636: William Von Hippel - Why We Need Both Autonomy and Connection to Find Happiness (The Social Paradox)

24:49How comfortable are you responding to a question by saying, I don't know? Well, I used to not be good at that at all because I felt like that was a sign of weakness. And so I gave this talk, I was in Amsterdam actually, on this, giving a series of academic talks. and this professor comes up to me afterwards, this big deal guy, and he goes, I really loved your answer to this question. And I couldn't remember anymore. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't remember how I answered that question because you said you didn't know. I was like, oh, I was kind of embarrassed, but I don't know. He goes, no, no, people never say that.

25:25It's really nice when you can just say you don't know. And I was pretty early in my career and I was like, oh, it never occurred to me that that was a plus. I felt like I'd been boxed into a corner and I had no choice but to say I didn't know when, when here's this eminent person telling me that was the best answer you gave all day. And so again, you, it's surprising how people respond to admissions of humility and lack of knowledge and error, but by and large, they respond much more positively than you think they will. And by and large, those are actually admission. Those are strong things to do to admit you're wrong rather than weak things.

26:00And the farther I go in my career, the more happy I am to say I'm wrong. And I don't know because I am wrong and I don't know. Well, you know what people really respond to? Authenticity. Real. Whether it's a coach in sports, a teacher, a podcast. I just sense this kind of fake, inauthentic, tough guy leader mantra that some people have that I've worked for. I'm thinking of one right now. I'm sure everybody can. Doesn't work. Right? You have a coach who's trying to be like the other coach, maybe that mentored them instead of figuring themselves out and then taking bits and pieces from other coaches and then mashing it together with their personalities to still be authentically them.

26:44Yes, that's the good thing to do. but but i would love to hear what you think about this idea because i sense it from you i've sensed it from the second we connected on zoom and you got here early and just the way you've talked about why you moved to australia like everything like i just sensed this like oh this guy's just real he's authentic he's just kind of saying what he thinks and what he believes he's not trying to put on a show what is it about authenticity that is just so attractive well remember what i said earlier that we all are trying to be ourself plus 20 right And that's a deceptive strategy to get more things in life than you would get otherwise.

27:18It's kind of the equivalent of lying. It's overconfidence. And we all do this. And I'm just as guilty as the next guy of doing this. But I'm also, I'm 61 years old. So I've been down this road a long time. And over that, one of the nice things that age gives you is you become more comfortable with who you are and what you are and are not going to achieve. You're not going to get some of those things that you wanted. And you will get others. And you learn to be satisfied with that. And so, yes, what we really resonate to is people who we think are telling us the truth. And it's hard to tell the truth, particularly when you're in the early stages of the game.

27:53But I think you hit the nail on the head. And that is when you go through life, you're going to have mentors and teachers who have lots of great strategies. And some of those are going to fit you well. And you should incorporate them. Just literally steal them because nobody is going to take your class and their class. Nobody's going to be your employee and theirs. It just doesn't happen, right? And so borrow, that's the most sincere form of flattery. Borrow the things from your mentors that actually resonate with you that you think you could do and make sense to you. But don't try to pretend to be something you're not.

28:26I've had so many awesome professors who are just things that are not. And I go, well, I wish I could do that, but I can't. And so you let it go, right? Well, I read that you did a study, I believe, in 2017 on overconfidence. What did you learn from that study on overconfidence? Well, so overconfidence is a strategy that we use and we do it when we do it under a variety of circumstances. We do it when we think that it's going to benefit us. And so if I'm communicating with you in a way where my confidence will come across, then I'm going to do that. I'm going to puff myself up in a way that gets you to see me as something more than I really am.

29:08But we're strategic about it. If I'm in a context with you where that's not going to work, I don't do it. And what's really remarkable about it is that we believe our own story. Sometimes we know we're bluffing. I'm playing poker. I got a terrible hand. You can't see it. I'm just going to go for it. But most of the times in life, we actually believe the stories we tell ourselves. And so that's why we do a lot of things that might otherwise seem kind of illogical. So for example, we often avoid seeking additional information if we're worried it might be bad news. So the simple version is I go, I'm trying to decide forever which product to buy, and I make a purchase.

29:44And then somebody says to me, oh, you should check out their prices over across town. And I don't even want to know. Like, I've made my purchase. It's too late, right? But we do this in lots of ways where we don't. If I encounter the bad news, then I would have to admit to you, oh, I made a bad decision. And maybe I'm not as good of a leader as you thought or as a decision maker or whatever. And so we try to organize our lives where we minimize the degree to which we get that bad news. And that allows us to believe our own stories. And that's important because it does determine who's successful in life.

30:15Because Bill is who he is. He can try to improve himself, but it's a whole lot easier just to bluff and bluster his way through than it is to actually self-improve. Self-improve is hard work. Bluster is easy. And so if I can get myself to believe my bluster, I'll go a long way. And you can think of politicians who are full of bluster and it works, right? And leaders as well. Does it work? It doesn't. Well, it works for the short term. Okay. Yes. Somebody eventually pops that bubble and unfortunately the whole thing can collapse. But again, because it's easier to do the bluster than it is to do the hard yards of getting it right.

30:51It's a strategy that people are always going to pursue. And so for me, the thing is that we can't help ourselves. That's just in our nature to be overconfident. And it works. It attracts members of the opposite sex. It attracts coalition partners. It does the things that are evolutionary important. But if you lean on it too hard, you can someday find yourself like, I would have been far better off spending these ensuing years self-improving and actually now having the skills that allow me to do what I want to do rather than pretending for so many years. Yeah. I think real confidence needs evidence.

31:25So you just got to go do the thing and create some evidence for yourself. I am fascinated. How did you meet your wife? what was that story like? Oh, so the, I'm thinking of being overconfident in these situations. Maybe I'm projecting a bit here, Bill, but I'm, I'm just, I'm curious about the story. In that particular case, it wasn't an overconfidence case. I was just a, I was a young academic at Ohio state and she was a student in my lab. And so she approached me and asked me if, you know, sort of asked me out, but in a way that has enough ambiguity so that, you know, you, it wouldn't be awkward if I said no.

31:59And I didn't know if as a - She was overconfident. She was. This is 30 some years ago. And so I actually went to the, there's an ombudsperson and I said, am I allowed to date a student? And they said, yes, so long as not your student. But they said, if it goes pear-shaped, it's on you. No matter what happened, the university will blame you. So just keep that in mind if you're going to go down that road. and but so it wasn't that's a slightly different kind of case but but i can tell you that you know i if i look at myself here's a for example i remember when i was trying to grow a beard the first time and it looked a little bit like moss on the south side of a north-facing tree i mean it was this patchy ridiculous thing and i but i was keen to see what it would look like if i could literally grow it out and so i you know i'd be i was like 16 or something right and so i'd go i'd be at the shops and i'd be kind of flirting with the person behind the counter maybe and it all be going fine.

32:53And then I'd suddenly remember that I have this absurd looking growth on my face. I would just glam up and get nervous and it would all go, you know, it would go arrive. And so you need to believe in yourself, even if you shouldn't, because I shouldn't have at that point, I looked ridiculous, but by believing in myself, it went smoothly anyway. Yes. I know that feeling as a quarterback, especially a younger quarterback and the power of coaches pouring and adding confidence on you that maybe you shouldn't even have, but the coach needs you to have it because you're his guy. You're our quarterback.

33:26And they pump you up so much to the fact where you start believing it. And then hopefully, you know, you make a play or two and then you've created some evidence for yourself. And then you're kind of writing high. The problem is if you keep that kind of ego for the rest of your life outside of, because I think you need a little ego as a quarterback. When you get on the field, you got to feel like the baddest dude on that field. It's part of the deal. You've seen Baker Mayfield and Tom Brady and these guys, they're the baddest dudes on that field. and they kind of need that edge. The problem is if you let that carry off of the field, you can run into some problems.

33:56You can make poor decisions. You can treat people, maybe not, as equals. And I think that could be an issue. I have a question, Bill, about a phrase that is said often that I'm not sure how I feel about it. And that is, fake it till you make it. What do you think of fake it till you make it? Yeah, so I think that's actually good advice under most circumstances. There's going to be demands that are too important. And you have to ask yourself, what are the costs of success versus failure, the relative costs? And sometimes failure has such a high price and success has such a low benefit that you don't want to risk the failure to gain a little bit of success.

34:38But in the front end of any job, when you first start out, people need to believe in you. And so I remember when I was a brand new assistant professor at Ohio State, I'm like, you know what, 27 years old. I know very little compared to all my colleagues. And I remember getting an argument with this lovely guy. He was a senior colleague of mine. And in retrospect, there's no question in my mind he was right and I was wrong. But I didn't know at the time. And I just looked completely confident. And I remember when we walked out, it was a fun argument. It wasn't a mean one or anything. But we walked out of that meeting and essentially half the students had decided with me and half had decided with them because they couldn't tell.

35:11and I just looked like I was perfectly confident in going back and forth with him. And so it allowed me not to be humiliated in a circumstance where I probably would deserve a little humiliation. But at the front end of your career, it's like you going out on the field as a quarterback. A little humiliation doesn't actually help when you're already nervous and have an imposter syndrome and worried that maybe this isn't for you. You need that little bit of boost, even if there's some untruth to it, so long as you're not doing neurosurgery where the costs of getting it wrong are super duper high.

35:41Hmm. Super interesting. Many leaders are like, let's say for those who are at the top end or the higher part of their companies or the CEO, they're the owner, SVP, right? Lots of people. Those jobs are lonely. I work with those leaders. They often can be lonely. They don't necessarily have people they can go to that are their peers or equals. They may have one or two. In some cases, they have none though. And so they can struggle with this isolation. They probably have some autonomy, but they need more meaningful connections. So what advice would you give to those leaders who are at or near the top where they're isolated, it's a bit lonely, and they're lacking in connections?

36:25Yeah. So your individual circumstances obviously are going to be particularly important in cases like that. And from my perspective, you have to step back and ask yourself, well, how did we evolve and where do we come from and how would our ancestors deal with that problem. And the way our ancestors dealt with that problem is that there was never one overall overarching leader. And when we talk about immediate return on to gather societies, which is where we started, there are people who don't have any gardens. Everything changed once the agriculture and those things came around and not necessarily in good ways.

36:56But if we look at how we started and how we spent 99 % of our time as a species, you might be the hunt leader today, I might be the song leader, I might be the medicine leader. And so nobody was peerless. Everybody had somebody else who was as good or better in other domains. And so from my perspective, they're very happy people. And they always felt like they had someone to talk to and balance advice off and stuff like that because they weren't the tip of the sphere in every domain. You could run a company or a sports team or whatever and be the number one person across all the domains, even though really your expertise is in one particular domain.

37:33But now that's your company. You're the CEO, whatever. And so from my perspective, what you need is a group of people that you actually trust and you enjoy their company, ideally. And those are the people that you ought to be bouncing ideas off all the time. And what the data show most clearly, so to back up a ton of a bit, and this is something that you might already be very familiar with, but you might not have run into it. when Google does everything in Teams and they're super data oriented. And so they eventually decided, boy, we've run thousands of Teams. We collect a ton of data on how well the Teams, what's going on in the Team.

38:15And we also know how well the Team succeeded, how well the product worked out. Let's see if we can predict that success. And the single most important variable that predicted the success of Google Teams across all the Teams they'd ever run was what's called psychological safety. or the degree to which members of the team felt like they could be themselves and say what's really on their mind. And so what you want to do is create a group of people. If you're a CEO who feels psychologically safe saying, Bob, you're full of shit. That's the dumbest idea I've ever heard. And here's why. And people are afraid to tell Bobby's full of shit if he's their boss.

38:44And so I don't know how to build that team. I can't give any advice on who those people are and where they come from. But if you enjoy their company and if you think, if you value their opinion, now you've got that group that our hunter-gatherer ancestors always had because they always were leaders in different domains. And so they always had each other to bounce ideas off and talk to. And it makes you less lonely. And it also makes you do a better job. That's what the Google data shows. You know, human beings are pretty special. We're pretty damn smart. But what makes it special is not the trillion connections inside our own brain, but the fact that we can now connect that to all the other brains.

39:18And now we've got quadrillions of connections where ideas can get just improved as they bounce around among different humans. What are some practical ways, CEO, for example, what are some practical ways a CEO can create psychological safety at their company? You could tell people, for example, in every meeting that we hold, you have to disagree with me at least once. And you have to have reason for disagreeing. You can't just say, Bob, I disagree. You have to say, Bob, I think that's wrong. And here's the data why I think that that's a bad idea. And so if the rule is that I have to do it at least once, well, then everybody's going to do it and it becomes a norm.

39:58And B, if I disagree with you, it's not because I don't like you. It's not because I don't trust you. It's not because I don't value your leadership. It's because that's the rules of engagement. And so whenever you create rules of engagement that require disagreement or you could play the devil's advocate, somebody gets assigned that role every meeting. You choose how you want to do it. But the key ingredient is disagreement. and look, it's important to put it in its place. If you divide decisions into their component processes, they really come into two different phases. You've got what we call deliberation and then implementation.

40:33And deliberation is when we're all sitting around saying, well, what should we do? Do we introduce this new product? Do we go after our competitor? Whatever. And so that's the time for disagreement. That's the time when everybody should pipe in and give opposite things. Then once we agree on the answer, now we're implementing. And now nobody wants to hear your disagreement with the original goal anymore. That time has passed. And so you have to be sensible about the nature of the disagreement. Once you decide, let's say that there's 10 of us and we have to decide whether we're going to introduce this new product.

41:03And I'm dead set against it. And during the deliberation phase, that's my job. I keep telling you why it's a bad idea. All right, fine. We've now decided eight to two, we're going to do it. I have to put that aside. I'm not arguing anymore we shouldn't do it. Now we're implementing, now we just have to decide the best way to actually make it happen. And so a good board member puts aside their concerns about stage one because they've been overruled and now focuses on stage two and does their best. They will, if we're going to do this, how can we do it the best we possibly can? And so what you want to do is build teams where people do disagree, but of course they have to disagree in the ways that make sense by virtue of the decision stage that you're at in the process.

41:40disagree and commit that's huge great teams are able to disagree and then commit even if they choose not your the one thing though bill i think is important when i'm working with leaders we talk about this specific area when it comes to feedback when you're the ceo or the senior leader and let's say you get feedback that is critical of you or critical of how you're running something from someone who works for you, a peer, anybody. I think it is so important how you receive it. The feedback you give to them, the response you give to them. Because I've had bosses, we've probably all had bosses who say, I love feedback.

42:22Give it to me. Disagree. Tell me when I'm wrong. We probably all had that person. And then you do it and you give them some critical feedback that is honest and real and it could be helpful and they get super defensive and they start explaining why you're wrong. When that happens to me, and I'm the subordinate in this case, giving feedback, I immediately say, all right, not doing that again. He can't handle it. He says he wants it. He's lying. I don't trust him as much. He can't handle it. So as leaders, sometimes that stings. Sometimes if someone gives us critical feedback, it hurts our ego or we really believed in the thing and now they're telling us that we're wrong and there's a chance that they're right, right?

43:04There's a chance that feedback's good. So what do you think about that? For the leaders who then say they want it, what are the best ways for them to receive it in a way to continue to have a culture of psychological safety? And look, it's super difficult because we all feel that sting when we make a mistake or have an idea that everybody shoots down. The only thing I would say is that practice and receiving negative feedback is key. And I reflect back on my own dad as a, for example, he was the perfect father for somebody who wants to take negative feedback because he dissociated two things. Every idea I ever had in my life was stupid as far as he was concerned.

43:43He would always shoot it down. But at the same time, he made it clear that he thought I was a wonderful guy. And so I learned that my idea and me are two very different things. And yes, every idea is imperfect and every idea can be improved, but that's not a statement about me. I'm this lovely guy who he thinks the world of, who just happened to say a stupid thing yet again, right? Or not a stupid thing, but an imperfect thing. And so if you get this, if you learn, all right, well, my ideas are not me. And what will make the best me is the one who has the best ideas that are the most successful.

44:16It's not an easy lesson to learn. It's a painful one that you have to go through time and time again. And I don't blame leaders. They say they want feedback because what they're really hoping is that you'll say, oh, I love the idea, but maybe make it a blue one instead of a red one. You know, they want tweaks on the margins and they want the overall idea to be appreciated. And that's not necessarily the accurate feedback because maybe the problem is actually the idea itself and not the margins. It's just that it's harder than people realize for us to take on that negative feedback. And I would say there's nothing like practice to make it.

44:49You're better at it. And the way to practice it is to actually require it. And so if you go back to the earlier point that we were making, if the rules of every meeting are every person has to criticize at least one thing or there's always a devil's advocate whose job the entire meeting is to disagree and say, what about X? Then you guarantee you're going to get practice of dealing with it because it's going to happen every time you and your team get together. I think you've got to be so intentional in those moments. like as the leader, everyone's paying really close attention to how you respond to things, good news, bad news, feedback, praise, people are paying really close attention to you.

45:29And so it's really critical that you're aware of that, that you're really intentional. You're not fake, right? I'm not saying don't be a phony or don't have like a fake response, be authentically you, but just be aware of the situation when you're in a meeting or you're with your people that the way that you choose to respond, she has a dad, I know this feeling, the way that I handle adversity within my family is going to reverberate throughout all my children and my extended family. They're paying attention to see how I handle that situation. I remember when I got pulled over for speeding, my intentional thought was be kind and be honest.

46:07Be kind and be honest to the police officer. Don't lie. Don't be mean. Don't be agitated. I really wanted them to see, man, this sucks. I hate that I got pulled over, but I'm going to be kind. I'm going to be honest because that's what I want them to be when adversity strikes. And I just think that's important from a leadership perspective of being very thoughtful and intentional of how you respond to any stimulus because those people are watching closely. You're absolutely right. People pay way more attention to somebody above them in the hierarchy than they do to somebody below because the person above them has things that they can give you or opportunities and the person below typically doesn't.

46:45It's just human nature. And the thing is that what that does mean is so if you're the above and let's say I'm running our team and you tell me, Bill, that idea sucks. It's a non-starter. Here's why. There's no harm in my starting it going, ouch. Okay, now what I really ought to do after I admit that that feedback hurts is I should pause for a second and ask myself, okay, is there value here or is he wrong? Because a good leader has to go ahead anyway, even if their team members disagree with them. If they're convinced they're right, if they're considering the other argument but disagreeing, they have to put it on the line and do it anyway, right?

47:22That's their job. That's literally what their job description is. And so, but what you want to be able to do is pause for a second and say, well, hold on. Is that criticism valuable? And ought I take it on board and either abandon the whole project or amend it in some way, et cetera. And in my mind, when everybody's looking at you, there's only one way to do that. And that is first admit, ouch, and then say, give me a second to think that through and then go, actually, no, that's not a problem. And here's why. You may be right. Let's back up and rethink this. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's also important just to thank people for giving you feedback.

47:55Say thank you. Like even if you don't have an immediate response, you create a little bit of a buffer, but just be genuinely grateful when someone chooses to give, because not all feedback is going to be right, by the way. Like it's not, they're not always going to be right, but I do think you should show gratitude. I'm curious, you brought up your dad. Was your dad also a genetically happier person? What was your dad like? What was your upbringing like with your dad? Yeah. So he's a genetically happy guy, but he's also this, he was this sort of young and aggressive bulldozer type person. He was a chest surgeon and he couldn't get along with anybody.

48:27And so he literally moved the family to Alaska because it's sort of wide open spaces. And you don't have to be as political up there and get along with everybody. He just wasn't very good at getting along. He's kind of a disagreeable person. But as Hardy, he was a genuinely good guy and a very happy guy. He had too much work because he was the only heart surgeon in the state. So anyone who got in a car accident or stabbed or shot or just a cardiac arrest went to him. But when he could, when he had time away, you know, this is 1960s and 70s. So dads are busy in those, you know, they don't spend time in the family the way they do now, but when you time away all, he always wanted to go skiing with us or go ice skating or do something, you know, that we'd all get together and kind of, Steve, life is a ton of fun and you ought to take those moments and enjoy them when you can.

49:15What was it like growing up in Alaska? Okay. In some ways, it's just like anywhere else except darker and colder. It's not that different from Minnesota or Maine or any of those places. The big thing is that, at least when I was a kid, there was so little infrastructure that it's a great place if you like to do things on your own and backwoods. And my dad, that was his thing. So we would just go to a mountain that there was not I think a human on it. We're in the middle of nowhere. And then we would ski up it and ski down it. That was our whole day because it takes a long time to climb a mountain where the snow is 20 feet deep.

49:48And so if you don't enjoy those kinds of activities, you're in the wrong place. And you go from Alaska to eventually Australia. I know we briefly talked about it before we recorded, but walk me through the decision to move to Australia. you well so i'm first of all i'm soft and weak weather wise i don't like to be cold anymore at all ever and so you kind of grew out of that like you grew up tough and strong and i can handle the cold and ski anywhere but now that's gone i i look i i could do it and i was tougher as a kid than i was an adult which is weird but i also i always was cold i always felt cold and so i remember walking to school in the morning and it's always dark and so you would know how cold it is by how crunchy the snow feels under your feet because there's mostly snow, but is it soft snow and forgiving or is it this gritty, cold, icy, horrible stuff that just goes right through your bones?

50:45Anyway, I always did like that. And when May came around, I was thrilled that the snow was melting and the summer was here. And now I live somewhere. I'm in Brisbane, Australia, where in the winter, the high every day is 70 degrees. And that just suits me so well. But I have to admit, I'm such a weenie that when it's only 70 degrees outside, I've got a jumper on. I bundle up because I find it cold if it's below 80, 85 degrees. How about the connection element of making a move across the world? Because I imagine you and your wife had friends, you had community, you could collaborate with people, right?

51:21You're a professor to leave all of those relationships. And maybe, I don't know if you had any in Australia or you started from zero, but I feel like that could impact happiness, right? Making a move across the world. I know there are great people down there, but still, if you don't know any of them, you have no relationships, that could take a while. What was that like when it comes to the collaboration element and connecting with other people if you don't have a built-in network of those that you already know? Yeah, that's a great question. And I had the advantage that I was, you know, we're a family with young children and lots of work to do.

51:58And so I have limited time for socializing and outside of my family. And I didn't know a soul. And so if ever there's a time to not know a soul, you don't want to arrive as a young single person and not know a soul because then you're bored and lonely. But if you arrive as this crazy, busy person with small children, well, bored and lonely is just not in the cards. You're overwhelmed. And Australia is actually a kind of hard country to make friends in. And the reason for that is that unlike Americans who are very residentially mobile, Australians tend to stay in the cities that they grew up in.

52:32And so their social networks are pretty full when they're adults. They've known all the same people in the same town. They have high school friends, college friends. And so it's hard to insert a new person. You know, there's nothing wrong. They're just busy. They've got a very full network of friends. Whereas Americans move all the time for jobs and things like that. And so they're much more open to creating new friendship networks. And so what I found was that if I look at all my best friends in Australia, some of them are native Aussies, but most of them are actually expats like myself who arrived, who didn't have these full friendship networks.

53:04And so we had spare time and we would get a coffee and then over time we became friends. Interesting. I'm curious, Bill, so you work with college students you have for a long time. And let's say you're meeting with a recent college graduate who doesn't fully know what they want to do other than the fact that they want to leave a positive dent in the world. What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? So that's a super intimidating place to be. And it's this modern problem that never existed for ancestors. You know, 10 ,000 years ago, nobody in the history of time ever asked a kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?

53:47Because there's only one answer. I'm going to be a hunter-gatherer, right? That's what every single human does. And now suddenly, not only are there a zillion jobs, there's a gazillion jobs. Because you could be this YouTube influencer. You could advance a new career. You can do stuff that when I was a kid just simply didn't exist. And so on the positive side, the world's your oyster. You can be anything you want. On the negative side, though, it's a little bit like walking into a really fancy chocolate shop. And there's a gazillion chocolates sitting on the trays. They're really hard to tell apart.

54:18And the only way I know which one I like is to literally try all of them. But I'm going to be sick if I eat more than 10 of those suckers. It's just not possible. And the line's going to build up behind me while I'm going, oh, do I want those pralines or the hazelnut? You just can't do that. And so with this overwhelming choice is actually can be a bad thing, too. and there's some really nice work, for example, Sheena Ayingar and others have shown that if you give people an ice cream choice and you say, here's three flavors, they'll always pick their favorite. They're really good at that. If you give them 50 ice cream choices, they'll often pick an ice cream they don't really like because they were kind of overwhelmed by choice.

54:54And the downside of the world that we live in today is we're kind of overwhelmed by choice. And so it's intimidating because you can't, it's not chocolate shop. You can't keep going and try different chocolates every day for 20 days and then you'll do it because careers are hard to try. And they often require enormous amounts of training before you get to the point where you even know what it's like. One of my daughter's good friends, her dad is a doc and he and I are standing around watching the kids play. And he's like, you know, I hate my job. And I was like, really? And he goes, yeah. By the time I finished medical school, I was like, I don't think I like medicine.

55:27And he goes, but I put so much money and time into it. I thought, well, don't go back to law school or something, give it a try. So I did. And then I got into my practice and I still don't like it, but now I've got huge expenses with my practice and I'm doing really well, but I can't just stop doing it because all these people work for me. And you get stuck in this burline bear trap where things are comfortable, but there's no escape, right? And so it's really hard to get around that problem. It's hard to know yourself well enough to know what you'd like without trying everything when you simply can't.

56:01And what I've learned is that what you can do, though, is back off and say, well, what are the elements of a job that I really enjoy? What do I want the day-to-day existence to look like? And just as a very simple, for example, am I happy in front of a computer screen or do I need to be face-to-face talking to people? Do I want lots of alone time or do I like to be surrounded by people all day? And if you ask yourself those big questions that lots of jobs fit those various answers, then you can at least window it down to a series of jobs that you actually would find enjoyable. And then really you should ask yourself, what are your strengths?

56:34So where will I stand out positively? I'm not a data guy. Let's not go that way. I am a person, whatever you are. And it may not get you to a career that you love, but if you get lucky, it will. But it also, it will help you avoid careers that just don't suit you at all. Yeah. And I do think you have to have an element of experimenting and being willing to try stuff. It's really, really hard to know without having done it. And so I think you have to be okay with the fact that you probably won't get it right initially. There's a good chance you won't. If you do, great. But you may not, and it's completely okay.

57:14right? It's okay to try stuff, make a move like, yeah, be committed when you're in and really be reflective, but also know that most people don't get it exactly right, right away. And if you don't, that's okay. Bill, this is amazing. I know we're right at time, man. The book is called The Social Paradox, Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. I'm often have PR people sending stuff my way, asking me to have people on my show. This is the opposite. I found Bill. I found his book. I was fascinated. I've heard you on other podcasts, Rogan and Chris and these guys and thought, I got to talk to this guy, man.

57:50And you certainly delivered. I really appreciate you being here, man. I love your work and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress. Thanks, Ryan. Same. There's been tons of fun chatting about all this stuff. It's taken me in a direction I don't usually think about, which I find super interesting. Love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, man.

58:11It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Bill von Hippel. Few takeaways from my notes are leaders born or made. Yes. Like most things, it's not a black and white answer. The key is to use your unique strengths to effectively inspire others to do the work that must be done in order to achieve the goals of the team or the company. You have to know yourself, learn your strengths, and double down on those to be an authentic leader to effectively lead others.

58:57I was surprised by how much of our happiness, health, and strength were based purely on our genetics, about 50%. Some people are just born happier, healthier, and stronger than you. It doesn't mean you can't be happy, healthy, or strong. It just means that you need to work harder to make it happen. That's just life. Then leaders, it is lonely at the top. What do we do about that? We need a group you can trust and you enjoy their company. That Google study is they do everything in teams. What's needed? Psychological safety. You've got to be able to disagree with each other, give feedback, receive that feedback really well.

59:43It's on the leader to create a culture and environment for healthy disagreement and receive feedback in a way that encourages more of it. So good. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Bill von Hippel. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you'll also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and subscribe to the show and write a thoughtful review and rate the show, hopefully five stars. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

1:00:20And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait. Thank you.