673: Daniel Coyle - Opening Yellow Doors, Mastering Your Craft, World-Class Storytelling Techniques, Great Questions to Ask, Building Your Community, The Power of Curiosity, and How to Flourish in Life

24:32Because what we're talking about here is where your energy is going and where do you see it's going really well. What do you want more of? I want more of this. I want more of that. And what do you want to do differently is another good question. What do you want to do differently? Because you're trying to create space here, which is such a groovy phrase. We're going to create space right now. But it kind of captures what it is, which is I want to make you feel like I'm not interrogating you. Yeah. That I'm not judging you. If I say like, what are you doing that you think is going poorly? That's a crappy question.

25:09But what do you want to do differently is not a bad one. It creates space for you to go, yeah, here's what I want to do differently. Yeah. Those are all good. And then other questions kind of about the future, I think, are really liberating and good. And all these questions, you know, paint a picture for me, describe for me five years from now, things go great. give me an average Tuesday. Like, what did you do on that day? And you're probably obviously skiing with your daughters. That would be one of them. My family's right alongside you. But, you know, something in all of those, what you're, I think, trying to do is get people out of kind of their narrow bore attention and let go a little bit, surrender a little bit and open up and point out things that are maybe in the corner of their eye.

25:57Yeah. So Dan, I was recently asked to give two talks to the same company. One was just, just the salespeople. And they asked me to talk about excellence and habits and routines and rituals of high performance, right? Stuff I learned about on the show. The second was with the entire company and they said, we want you to title it. And I don't usually do this. I'm sure you don't either. Where they tell you what they want you to talk about. They say it needs to be titled the DNA of great teams. And I said, initially I said, no, I don't know if I have that talk in me or whatever. And then I thought, well, it might be kind of a fun topic.

26:31So anyway, So I did that a couple, like a month ago now. And I would be curious if you were asked to give a talk titled The DNA of Great Teams, what are some of the, I don't, you don't need to give the talk right now, but what are some of the bullet points that would immediately start popping up in your mind of, oh, this is, yeah, this great team is great. I mean, you're maybe the foremost guy to ask this question to, so. No pressure, huh? Yeah. Right. Yeah. So this better be good. It's freaking great. I expect perfection. No, yeah. No, it's good. You know, part of my mind there goes right to kind of these core things of deep, deep belonging sort of sacrifice.

27:11But I'll get a little notch. So you got the big principles there that I think are true in every great team. But I'll go like since Indiana football is fresh in our minds after seeing that, there is something, you know, if we notch a little bit deeper, it's like peer leaders who sacrifice for the team. for me is like really big. Seeing that. You see it, Mendoza got smoked. Smoked. I mean, he was battered and he just kept going. That guy. He was getting hammered and he didn't complain. And interview, he talks about his teammates. I mean. Yeah. How do you respond? And so that leads to the second one, which is like that moment of terrible adversity.

27:52What is the instinct? Are we turning toward each other or are we turning away from each other? To me, that is like such a litmus test. You could actually see it last night. You could see the contrast between the two teams. When things went bad, they responded very differently, right? That response is just so important to DNA of great teams. And I actually don't think the coach is that important in a way. Really? Was he ready? No, I think he obviously sets the tone and everything, but when we, and it's part of the DNA, but it's not as big a part as people think. I think coaches can create the conditions for the team to emerge.

28:29But the thing with the great teams have, because sometimes pit themselves against the coach. They can sometimes see the coach as we're going to come together against this guy. The U.S. Olympic hockey team of 1980 would be an example of that. So I would put that on there. And I would also put a shout out to this curiosity is at the very, very, very core of it. because that keeps you going. And it's really hard to consistently succeed. And I think the teams that I've seen do that are ones that do not get gassed up on their own stuff, do not drink their own Kool-Aid, do not believe in their success, actually, in a way.

29:14It's not skeptical exactly, but they're not buying into it in a like, oh, now I'm at the top of the mountain, everything's fine. They get curious about that next mountain and they get curious about each other and they get curious about the situation and they're willing to let go of stuff that didn't work. OKC's really good at this. The basketball team, I mean, they are incredibly intentional about how they evolve and how they lead. And they were here last year and I had a coffee with their coach and their shooting coach, Chip England, who's a brilliant, brilliant shooting coach, and Mark Dageno.

29:45And they told me something that was kind of cool that I hadn't appreciated. When someone gets traded in pro sports, it's like a death. Like this is the locker room. Everybody knows each other. Trade deadline's coming. Somebody got traded. And then their locker's empty. It's like a gravestone. And what the coach at OKC does is on the day after somebody gets traded, he spends a minute of practice expressing his appreciation for that person who's gone. It takes like 10 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever. But it like, what, how simple and human is that? Yeah. How powerful is that? And it really, I think what I'm seeing in these places, it's the same thing that I see in these flourishing groups that I wrote about.

30:25The word is community. Like the thing that makes people flourish is community. It's not a bunch of individuals that are individualing together. It's like, can they connect? Can they, I mean, the way that some people would say it would be like, love your neighbor. Are they loving their neighbor and supporting their neighbor? And that is, that's just magical when that does happen. One of the groups that was blown away reading about those Chilean miners. Oh, yeah. Man, I didn't know and understand the full story until reading about it in your book. Tell me about how they somehow, after what seems like one of the worst things that could ever happen to you, flourished together and survived all of them together.

31:12Incredible. I mean, yeah, if you had to trade places with anybody in the history of the world, these guys would not be in the top list. list. Like there are a couple thousand feet below the surface happened in 2010. Most of us remember it. I think, you know, Chilean San Jose mine caves in, there's a hundred million tons of rock on top of them. They're in a room called a refugio and there's probably no escape. They're probably thinking this is it. And there's a little cabinet with some tuna fish cookies, spoiled milk, like not much, not much food, 33 people down there. And for the first couple hours, it went as bad as it could have gone.

31:47Like people are eating the food, people are running around scrambling, yelling at each other. And then they sort of tire out, they circle up and it's funny. And, you know, we all know that they survived. We all know that they ended up kind of creating a little civilization down there. And the original thought when they came out was like, oh, they had great leaders. They had like these two guys that seemed to be leaders. And those leaders had a plan and they had a strategy and they did it and they were like steering the ship. And it turns out that wasn't the case. What happened was that they sort of circled up and they stopped and they kind of paused.

32:17They just stopped. And they said, look, we're in the shit. Like, this is it. We're not getting out of here. And then the boss stepped forward. His boss, everyone was kind of afraid of. He wore a white helmet. His name was Luis Urzua. And he took off his white helmet and he said, there are no bosses and no employees. There's no bosses and no employees. We're all one here. And then there's another pause and somebody else pointed out that there were 33 of them, which is the same age Christ was when he died. And so they saw that as being, they're mostly Catholic, saw that as being as symbolic. And from those pauses, like they weren't actually trying to do anything, but what happened in those moments is their attention shifted from this terror and this task of survival to this larger connection that they had, this relationship they had with each other and with this moment.

33:04And they started to kind of self-organize at that time, like just let's build a little sleeping area. Let's get the food sorted. Let's figure out how much lamp battery power we have. And they started this set of rituals, rituals. And they almost like each meal, they would get out a certain flake of tuna and they would all share it and eat it at the same time. They built small games out of little reflectors and they would play these games with their limited light. And it didn't, like it wasn't easy. And it was, there was an incredible amount of shared suffering down there, but it was shared. and when they finally got contact with the surface, one of the things that they did that kind of blew everybody away was they sung the Chilean national anthem together.

33:45So they're down there, no food, very little supplies, dark, infection, it's super hot and they end up kind of creating this little model civilization that functioned incredibly well for the situation that they were in and what let them do that was not information, it wasn't analysis, it was letting go. It was having this moment of meaning, of making meaning and creating presence. I saw that pattern in all the places that I visited. They were able to create meaning because you can have all the information, you can have all the success, you can have all the productivity. But if you don't have the ability to like stop and create relationships and create community, all that stuff is, we say it's meaningless because it's meaningless.

34:32And community is how we do that. And so they were just a beautiful example of like, all right, they don't have anything. How did they create community? Well, they did it by stopping and looking to something bigger than themselves. Stopping and looking. And that moment of stopping and looking is something that I saw in all the groups that I visited. They had the ability in all the busyness of this world to be like, wait a minute, stop. What are we really about? What matters here? What is our community? Why are we here? What is bigger than us that we're connected to right now? And they grounded themselves in those moments over and over and over again.

35:09And that's what creates growth. And that's what creates connection. That's what creates community. So that's an extreme story. What about for the person who has a pretty good life and they're a mid-level VP-ish leader at a Fortune 100 company trying to hit an aggressive goal, hire well, fire when needed, you know? Yeah. different than being stuck way down there with 30, 30, well, yeah. What would you take from that experience and all of these stories of flourishing groups and people that could help the person who doesn't have it terrible? In fact, they have it pretty good, maybe not excellent or great, but they're doing fine.

35:50What could they learn from those guys, the Chilean miners to implement it to either their place of work or their life at home to flourish, to do really, really well from a team perspective, from a family perspective, and as individuals. Yeah. I think the thing, there's a lot of lessons to learn. And one of them is getting smart. Smarts will only get you so far. Yeah. It's kind of one big one. To really have this sense of fulfillment. We only flourish. I think there's a myth in our culture right now that individuals can flourish. Like you think of, oh, that person, you see them as a single person, as an individual.

36:27and you hear about their success and the appearance by all appearances like that individual is flourishing. But underneath them invisibly, they're part of a larger community. Flourishing is only part, we only become our best through other people. So we have this pronoun problem, basically. I, me, when actually it's we and us, right? Self-improvement, we're talking about self-improvement. Actually, that's not as powerful as shared improvement, right? So this idea that we're actually pre-wired to flourish through community, pre-wired. And one way to access that, I think, is to think about times in your life, moments in your life when you have felt the most alive, the most connected, the most growing, that have challenged you and that have made you who you are.

37:17I'm going to say those moments didn't happen when you were by yourself in a sauna, when you were training alone. Those were relationships. Those were moments when you're in community. Those are moments when community was lighting you up in some new way and challenging you to grow and creating conditions where you could grow. So the challenge to somebody in a Fortune 100 is a mid-level is who's your community? How are you nurturing it? Life looks like a game every day. Guess what? Sorry, it's not a game. It's a garden. And long-term, growing the garden of your career is going to benefit you. It's in your self-interest way more than playing the game of your career, growing the garden of your career.

37:56So the question to ask every day is like, who's in my garden? Who can I learn from? What relationship do I need to feed and nurture? And who can I feed? Who can I help? We had Craig Council in to interview for the Guardians manager position a few years ago. And somebody asked him what he did when he was feeling down, like hard job, lonely job, like a lot of jobs. Talk about sort of the loneliness of the manager. His answer was, I go find somebody I can help. Go find a rookie I can help. Go find a clubhouse person I can help. That's my cure. It's like, that really stayed with me because it's his problem, right?

38:34You'd think he'd want to sort of self-gratify and I need to fix myself. It's like, no. It's community comes down to like serve thy neighbor. It comes down to helping other people. And that instinct, which is kind of the opposite of what we really want to do in some ways, right? It's hard to do that. It's freaking hard to get out of your own head. But that instinct to flip it and say, wait, who can I go help is a really powerful question. Talk about powerful questions. It's like when Jeff asked you to go rock climbing. Oh, yeah. It's kind of a yellow door, isn't it? Because initially, from what I read at least, you're thinking, I don't think I want to do that.

39:11No, no. But now, since you said yes to that invitation, how has it changed your life? Yeah, no, it's given me this whole new community, really. Yeah. Really. And just, yeah, I didn't want to go indoor rock climbing. That is a stupid sport. Like, let's be frank. It is a, you put on these stupid shoes and you go some indoor thing with painful grips and chalk and all these bags and this stupid harness that I put on backwards when I first put it on. And it's just, you feel like an idiot. But my friend who had, you know, he was looking to create some new friends and friendships. He recently went through some changes in his personal life, and I wanted to show up for him, right?

39:51And so I ended up getting involved in this. And now five, six years later, here we are doing trips and playing music and going skiing. It's this whole new group, a whole new community of friends. So that yellow door and reaching out, I mean, through that yellow door is really what made it work. Has that changed for you? Because I'm with you. There are days you probably have introverted tendencies as a writer. I definitely do. Especially if you go on stage, you need to recharge, and it's usually by yourself. But that Craig Council, which I'm going to borrow forever now, too, of, you know what, when I'm feeling down or when something happens, like let's say your daughter gets temporarily hurt on the soccer field, like it's the worst feeling in the world.

40:28What makes that better? Having a conversation with you, trying to help somebody else, trying to do something I think is going to make a positive dent in the world, help someone one-on-one. It seems obvious, but it's almost harder now than ever because we have devices, these incredible computers that we all carry in our pockets. And if we can take it out and look at it forever and always have an unlimited supply of things to look at, but what are you doing when you're doing that? You're completely by yourself. Yes. In fact, it's worse because you might be watching videos or pictures of people who are together and you're not.

41:01I know. You know what I mean? So how does that play a role into this community and flourishing? Oh, my God. I mean, I sort of think of these places I visited as being the cure for this kind of AI dystopia that we're moving toward. I mean, we're clearly moving toward that. And there's a lot of structures in our society that really want to divide our attention and keep us individualized and keep us apart from community or provide a fake artificial friend for us to talk to, which is absolutely hilarious and dark and wrong. but the idea that the cure is we're pre-wired for this stuff. There are these huge meta-studies that show, are you happier when you get a gift or give a gift?

41:41Guess what? You're happier when you give one. We all know that already. We're increasingly learning. It feels like there is this sort of humanist revival. Maybe I'm gassed up on my own research, but in visiting these places, these communities that have kind of come back to life. These businesses, like Zingerman's Deli, for example, that have absolutely thrived by not scaling. Like we think of scaling as being this, oh, that's good to do. Always good to do. They had an offer. This is this little deli in Ann Arbor that I write about. They were very successful, just the best Reuben you've ever had.

42:19And a lot of your listeners may have even been there. It's very famous. It started in 1982. too. They've grown and grown and grown. And at one point, Walt Disney came up to them. And part of their values is to be in Ann Arbor. That's where they are. That's where they do their business. And Walt Disney came up to them with a$50 million offer to say, we want you in our park. Like you guys are a great deli. We want you in our park. And for most businesses, that's a no brainer. Like we're going to do it. And for Zingerman's, it took like 20 minutes. And they're like, nope, we're not interested. If you ever come to Ann Arbor, if you ever have a Walt Disney world in Ann Arbor, we will be in it.

42:48But short of that, this is where we get our meaning. This is where we get our purpose. This is the ground in which we grow our roots. And they have got this community of businesses there. There's a creamery, there's a travel business, there's a wedding planning business, there's a Korean barbecue. There's all these connected businesses, this family of businesses that is deep in Ann Arbor and has all kinds of deep connections with that community. So not to say every business has to follow that model, but there are models for creating those kinds of relationships that can actually lead to a much deeper sense of thriving than simply the present model we're given, where it's like, go, go, go, go, go, and be narrow in scale.

43:33I like the question too, what do you, James Clear has said this. I had dinner with him recently and he said, what are you optimizing for? He asks that all the time. And Corey and I were talking about this before you got here. And I said, I'm optimizing for this. Oh yeah. For amazing experiences with great, great, high character people who've put a positive dent in the world and being with them. We had this scheduled on Zoom. I remember when I emailed, what, the day before, or maybe it was the day of, you and their team and said, wait a second, Dan might be in Cleveland. I'm just going to go up there and see him.

44:05Or Clark Lee's down in Nashville. I'm going to go see him. Or Will Goddara's down there too. And to me, this is the community building that is hard to do. You can do it a little bit on Zoom. You can still feel some of it, but there's nothing like meeting you down in the lobby, hanging out for a little bit, talking. I think that brings me so much joy. Like this flourishing is being with people, being together, connecting, developing friendships and relationships. That's what I'm optimizing for. And you hope, you know, you got to make money, right? I got a family. We all have to do that. But that's what I feel like.

44:38Is there anything better than optimizing for those big relationships that can be transformative over the course of your life? To me, that's been the number one thing that I'm shooting for. I love it. I love it. It's so good. And optimizing is a, is, is kind of a good word because it kind of implies too, that you have to leave some space. It's not, it's imperfect. Right. Right. It's definitely not efficient. I'm aiming for it. Yeah. It's not efficient. Like you had, you had a better way to spend, you had a more efficient way to spend your morning driving up here. And I had a, I probably do too, but that's not where the, you know, the value is not evenly distributed here.

45:08Like there's, you're aiming and that's the thing that the flourishing groups have. They're kind of, it's about moments. It's not measurable in conventional ways, right? It's measurable in terms of value or in terms of joy or in terms of feeling connected or in terms of relationship. And like relationship is so mysterious. All these studies show us it's the most important thing to a life, relationships, right? The Harvard study of longevity that we've all read about, Harvard study of development, you know, what is it? It's relationships, full stop. Like that's it. That distinguishes health and happiness more than nutrition, more than exercise, more than IQ, more than genes, like it's relationships.

45:48And yet there's not a playbook for it. Like what is the playbook for relationships? It involves curiosity. It involves risk. It involves looking at people who are good at it and learning from them. It involves community. You could probably make a case that communities are where we learn how to play that sport. And that's why they're so important. And that's why isolation is so detrimental. Like communities teach us how to be in relationship. And that's the cool part of it. And as dystopian as the world can feel sometimes, that's just part of us. We're pre-wired for community. When some of these places that I visited, they were inspiring because they were kind of able to flip the switch.

46:30It wasn't like a lot of work to get people to click on that way. And when you walked into the guardian's office and people start asking questions, it clicks on. People have that quality in them. It's not predetermined that we're going to be in this tech dystopia forever. It's like there really is a possibility for a community revival. Well, one of the things I love about your style of research is you can learn a ton by using AI tools, by reading books online. You just go there though. You go there. You embed yourself with these groups of people. You've done it for multiple books now. I'd just love to hear your decision making of, okay, I should go see those people or I should go there.

47:14What are the Navy SEALs? You know, Pixar. Can you just walk me through like the way you think about, okay, I should go study them or study that. I'm going to go there. And I got to imagine there are times when you go study somebody and you - Whoops. Yeah. It's not a waste of time, right? It's part of the deal, but like, I am curious how you think about that. Totally. No, I used to think I had to go someplace where I already knew the answers, right? I need I would go like, oh, it's definitely there. It's definitely, I know. As I got older and as I made mistakes, I end up going to places that are most mysterious.

47:43Like it's the mystery that draws me. For example, for the talent code, somebody had told me about a Russian tennis club in Moscow called Spartak that had produced more top 20 women players than the entire United States over a span of time. And I called a filmmaker who had been there and he just made a sound over the phone. He was just like, dude, like you won't believe this place. And right at that moment, I'm like, I'm going, I'm going like, there's no question. My curiosity gets the best of me. And it's like, I'm looking for places that are credibly unique. They stand out for some reason. And often it's a performance difference.

48:21Like what is going on? Zingerman's deli. I've heard about that a lot, but not every deli grows into a$90 million community of businesses. What is going on there? And then you have your first, your probe, to go back to our earlier idea, like it's complex. So you have a call, you have a couple interactions. If that is still resonating for you, it's like a guitar string, right? Can you still hear it? Is that mystery still there? And then you go. And for the Spartak thing, it was not an easy thing to fly to Russia. And it was not an easy thing to sort of get a translator and get there. And, you know, it was dead of winter.

48:56And it was in a very strange place. was the middle of this giant park. And it was an old, old kind of Quonset hut building. It was a little narrow door and you just kind of keep exploring and you keep going in and there's an old lady in there moving in slow motion, teaching kids how to hit. And she had been teaching there for 50 years and you start asking questions and you know, yeah. And you give enough time to where people will open up a little bit. But what I've found is that when people come up to you and say, hey, I find what you do kind of fascinating. Can you tell me about that? Most people are like thrilled to share that.

49:35Now there are some where they're not. The San Antonio Spurs famously closed culture. They don't like people who write about them because they're a great culture. And part of what makes a great culture is they don't brag and they don't sort of spotlight their own greatness. So in approaching them, I ended up having to take sort of a side door and appeal to their curiosity about learning. R.C. Buford, the GM, he's like one of the most curious people I've ever met. I sort of explained what I was doing and that kind of opened the door because he wants to learn about the SEALs. He wants to learn about the Guardians.

50:08He wants to learn about the U.S. Olympic hockey team of 1980. So I end up sort of serving as a bridge a little bit so that those conversations can happen. It's a back and forth. And then it sort of connects back to what we were talking about at the very beginning, which is like, you get up to the top of these super top learning organizations and you find the most curious people you've ever met. R.C. Buford picked me up in his car at the airport. And I didn't stay at his house, but I spent vast amounts of like three days with him. And I think I asked him like five questions the whole time. And he asked me like 5 ,000 questions.

50:45I was wrung out when I left. I was like, I don't think I have anything else to talk about. And it ended up being a great, a wonderful experience. I got to, you know, watch pop work and meet Chip England and meet all those other people. So it was a great kind of embedding, but it really reinforced to me what's driving those places is that they do not think they have it figured out and they're delighted to find where they make mistakes. And they are super curious about other people that do it well. And it's fun to be around them. man that's that's absolutely a commonality of the elite the best of the best i mean jay's this way as well with the guardians and the seals that this just inherent curiosity is so inspiring yeah man i think that's it i know we got to go soon but one more question that i'm curious about you personally so i learned this question called the champagne question from my friend jason gainard i've asked it a million times since then it's exactly a year from now okay and you and i are popping bottles.

51:45We're celebrating. Yeah. What are we celebrating? Ooh, that's really good. That's really good. We just arrived at the ski resort with our nine combined girls. Let's go. What, you've got five? I've got four? We have nine girls. Just a whole football team of girls. We just got there, right? We just got there, and we're about to spend like 40 days. Can you hang on the blues with me, though? I can hang. I can hang. Love the blues. You can ski backwards, maybe, or just make it harder? absolutely no that kind of stuff we're like there's something new new relationships but also connected to old that to me is very super appealing and i think you've got this community that you've built and to a certain extent you know i think we all do and seeing those communities kind of meld and merge and grow is exciting i love it man the book flourished the art of building meaning joy and fulfillment how fun was it to write this thing super fun and i'm still learning about it too.

52:43Like, is there going to be a part two? We're going to change. Well, we're going to, what I'm realizing, we'll try this out, but we're going to, we're going to shift the subtitle on the book actually. Right now it's, we're going to shift it at some point. It may be with the paperback or maybe in a little bit, but we've got to sell the copies we have now with this subtitle. But what we've realized in these conversations is that this is actually about the transformative power of creating community. That's what the book's about. And that gives you fulfillment. That gives you joy. That gives you meaning.

53:13But that's what people are craving right now, I think. And that is what I'm craving right now. And that's what each story in the book is about, the power of creating community. And that's what's exciting. So all those things will be true. Both those subtitles will be true. But we're kind of real. It's funny. I mean, a book is kind of an exploration into the world. And there's the book you write. And then you get to see what people respond to. And you get to see where the conversation is going to go. And so that's been really thrilling to go like, wait a minute, this is about something that I wasn't quite appreciating a year ago.

53:47And now I really see that clearly. I mean, do you even think about the next thing? Or are you just all in on this? Because I know some authors are already working on the next thing before this one comes out. And other ones are, I'm going to go on in this for years. Like, how does that work for you? Yeah, I'm kind of in between those two. On the one hand, it is really fun to kind of see this land, see people connect to it, see it resonate, see what emerges from it. And in a larger way, I've been doing that. The talent code was about, what's making that individual so cool? Culture code's about, what's making those groups perform so well?

54:23And now it's like, what's making these communities so thriving? What is going on in that group? What is that joy coming from? So each one has kind of led to the next. So what's the next one? Beyond the grave? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it is. But life is really big and deep. So we'll see where it goes. But it has a way of leading to the next thing. I appreciate you, man. And thank you for taking so much time off air listening to me ask you stupid questions about everything and anything and writing and sports and everything. Yeah, it's funny. Your name comes up all the time in a lot of the work we do when it comes to great teams and culture code type stuff, talent code, all of it.

55:03And now I know this will, this will is going to inject this way into everything we do. So super grateful for me. Thank you, man. Thank you for what you do. Appreciate it, Ryan.

55:14It 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 learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Dan Coyle. A few takeaways from my notes. Find your yellow doors, those opportunities you glimpse out of the corner of your eye, the conversations that could go deeper, the friendships that could be closer, the projects that might scare you a little bit. Instead of walking past them or saying, nah, I kind of feel like being by myself, try to go out and create some community. Say yes.

55:50You never know what could happen. And then create presence conditions, the ski trips, the long drives, the shared meals, no phone, schedule them. This is how connection happens, whether it's with your family, your kids, or with your people at work. And I love the story from Craig Council, what he talked about when he said, how do you bounce back when things are going rough? You're having a bad day. And he just said simply, I try to go help somebody, right? So good. So good. And then practice curiosity like a superpower. I experienced this firsthand with Dan, Jay Hennessey, Josh Gibson, their team president, Chris Antonetti at the Guardians.

56:31I walk up in their office kind of intimidated, expecting to pepper them with tons of questions to learn from them. And that was the opposite of what happened. They just kept asking me question after question, wanting to learn. And what it taught me is that those leaders who sustain excellence are just so curious and a desire to learn, improve, and get better. And Dan has seen the same things with all of the excellent leaders from teams that he has studied. Ask better questions. Listen. Actually listen. Ask follow-up questions and strive to learn more. Curiosity is also the ultimate way to show love.

57:09Once again, I would 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 Dan Coyle. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, write a review, rate it hopefully five stars and definitely subscribe by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what i love on a daily basis and for that i will forever be grateful thank you so so much talk to you soon can't wait