0:03

Welcome to the show, where we expose new perspectives on our ever evolving world through the lenses of various industries, cultures and backgrounds.

Our guests are disruptors, united by a common goal to bring their purpose to life.

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Whether they’re from the commercial world or third sector, from the Global North or the Global South, expect an inspirational journey that will transform your perspective on just what is possible.

My name is Philippa White and welcome to Thai Unearthed.

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So why do so many incompetent men make it to the top?

And why do we all suffer the consequences when competent women and men who don’t fit the stereotype are unfairly overlooked?

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And why should you not be yourself?

And why is authenticity BS?

Now these are just a few of the things that Thomas and I talk about today.

Welcome to episode 94 of Thai Unearthed.

Doctor Thomas Chamorro Premuzik is the Chief Innovation Officer at Manpowergroup, professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University Co, founder of deepersignals.com, and an associate at Harvard’s Entrepreneurial Finance Lab.

1:30

He is the author of 12 books, Yes, I said 12 Books, which includes Why do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders and How to Fix It.

And it was this book that then based his Ted Talk, which is a must watch today, is definitely a conversation that turns so much conventional thinking on its head, which at the end of the day is my favorite type of conversation.

1:57

We talk about the clear difference between the traits needed to be effective in leadership roles and those that propel people to the top of organizational hierarchies.

Thomas explains that meritocracy would be ideal, but there’s actually no evidence that leadership selection is based on talent OR leadership potential.

2:20

And we get a sneak peek to Thomas’s next book, which is coming out next year, that explores the complexities of individuality, authenticity, and their intersection with diversity and inclusion.

There is so much more, but you just have to listen to find out.

2:37

So throw on those running shoes or grab that favorite beverage, and here’s Thomas.

Thomas, thank you so much for joining me here on Tie on Earth.

It is such an honor to have you here, so thank you.

Thank you for the invitation.

2:52

And thank you to Natalie for putting us in touch.

So a bit of a shout out to her because I’m sure she will be listening to this.

There you go.

Now, Thomas, I was so happy when Natalie put me in touch with you because I then started digging into a little bit of your story and into your Ted talk.

3:08

And I mean the number of books which we’ll get to in a second, but it’s extraordinary.

But your story is amazing.

And for our listeners, as we just get into the details of your story and what you’re doing, it’d just be great if you could just first of all explain where you are ’cause you aren’t from where you are.

3:25

So perhaps you can stop there.

I read the other day that only something like 5 or 6% of the global population work in a country other than the one other than the country that were born, which would include you and I.

3:41

But, you know, it’s a tiny minority, especially if we have people listening in, you know, cities like London, New York, Dubai, Singapore, I would say even Sao Paulo.

The percentage there is much, much larger.

But yeah, so I’m born and bred in Argentina.

I’m not sure if it’s that interesting, but, you know, born and bred in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in an area called Villafroit or Villafroit, which boasts the highest percentage, the highest concentration of psychoanalyst per capita in the world.

4:10

Yes, now, now it changed.

It has hipsterized and gentrified.

So, you know, it looks like any other hipster neighborhood in any global city.

But back then, the bars used to be called the Oedipus complex or the Freudian slip, right?

4:28

So everything was thematically oriented according to that.

And I grew up and I would say lower middle class family were even even then not so much.

Now it was quite common not for everybody to be in therapy, but even your dog would see a therapist.

4:43

So we had a dog and, you know, once a month the shrink for the dog would come, you know, so I think I was kind of destined to become psychotherapist, which is how I started.

So became a clinical psychoanalyst in the beginning of my career.

Then when I realized that it was mostly BS, so not very helpful to help people who really need help, I kind of left the country to go to the UK and retrain as an organizational psychologist, which is what I am.

5:09

And at the moment you find me in Italy.

We have a place here in Rome.

Most of my work and my working time is spent between London and New York, and I do three things.

I’m the chief innovation officer for Manpowergroup, which is a large staffing and recruitment agent.

I mean really a large human capital multinational company.

5:27

That’s basically how I spend 80% of my time running.

Innovation means using AI and data to help our clients find better talent, including better leaders.

And then the remaining 20, My time, I do what I used to do full time 15 years ago, which is to be an academic.

5:45

So I researched, write and speak about the science of leadership, the science of personality, the science of assessment, and how you can leverage an evidence based understanding of people to improve the decisions that they make and the decisions that others make about them.

6:00

That’s basically my elevator pitch.

If it was a very, very high top building and we had 55 floors or if we got stuck somewhere.

You know, it’s so just because obviously, as you know, I live in Brazil and I from my accent, I’m not Brazilian.

So I have been here for about 20 years and I grew up in Canada and no one goes to therapy.

6:19

I mean, that’s just maybe now, maybe now, but I mean.

Maybe Justin Trudeau.

Maybe Justin Trudeau.

Yeah, right.

But and like I say, maybe now it’s a little bit more something that people talk about, but I mean, I grew up and you would never say, you know, I’m going to my therapist.

Brazil is a totally different thing.

6:36

I mean, if you call to make an appointment to get your hair cut and they’re like, oh, no, Wednesday at 12, sorry, he can’t make it because he’s he’s at therapy.

Wow.

OK, that’s different.

Which which incidentally, they would communicate via a voice memo in WhatsApp, which I really hate.

6:52

Like if there’s any people listening who want to be my friend, I only have one exclusion criteria.

Never leave me voicemails on WhatsApp which start by saying I’m too busy to type, therefore I have to put up with your 3 or 4 minute explanation that you could have that.

7:08

That’s the only thing that really, really upsets me in life.

There you go.

Brazilians use WhatsApp for everything.

Everything.

Like lawyers, accountants.

That is such a funny thing.

Before we get into books and things, it would be interesting to know because I want to ask like, what was the catalyst to what you’re doing now?

7:26

But maybe on the back of that, where are things going?

So, you know, I mean, I always feel it’s always embarrassing when people ask you for career advice and then the assumption is that you are in any position to, to draw from your experiences and tell people, oh, well, you know, do what I mean.

If somebody tells you that it’s, it’s not a very reliable approach and they’re just uncomfortably to follow themselves in front of themselves.

7:49

So I, you know, what I say when I talk about my career path is that it was all pretty serendipitous and that’s the reality.

It’s not fake self deprecation, which in Canada you have a bit and in the UK, obviously you have to master that art if you want to assimilate.

But I mostly knew what I didn’t want to do.

8:06

And then, you know, were doors open.

I just basically went in and even though I, you know, I jump from one thing to another and I mostly have difficulties leaving, leaving things because I keep accumulating, you know, jobs and tasks, etcetera.

8:22

On the whole, I’m very boring.

I’m just a psychologist, but I’m a psychologist who is really passionate about the science of psychology as a very practical, helpful tool to improve how we live, how we work.

I truly believe that the most interesting part of this science is the applied impact, the practical input.

8:44

Like in any other science, there is this big gap that exists between science and practice, right?

You have it in every.

And I like to think that I really inhabit this space in between and I try to connect them.

So whether it’s through now my work at Manpower or before when I was running an assessment company or before when I was an academic, an entrepreneur, a consultant, what I what really, really excites me is to take interesting and relevant principles, findings, theories, tools from the academic world, which if you only inhabit that world, you speak to other three people and you inhabit this kind of obscure, you know, tower that you know, is very, very self obsessed and self promotional or not even promotional vis a vis what it knows.

9:28

I’d like to kind of take what’s helpful there and try to bring it to the real world.

And I do that in three ways, obviously through speaking and writing.

So then the books are there because I think there’s a direct to consumer play that is very important or direct to decision maker play that is very important, whether it’s educating CEO, HR leaders, professionals, etcetera, or employees themselves.

9:49

The second one is by creating tools that help organizations make better decisions, especially when they have to make decisions that aren’t serendipitous, but meritocratic or talent centric decisions about people.

And the third, I think is basically starting or investing in businesses that attempt to apply some of the science to innovation.

10:11

I’m very interested in innovation.

So, you know, I mean, those will be the chance, but really based, you know, at the heart and, you know, in plain and brief kind of a descriptive terms.

I’m just a psychologist.

We’re a big interest in the real world.

You know, wherever there used to be this joke when we were studying that when you went to a party, people would say, oh, you’re a psychologist, You’re analyzing me, which is a very narcissistic statement or question to ask is like, tell me about myself, right?

10:39

The answer that you learn to give is like, oh, no, not at all.

But the real answer is yes, of course I am.

And by the way, you’re far more boring and predictable than you think.

So can I just move to somebody else now?

It’s not that that would be an example of an authentic response that makes you antisocial.

10:55

Yeah, right.

So let’s, let’s talk about polemic, antisocial, challenging the sort of status quo as far as how society runs, I guess.

And let’s get to your book When Natalie put us in touch and she sent a few of your books and then obviously your Ted Talk.

11:11

And I literally, I mean, I was super busy that day, but then I clicked on the Ted Talk and even just the name, I was like, I have to spend this 10 minutes watching and it’s like, that’s what I’m doing.

And I will of course put the link to it because it is phenomenal.

But the book obviously called why do so many incompetent men become leaders?

11:28

And then how to fix it?

Talk to us about that.

The book was born as an HBR article, as a Harvard Business Review article, one of the first ones I wrote more than 10 years ago, which went on to become one of the most popular HBR articles of all time.

11:45

Which is interesting, right?

Because 70 or 80% of readers of HBR magazine are male executives.

And yet it went viral.

It obviously went viral every time there was a political election where people perceive that, you know, no, I now need to give examples that people can imagine or fill in the blanks.

12:03

But every time that somebody was deemed an incompetent male leader made it to the top, the original article kind of went to #1 which is why when people ask me what’s going to happen now or what do you want for the US elections?

Well, there’s something that I want for the US as a country.

12:18

But in terms of book sales, it’s a different outcome, right?

If it’s, but so.

And actually it was my editor who in response to Sarah Green, my then editor at HBR, when leaning was published, Sherry Samberg published Linen.

She was familiar with my research and said this is now very popular.

12:36

Linen is a best selling book, but I think your research is inconsistent with that.

So and when I looked at the book, I said, yeah, it is inconsistent because, you know, even if leaning is well intended, actually I felt really it’s an accidental form of benevolent sexism because it’s based on this, you know, 19 sixties, 1970s idea that the main explanation for the under representation of women leadership roles is that they don’t want it enough.

13:02

They don’t put themselves forward, you know, they, they don’t start promote, they’re not assertive enough, etcetera.

It’s a very kind of old version of, again, this was feminism in the 60s and 70s.

If you look at the data, what you actually find is that there’s a very, very clear difference between the traits and behaviors that catapult people onto leadership roles and those that are needed to actually be effective in a leadership role.

13:29

So if we start with the latter, you know, to be an effective leader, you need to be selfless, you need to put others ahead of you.

You need to display things like emotional intelligence, humanities, self-awareness, coach ability, integrity, self-control.

13:45

And a lot of these behaviors are clearly more frequently found in women rather than men.

But if you look at the behaviors that actually propel people to the top of organizational hierarchies, there are things like overconfidence.

As I say in the book, the connection between confidence, the overlap between confidence and competence is 9%.

14:05

So most of the time, if you choose people leaders on the basis of their confidence, they’re not gonna be competent.

That’s even more clearly the case if you select leaders on traits like overconfidence, brother or narcissism, psychopathy, etcetera.

14:20

So the book makes a simple argument, which is that yes, it is true that most leaders are men, but there is no indication whatsoever that most leaders are actually effective.

The vast majority of leaders or managers disengage their teams, cause employees to quit, quit, generate alienation.

14:39

And so actually an even more controversial conclusion of the book than the title is that, you know, meritocracy would be a nice idea, but there is no evidence that leadership selection is meritocratic.

In a world in which leaders would be selected or their talent or their leadership potential, you would not need affirmative action, positive discrimination or any quotas.

15:01

Because if leaders selection was gender blind but focused on talent, we will probably have 60 or 65% of leaders being women rather than men.

And by the way, ironically or paradoxically, there’s a lot of men who are obviously capable of displaying self-control, empathy, humility, kindness, self-awareness, coach ability, EQ.

15:24

And ironically, they are overlooked for leadership roles because they don’t resemble Donald Trump.

So basically, we live in a world where men succeed because of their incompetence and women fail because of their competence and of course, equality.

You know, you could generate gender diversity or gender equality by making it easier for incompetent women to become leaders, but that’s obviously not what we need to do.

15:48

What we need to do, equality, equity, and progress, is not making it easy for competent women to succeed, but making it harder for incompetent men to succeed in the 1st place.

That’s the first step, right?

There are too many leadership roles because they aren’t unlimited.

16:06

Too many leadership roles are actually going for not just men, but men who are incompetent.

And of course, they have no desire to disrupt the status school because the status school is themselves.

So that’s basically the book.

And, you know, sometimes people ask me, well, why don’t you talk about why isn’t the title, why so many incompetent people become leaders and how to fix it?

16:28

Is that because statistically speaking, it’s very, very hard for an incompetent woman to become a leader?

Yeah, we can.

We can.

We can all point to some, but you know, just like there aren’t that many famous example of female psychopaths or female narcissists to succeed.

16:44

And many, many, many.

For men, this is the world we actually live in.

It’s so.

Yeah.

And then that became a book, right?

That became a book.

And, you know, and the publisher still have a business review, struggled with whether doing the book would be too controversial or not.

But then the book, you know, has done very well, I think for the same reason that the article did well, which is that people tell me, oh, you’re so brave saying this.

17:06

It’s amazing that you you are labeled courageous or brave for putting the word incompetent and man next to each other those words, but that’s the case.

As somebody who, I can’t remember who it was, but when we last spoke, you did refer to this story, but it is so true and so telling of the situation and it’s kind of ironic.

17:25

The reason why people are receiving the information as they are is because you are a man.

Yes, exactly.

Many, many friends.

Some of them might be watching.

You know, many of them, especially activist female friends, feminist female friends, when the book came out, they kept turning up, you realize, they always told me, or they kept saying, you realize they’re only listening to you because you are not just a man, but an overconfident, maybe charismatic, you know, man.

17:54

Argentinian American man in the.

Beginning, you know, I was kind of bothered by that and upset, technically speaking, because I always think I speak to the research and, you know, my personal story isn’t that relevant.

You know, it’s like this is the data and the book is a agreed, but it’s full of data.

18:12

But then I actually thought, you know, they’re probably right.

And if they’re right, it also means that the theory is correct because, you know, there you go.

I have that bit of tailwind or privilege that people people listen to me, right?

It’s harder to label me an angry female feminist given you know who I am.

18:30

But then I also felt, even if that is true, I mean, I’m gonna use that advantage or that, you know, to put the message across.

You know, it’s like you always need to be part of the status quo to some degree.

If you’re trying to improve it or change it or edit it with something better from the outside, it’s very hard to do.

18:49

Totally agree.

I totally agree.

Perhaps the response is obvious.

I don’t think it is because if it was obvious, then we would have more women in power in these companies.

But you talk about this in when you’re talking about the book, and I just would like to press this sort of this subject a little bit with the listeners so that people really do understand, You know, why do we all suffer the consequences when competent women and men who don’t fit the stereotype are unfairly overlooked?

19:17

Like, what does that even mean?

Yeah.

This is a really important question because, you know, I mean, obviously for evolutionary, historical, cultural, there are typical reasons there.

We have a tendency to see this as a war between, you know, women and men, gender war or whatever.

19:35

Even sometimes people who like the message and the content of my book say, oh, you know, but why do you have to be?

So, you know, it’s like throwing gasoline into the fire, you know, because, you know, which I mean, I object to because I think if you’re too polite, we’ve seen it doesn’t really work.

19:51

So you have to stir things, shake things up a little bit, but I think it’s important to understand that putting more competent people in leadership roles, which incidentally would lead to having more women in leadership roles, but also more competent men in leadership roles.

20:06

Even if we focus on the female diversity part or gender diversity part, it isn’t something that is for the benefit of women.

It’s like when we say when CEOs have daughters.

Their companies have more gender parity in pay in in compensation, which of course isn’t something that is good for their daughters potentially in the future, right?

20:29

So I mean, if you have better people, more talented people in charge, more competent leaders in charge, everybody benefits.

The men in those teams benefit because they can do better work and be more productive and have more prosperous careers and careers and have somebody who understands and cares about their potential, the women benefit as well.

20:48

And if you scale that to an organizational level, an organization that has a higher proportion of competent, effective leaders in place, whether they’re men or women, everybody benefits.

What’s good for the organization is good for the individual as well.

And of course, that can scale up to the level of nations in societies, right?

21:06

When Scandinavia outperforms other nations in gender diversity, it isn’t perfect, but it tends to outperform other nations.

That isn’t something that they do for the women there.

They do that for people there because they managed to have a higher proportion of competent people in charge.

21:25

Of course, we can get to the specific cases that are often mentioned that, you know, if you actually focus on increasing female representation while not attending to talent, it’s very easy to appoint women who out male males in masculinity and who are, you know, like, like Margaret Thatcher, basically, who was the only, I believe, British Prime Minister to have zero women in her cabinet or in a cabinet, right?

21:50

I mean, that can happen.

And that’s also a symptom of the same phenomenon, which is that if the structural conditions for success don’t change, then of course, the trades that propel you to the top are going to be narcissistic, psychopathic, Machiavellian.

22:06

And we’re going to promote people who are good at promoting themselves and managing up rather than managing.

Dove, there’s a beautiful quote, I believe by Plato that says something along the lines, lines of only those who don’t seek power should be allowed to attend.

So it’s the very opposite of lean in, right?

I mean, clearly if you’re doing your work and you care about others and your team, etcetera, you should wait for somebody to tap you in the back and say, hey, do you want to manage people as a in?

22:31

In contrast, you know, we let people basically step on each other and put themselves forward after they kill all the competitors.

They say, OK, because I’m afraid of it.

I’m gonna put you in charge because you’re gonna otherwise you’re gonna eat me and kill me as well.

So, and this is a very short question or a very complicated answer, how can we fix it?

22:52

So this is a really important question as well.

And it’s a, it’s a tricky question because often times I get called into organizations who want to improve gender diversity.

And even though I get called because I read my work and my book, etcetera, which is of course an honor and a privilege and a beautiful responsibility to have.

23:12

When we talk about the workshop, the talk or the designers say, oh, and by the way, and can you, we, we are running part of the sessions on self branding, self promotion and how to, you know, boost women’s confidence.

So it’ll be good if you can speak to that as well.

It’s like, obviously you haven’t read anything but but, but if my client is the individual, if I’m coaching you and you work in a company and I coach you to emerge as a leader, unfortunately, the only way I can do my job is by helping you become a political hyena and be very Machiavellian, manipulative, politically shrewd, etcetera.

23:47

Brand yourself, help promote, be overconfident, whatever, because that will help you go.

I don’t like doing that because that doesn’t fix the system.

It might still help to do that, right, because maybe you are a good person and maybe these are strategies for promotion that you need to emerge in order to be effective.

24:04

Once you get there, then yes, let’s talk about.

It you can change the.

System.

But I’m more interested in fixing the system.

And then I need to talk not to the individual women who want want to be leaders, but to the decision makers, to the CEO, to the CHRO, to the initial.

24:21

Diversity officers usually know this.

And there is a different game altogether because you need to put in place meritocratic measures that actually quantify the value people contribute to the organization as managers, as employees, etcetera.

24:39

And I mean really it’s about making that organization more talent centric.

The solution is so beautifully simple that people argue, well, so why can’t we do it?

It’s like, well, because you know, there’s a lot to gain in terms of personal, there’s a lot of personal short term benefits in pretending that you are a meritocracy.

24:57

When in fact, look, I mean, again, I think cronyism and politics.

And if you look at why nations decline, I always use Argentina as an example because it’s, it’s always more politically correct to offend your own country of origin than another one, right?

25:12

But if you take Argentina, which is very interesting because it’s the only perpetually declining country in the world for 200 years, we’ve been in this constant economic decline.

It’s still a very nice place to go visit and you know, to live in because we started very, very high.

25:28

But the, the way you can do that is simple.

You know, you basically have political crooks that succeed each other in government and who operate like, like parasites in an infested or contaminated pond.

And you know, they, they suck the blood out of everybody else who’s there.

25:47

So, you know, cronyism and corruption, etcetera.

I mean, that’s, that’s an example, an extreme example of what happens.

So in a way, when people ask him what’s the solution, the solution, the system will correct itself.

Organizations who are better at installing and maintaining and harnessing meritocracy will focus more on talent, will continue to combat nepotism, privilege and non meritocratic kind of systems and processes.

26:14

And they will inevitably be good for gender diversity.

They will also improve the quality of their leaders.

And then theory and the practice show they will outperform their competitors.

The problem is that it’s very hard to see this in like a five year time frame or 10 year horizon.

26:30

But even if you look at sectors that are very malnormative, banking, investment banking, finance, engineering, pharma, tech, etcetera.

The prediction is that even if the baseline is very poor and if there’s almost sexism or a little bit of gender diversity, those that actually become more talent centric, meritocratic and have better, more sanitized, less corrupt cultures will outperform the others long run.

26:59

That’s why in in a truly self interested world, you wouldn’t need consultants, you wouldn’t need theories.

You know, they would find it out.

But of course, because some of the incentives that exist are there to optimize in the short term, there are many barriers.

27:16

You, I’m sure you’re aware of The finding, which is a very interesting, important finding, that when in the US, when publicly traded public listed companies elect or select more women into their boards, their stock goes down.

And the stock goes down because the global or national or perception, or at least the mindset and the perception among investors is like, Oh my God, you know, they’re too woke, They’re anti meritocratic.

27:42

They’re and you know, it’s the opposite.

But this is a really important issue to know because if the narrative and the message is just focused on social justice, you perpetuate this illusion and this myth that actually there is a tension between something that is good for women and something that is good for business.

28:00

And actually, you know, you should only pursue profits and business organizational effectiveness.

The issue is that it’s the long term pursuit of this that we want.

That’s why sustainability is not about, you know, climate change, environment, etcetera.

I mean, yeah, it’s partly about that, but it’s about the longevity of the business.

28:19

And I think so.

The prediction is that smarter companies will understand this and implement it better, and then they will outperform Dumber companies that don’t get it.

That is what I talk about when I talk about return on humanity and you’re talking about sort of a talent centric culture.

28:36

It’s interesting.

When I was on the stage with a whole lot of CEO’s here in Brazil not long ago, and we were at the CEO Forum and there were all these different CEO’s from these big global companies.

And the focus of the talk was happiness as a business strategy.

28:52

Yeah, and it was interesting because you had a lot of these CEO’s and we’re talking massive global companies who were also on the stage.

And some of them were using this as APR opportunity that clearly didn’t really understand what all of this meant.

And some of them were saying the culture of a company comes down to me, the CEO, it’s it’s up to me.

29:10

And I questioned that and I, you know, I was also on the stage with these individuals and I had my bit that I was talking about.

But then I said, well, actually, I, I disagree because I don’t think it’s, I think of course you play a part in, in helping to create an overall idea as to what the sort of the direction, I guess of where the companies going.

29:27

But it’s up to every single person with it, all the leaders within the business to create that culture.

They need to have those human competencies because it’s those human competencies of everyone within that business that’s going to create the human culture.

And that comes from having a chief people officer who’s a decision maker as well, who is seen and heard and has a voice at the table who drives that because that needs to be the strategy of the company.

29:52

And so when I talk about to some companies, I say, you know, it should be people first and then profit follows and people freak out and they’re like, well, no, no, no, no, you need to focus on profit.

And I’m just curious what you think about that, because I believe that it’s people first.

Because if you just focus on profit, how do you get excited about that as an individual that’s working at a company?

30:11

If I just feel that I’m just there as a cognitive machine, I’m not going to get excited about this.

Fully, fully agree.

And I would say especially again, if you’re interested in long term success, right?

Because even killer ideas, innovation, solutions, they come and the longevity is always, you know, short lived and then markets, environments, competitors change and strategies change.

30:36

But in the long run, what outlasts everything there is culture and talent.

Now I think there’s a couple of nuances to that argument. 1 is that again, happiness is a tricky is a tricky word.

I totally agree.

I totally agree.

30:51

What matters is that people feel a sense of belonging, that they’re proud to be there, that they think fairly and all of that.

And actually, I think it’s probably more counterproductive effect of lack of that than positive effects of that.

You know, I almost think it’s like unhappiness, dissatisfaction and you know, is what needs to burn out and demoralizes people.

31:14

You need to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Then the incremental or or additional benefits between basically people are, let’s say they are engaged and happy or they are amazingly, you know, it’s like it’s not as high as we think.

And also the correlation between even things like employee engagement and performance, it’s also about .3.

31:35

So it’s important, but there’s so many other things including by the way the relationship you have with your boss, with your manager, etcetera.

So but I would say that is something that people not only fail to truly understand and believe, but also at the same time, that was my second point.

31:53

It’s been kind of turned into a kind of a cliche, a party, right?

It’s like, it sounds like a like a clip from the office when people say, oh, people are my biggest assets.

So it’s been like hijacked and coped by people who hate people and work.

And that’s unfortunately one of the problems, right?

32:11

That the majority of people who actually say it, talent first, people first, whatever, which is now in every website or company manifesto.

Unfortunately, the minute everybody said, it’s like when everybody says 0 emissions, diversity, inclusion, innovation, you know, you can get away with saying it for a couple of years.

32:32

But after a while, when people hear what you say and then they go into Glassdoor or they browse and they see what horrific things happen in your company, then it’s a discredit to the actual thought that, yeah, if people are happier, they’re generally going to be more engaged and more products.

32:49

So let’s get to the second.

Actually, I say second book.

It’s not the second book.

It’s like #9 or 10.

I mean, I don’t know.

How many books have you written?

Just for a little.

So if we want to talk about the one that’s coming out, that will be for 13 actually.

But thirteen, yeah, you know, it is kind of the third because the previous 10 have been ignored by everybody.

33:08

They’re very academic, very technical.

So let’s say I have this will be the the third that people that some people hopefully will read other than mom and you know my close friends who get it.

But it’s great because like the other one, which you know, you have Incompetent and Man together, which was rather polemic.

33:26

This is the sequel to the incompetent Man book.

And I just wonder if you can share the name because that I think is great and just bring to life, you know, why are you writing a sequel So.

This one, yeah.

The working title for this one is Don’t Be Yourself, Why Authenticity is BS, and what to do instead.

33:43

And that’s the working title.

You know, in fact, it’s still very much work in progress, but we know it’s going to come out at some point next year.

I actually received the detailed kind of feedback review of my editor at HBR earlier today.

And, you know, on the one hand, he loves it.

34:00

On the other hand, he’s so worried about, he has this line that I wanted to kind of recap that says, you know, with this book, it’s a lot harder to persuade people of your arguments because taking down authenticity is like basically taking down or trying to take down Taylor Swift.

34:16

And actually I thought, wow, that can be the next one, right?

Because that shouldn’t be that difficult.

But anyways.

And of course, Oscar Wilde once said everything popular is wrong, right?

And I think, you know, we should at least approach ideas that are very, very popular with a little bit of skepticism.

34:34

And that’s how this book starts.

Of course, it has a connection with the previous book and come to men because just like women are blamed for not leaning in and we point the finger at them as it like they are the problem to be fixed if we want more gender diversity.

Actually, any person who is a member of the out group and doesn’t belong to the the in Group of the status quo is now pushed almost violently pushed to just be themselves, to bring their whole self to work, to not worry about what people think of them and you know, to only be true to their values because that will obviously fix all their issues.

35:12

If they do that, they’re going to be very successful.

So I start with the arguments that are usually made in the self help industry and, you know, mainstream management, HR, leadership talk.

And then I look, as I always do, at the actual science and evidence.

35:28

And of course what the science and evidence shows is very, very different.

You know, in any area of life, if you want to be successful subjectively speaking or objectively speaking, it pays off tremendously to care a great deal about what other people think of you.

A society at the group level, a society, an organization, a cultural institution, a group is far more effective, successful in a far nicer place to be in and to in a far nicer group to be a part of.

35:57

When people aren’t self-centered and aren’t narcissistic and entitled enough to think that they can just behave as a four year old or three-year old child does without any moral censorship or without any inhibitions.

So you know the main book, the main argument of the book is that, you know, we all inhabit multiple selves.

36:16

Self complexity is a beautiful, beautiful thing, right?

And we all have multiple roles inside us.

So the right set of behaviors that make you effective are the consequence of expressing and displaying the parts of yourself and identity that are relevant in a given situation.

36:36

Just like nobody in the right mind would approach, you know, a job interview telling the job interviewer, the manager, hiring manager, or both everything they think about that person in that company and is capable of engaging in a relatively minor, moderate, but benevolent degree of impression management and self presentation that makes more effective.

36:58

Which doesn’t mean being a fraud to yourself or themselves.

It’s important to understand that the most important aspect of our professional and public behavior is 1.

That not only cares a great deal about how our behavior impacts on others, but also has the capacity to internalize how other people see us.

37:19

Right?

And what’s very interesting, and here comes the connection with the previous book, is, of course, that authenticity in the way that is celebrated, worshipped and operated.

Sadly, it’s a privilege for the status quo for those who are in charge.

But it’s people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump or Harvey Weinstein that are truly entitled enough to just be themselves and often don’t even suffer the consequences.

37:42

In fact, they’re often celebrated for for that while not just women, but any minority and any person of the out group needs to pay a great deal of consideration to how they impact others.

Now, granted, if that inhibits you, if that suppresses you to the point that you are oppressed, then we need to deal with that and we need to remove the barriers.

38:03

But first we need to remove the barriers.

Telling people they can do whatever they want is irresponsible and actually sends them, you know, it’s like sending them to die.

On the other hand, if we spend a little bit more time demanding that those who are the privileged few and are the status quo and are in charge are less free to be themselves, the world might be a better place.

38:25

So it basically is an application of some of the findings and theories of the previous book to the space of diversity and inclusion, which of course is now under attack.

But also understanding that the world, that authenticity has been weaponized and fetishized in mainstream discussions actually makes it another symptom of the narcissistic culture inside guys that we’re living in, right?

38:49

I mean, a world in which everybody just cares about themselves.

Nobody’s tolerant to other people’s values, and all we want is to impose our values on others is sadly looks a lot like the current polarized and tribal world we live in.

39:05

By the way, if your values are similar to Hitler’s or Mao’s or Stalin, you know, you better not be true to your values, which then basically the question of like which values should adhere to that norm and not right.

So anyway, so as you can see, it’s a it’s a topic that I’m very passionate about and, and you know, still dealing with in this latest book.

39:24

And it’s funny because when we spoke before, he said it’s said 100,000 words, which obviously it’s not going to end up, it is 100,000 words.

So I can’t even imagine the editing process of this because there’s so much data, of course.

And it’s such a meaty subject because it is so relevant when we’re talking about fake news.

39:40

So what news is real?

Talking about values, which values are OK?

Just be yourself.

Well, hold on until what point can I be myself?

How authentic should I be?

This is the real me.

But maybe that’s not OK.

There’s just a lot there.

But what I find in interesting, and obviously having just written my book, Return on Humanity.

39:57

I mean, maybe I’m biased because I’ve also just spent a very long time overthinking this in a lot of detail, but what I think underpins all of this is humanity.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think humanity and especially in a way, acting in human but especially humane ways, right.

40:14

And I think, you know, just like efficiency is often the enemy of the humane, which is a problem that, you know, now capitalism has, but before that communism has.

But you know, is it going the same direction?

I think also individualism is the enemy of the humane, right?

40:31

Because not just in the sense that a lot of individualism can lead to extreme anti socialism, like, you know, the narcissistic digital narcissism that has become the dominant form of interaction in social media and in, you know, in dominant virtual or digital environments.

40:48

But I would say also in the sense that it’s dehumanizing in a subjective sense, because if the message is you can be anything you want, don’t worry about what people tell you.

You replace oppression and repression with depression.

You become the because the all meaning is taken away from you.

41:07

And then you’re perpetually guilty because you could be something else and you could have done something else.

And there’s nothing that guide you.

And you’re so obsessed with yourself that you become selfish and you lack empathy for other people.

And that’s not, again, it’s not a, it’s not a system that most people will want to live in.

41:24

Fascinating.

There’s so many layers to this, isn’t there?

Looking forward to the book coming out.

I can’t if how quickly this time has gone, but I am curious.

I got this message sent to me by somebody who I actually went to university with, you know, 20 / 20 years ago.

And he said he’s doing a course on corporate governance.

41:40

And he said, you know what the findings are or that circumstances dictate behavior more than personality.

And he said, so then if you know if that holds, then it makes predicting behavior pendant on consistent circumstances.

41:57

And so he said, what are your thoughts on that?

I do have my opinions but actually I’m super curious to know being a psychologist, what are your thoughts on that?

This is an old question, right?

You can go, I mean, if you really want kind of the, the most fundamental and sort of like deep way to address it would be the nature nurture of the base, right?

42:16

And it’s important to understand this because there is a very scientific way to actually answer this question, which seems to come from from a very detached area of research, which basically studies twins and compares, you know, identical twins who grow together with identical twins who are separated at birth, which is a very rare thing to happen, but it happens.

42:39

And imagine finding actually Canada has one of the largest cohorts that have been studied for many, many years.

And equally, they compare how similar adoptive parents are to the adoptive offspring versus etc.

And So what it shows is that it is 5050.

42:55

And that doesn’t mean that we’re sitting on the fence.

There is a lot of complexity underpinning that.

But what is actually true is that personality as it’s studied in very early children, at the age of 3 or 4, even like after eight weeks of a baby being born, babies differ in their preference to attend or look at novel stimuli.

43:17

And that predicts grown up curiosity.

And that predicts whether you’re going to science or whether you become an entrepreneur versus not.

But of course, you know, at the same time this isn’t perfect and you know, circumstances play a big role.

Now, one of the most interesting and counterintuitive findings is that the way we think about, for example, parenting and environmental impact, etcetera.

43:40

Like helicopter parenting, for example, right?

Sending your kids to a very expensive school and making sure that they know Mandarin and Arabic and French and violin and piano and you know, they are only living on cold pressed kale juices from the age of two.

43:55

That has zero impact on their welding.

But extreme deprivation has a big impact, of course.

So even the most hardcore geneticists who believes in the impact of personality and is dismissive of the environment wouldn’t lock their kids up in a basement and bring them up, you know, 20 years later.

44:13

So extremes make a difference and environmentally, the people that have a big impact on us are not our parents, but our aunts, our cousins, our friends, etcetera.

And then of course, when people say, oh, your personality is entirely dependent on your situation, it’s bullshit.

You know, unless you haven’t been paying attention, you can predict if a friend of yours is going to be late or not and what excuse they’re going to use when they tell you that.

44:35

And you know that some people are going to pay for the bill and others are going to always reach their wallet a little bit late and pretend that they can.

Oh, you paid OK, fine.

So people are remarkably consistent after the age of 30 or 40, people change very little, not because they can’t change, but because they don’t want to.

44:51

So there’s an inner force inside that that actually makes us gravitate towards situations that are consistent with our ways of being.

So if you’re extroverted, you go into sales or leadership because you like the attention and you strive, you know, strive on being, you know, assertive and confident and influencing others.

45:09

If you’re a little bit introverted, you, you know, become a librarian or a PhD, be a molecular scientist because you want to be left alone.

And that’s what basically there are this not snowballing effects in the gene environment interaction.

So basically, most people become an exaggerated version of the of themselves, right, of their earlier selves.

45:31

And so most people become a more boring version of themselves.

As we grow older, we become more traditional.

We become less open to new experiences, less curious, and actually we become less authentic.

Somebody in their 50s will know how to be polite and not hurt your feelings, but if you overdo that then you become so boring that you know you basically be left alone as well.

45:54

All of that I get, I guess from the point of view of experiential learning and lived experiences and being forced into situations that you’re, you know, you’re faced with constraints or you’re suddenly pushed in a way that you’ve never been pushed before.

To actually understand what resilience and grit and determination actually means and to find what your purpose is.

46:13

It’s those kind of experiences which I believe that you sometimes have to create the circumstances to change the behavior.

Correct.

I mean, your programs exist because they don’t happen in a natural way.

You have to put people outside of the zone because otherwise you know.

46:29

When does it happen?

People, you can.

Force it, yeah.

People are a bit like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets.

Even if the waitress changes or the waiter changes, they get annoyed and uncomfortable because it freaks them out.

So, you know, but at the same time, I would imagine that the people who open who are brave and courageous enough to obtain to your leadership experiential out of the comfort zone programs are already a little bit more risky and just which is a good thing, right?

46:55

So in a way, your programs are just like coaching.

They work the best with people who need it a bit less, the ones that we should actually put there, so afraid of it that they’re probably uncoachable.

Totally.

Yeah, totally.

I mean, that’s a whole other thing, how you choose people.

And actually interestingly, the ones who have been chosen and said, listen, you’re doing this.

47:15

The ones who have actually gotten worse out of it, they got said like we’ve never done.

It there is this whole book in psychology, which is, you know, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb?

Only one so long as the light bulb really wants to change, and that’s the same.

That’s a great thing to end on.

47:33

Listen, we have actually come to the end, but is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you want to share with our listeners?

I don’t know if there’s.

No, I’m also looking forward to reading your book.

And so I have that now on my iPad but as well.

And it sounds like we have a lot of ideas that are overlapping, but also complimentary.

47:51

So I can’t wait to do that.

And thanks again for the invitation.

Oh my God, Thomas, it is such a pleasure.

I love it when people know that I need to meet someone.

So another shout out to Natalie and thank you for your time.

Thank you next time.

See ya.

Hey everyone, this is Philippa again, and I hope you enjoyed listening.

48:10

Now this is your chance to get involved with Ty.

If you’re looking to create better leaders, better companies, and a better world, that’s just what we do by helping leaders tap into their greatest asset, their humanity.

We have a number of corporate programs that impact a range of people, from individuals at a company to 500 people around a business.

48:31

Or check out my book Return on Humanity Leadership Lessons from All Corners of the World.

You’ll find the answers to how business can truly become a positive force while remaining at the forefront of competition.

You can find all the information you need on all of this at thaileadership.com.

48:51

Get in touch and I can explain more.

A huge thanks to Beja Naviera for Co producing this with me and for creating the music.

I hope we’ll meet up again soon.