How to create a ‘transcendent’ career (with author Suzy Welch) | Masters of Scale

Suzy Welch 0:00 I think it really is this pace of change, and the pace of uncertainty, and the lack of visibility for the future, like, is, is very heightened.

Jeff Berman 0:06 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 0:06 So what can you know? What can you know? You can know yourself. What most people do is they don't realize it's two values that are in conflict, they just think their life stinks. They just live a [beep] show every day.

Jeff Berman 0:15 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 0:15 And you bounce around, and you're sort of in default, and you bing and you bang, and you're like a pinball machine. The corporate leaders were like, "We're gonna deal with this by telling them that we care about their self-care," w- while they were s- secretly fuming inside. And now the job market has changed and it's a buyer's market, and they're starting to say the truth.

Jeff Berman 0:35 I'm Jeff Berman, your host. My guest this week is Suzy Welch. She is the bestselling author of a new book based on her popular NYU class by the same name, Becoming You. It's a method, a practical framework for defining your values and figuring out how to live in a way that aligns with them. Suzy is a force of nature in the very best way. She's one of those people who you know you want to spend more time around within seconds of their merely entering the room, and she shares so much wisdom in our conversation. I'm so glad we get to share it with you. This is Masters of Scale. Suzy, welcome to Masters of Scale.

Suzy Welch 1:23 Thank you for having me.

Jeff Berman 1:25 Uh, I'm super excited that you're here, especially with your new book out. Will you tell us a little bit about the new book?

Suzy Welch 1:30 The book is called Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting the Authentic Life You Want and Need, and it's based on a class that I teach at NYU Stern, um, that is somewhat of the same name and a slightly different, more academic-sounding name. And it's about a methodology that I wish had existed, like, not just when I was in business school, but at many different points in my life when I, uh, took a boneheaded detour. And it's a methodology for figuring out three big data sets. Your values, which no one knows, by the way, no one really knows. Um, their ap- your aptitudes, which people have a slightly better bead on, but not great. And your economically viable interests. These are three huge and important data sets which we almost never mind. So it

Suzy Welch 2:10 walks you through that process and then it asks you to take a look at what's at the intersection of those through this process that's in the book, and we call that your area of transcendence, which is a fancy and more academic way of saying your purpose.

Jeff Berman 2:20 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 2:21 And I'd started teaching this class as an experiment when I was coming out of a period of my life after I lost my husband when I was not sure what I was going to do with my life anymore. And, I, I didn't realize it at the time. You know, it was a little doctor heal thyself kind of thing going on, but I had been in this space of writing and thinking about career formation for decades. And I had this idea for this methodology, and then I thought, "Well, maybe I'll create a class out of it." I went down and I saw the dean at Stern, um, and I proposed it to him. He said, "Let's try it as a little experiment." We thought there'd be 18 kids in the first class, but if you take a class and you name it Becoming You, [laughs] and the promise of the class is to help you figure out what to do with your life-

Jeff Berman 3:01 Hmm

Suzy Welch 3:01 ... and you offer it to a bunch of kids who are in business school, coming out of the pandemic, yeah. So that was not an experiment very long because people signed up and the waitlist got very long, and the class ended up meeting people where they needed it to. And so there was a little bit of noise, like I should write a book about it, and I was like, "No, no, no." I honestly said, "No one write... No one reads books anymore." That was my... Because I've written other books and, and also I think writing a book is incredibly hard. Like, no one finishes a book and says, "Ooh, that was much easier than I thought."

Jeff Berman 3:30 [laughs] Let's go do it again.

Suzy Welch 3:31 Oh, fun. Everybody says, "It's like torture." And I didn't wanna do it. I didn't wanna do it alone. The last few books I'd written I'd written with my husband, and I had written books by myself before. I, I don't know. And then one day I was walking in the woods with my daughter Eve, who's a very woo woo hippie, who's always telling me to follow my bliss and work less, and I was saying to her, "Everybody wants me to write the book," and I thought... I went to her for sympathy.

Jeff Berman 3:51 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 3:52 She's 30. And instead she said, "You gotta write this book, Mom. People need it and it's undemocratic for you to just keep it at NYU. It's a good process. It really works. It changes people's lives." And I was like, "Shoot."

Jeff Berman 4:02 [laughs]

Suzy Welch 4:02 I said, but-

Jeff Berman 4:03 That's probably not the word you said

Suzy Welch 4:04 ... but maybe not, shoot. And I was like, "Oh, Eve, uh, how, uh, how could you forsake me?" And, um, and so I sat down and I wrote it.

Jeff Berman 4:11 Well, was the book actually your area of transcendence-

Suzy Welch 4:14 Yes

Jeff Berman 4:14 ... in this moment?

Suzy Welch 4:15 Not the book, but the teaching.

Jeff Berman 4:16 The teaching.

Suzy Welch 4:16 Like I said, well, I... But people ask me, how will I know if I'm in my area of transcendence, my purpose? And I, it's a lot like love. Like you never say, "Am I in love?" Okay, rarely, but if you're in love, you know you're in love, right? There's no feeling like it, and that's when you're living your purpose. You feel kind of exquisitely

Suzy Welch 4:30 alive.

Jeff Berman 4:30 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 4:31 And I think there was one moment when I was teaching and I felt like I might levitate.

Jeff Berman 4:35 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 4:36 And I thought, "Oh, this is it. The, this is it. I am absolutely doing what I was born to do, and the world would like me to be doing this as well." I mean, that's part of it. I'm not part of the passion party. I don't think you should just do your passion. I, I was practicing what I preached, and it felt great.

Jeff Berman 4:51 So the, let's just break down if we can the three kind of, um, vectors that lead into-

Suzy Welch 4:56 Yes

Jeff Berman 4:56 ... the area of transcendence. You say that most people don't actually know their values.

Suzy Welch 4:59 Yes.

Jeff Berman 5:00 How, how, how is that possible? Like don't we know what we stand for? Don't we know what we're about?

Suzy Welch 5:05 Hmm. Why don't you go ahead and, uh, let's do a little thought experiment here.

Jeff Berman 5:07 Okay, great.

Suzy Welch 5:08 Go ahead, define value. What's your va- what are values?

Jeff Berman 5:11 Uh, um, great question.

Suzy Welch 5:13 Mm-hmm. Keep going.

Jeff Berman 5:14 Um, uh, I mean the, the-

Suzy Welch 5:16 Yeah

Jeff Berman 5:16 ... the val- the, the values are what-

Suzy Welch 5:18 Mm-hmm

Jeff Berman 5:18 ... underlie the-

Suzy Welch 5:20 Hmm

Jeff Berman 5:20 ... the meaning in your life.

Suzy Welch 5:22 Hmm.

Jeff Berman 5:22 Right? It's, it's what... It literally the definition of value is what, what is meaningful to you.

Suzy Welch 5:27 So name a value.

Jeff Berman 5:28 Um, uh, integrity.

Suzy Welch 5:30 Wrong.

Jeff Berman 5:31 Okay.

Suzy Welch 5:31 Lovingly. Okay, that's a virtue.

Jeff Berman 5:34 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 5:35 Okay? So virtues are not values. And you know, you can learn a lot of stuff in school. You can learn how to get the, uh, volume of a cylinder, and you're not ever taught what values are. Values are the deeply held beliefs that galvanize your actions and decisions. They are choices. Integrity's not a choice. Virtues, everybody should have more of them. They're, they're like, they're as old as literature. They're as old as humankind. Fairness, integrity, kindness, these are all virtues. Please, go have more of them. But actually, values are very specific to individuals, and we each have sort of a values profile. Now, here's this Thing is, uh, so I did some research to prove that you are absolutely in the majority, and that only 17% of people could even begin to define values, and I was giving them very wide berth in this research. And only 7% could actually name their values but, and exclude virtues in the whole thing. So, um, this is a gigantic deficit in our education system, but let's just talk about what values are. So values are these choices. And, uh, look, here's a place where academia could have really helped the real world, and they didn't. Because academics have been talking about what values are for 100 years, and they just somehow, it has not crossed the fourth wall over to humankind. Um, and there's, there are values inventories that exist, um, and they exist along continuums. I, um, as an academic, um, took a look at all the values inventories and I thought, "I think these are not modern. I think they're quite judgy," and I wrote a new values inventory which is out there in the academic literature called the Welch Bristol Values Inventory. Let me give you some examples. Let's start with a value called scope.

Suzy Welch 7:00 Scope is a value, uh, that reflects how big or small a life you want. Do you want to be Bianca Jagger on the back of a white stallion walking into Studio 54? Do you wanna have an exciting life? You'll take the chaos 'cause you want a big life. You want, you want a lot of learning. You want new experiences. You want new people. You want, you want that all. You wanna swallow the world. I have somebody, a student who was, uh, um, who described her high scope as wanting to touch everyone's brains. Um, let's take another value that's not often spoken about, uh, beholderism. Okay, this is one of the oldest values. It's usually called aesthetics. I call it beholderism, easy to understand, and it's a value that measures how much you care about how stuff looks. Hmm. Including yourself. Like if you've ever known somebody who really cares about how they look, how their house look, how their, how their stuff looks, and they are, their spouse is being driven crazy about it because they just don't care how they look. Is it how it, how, how it looks or how it's perceived by others? Um, it can be either- Yeah ... um, with the factor analysis. Okay. So but it's that you care about how stuff looks. Mm-hmm. And, uh, and it can be a proxy for wanting harmony, or it can just be a proxy for looking good. Mm. Um, I don't care. Like, I'm not in the field of values formation, how you came by your values. I only really care about what values you hold. But here's the thing. We can have values. As I said, there's 15. I'm delighted to go through all of them. Um, you can have a value, really hold it dearly. Like take scope. I have very, very high scope, but you may not be expressing it. Hmm. And so for every single person, there's an authenticity gap between how much they hold a value and how much they're actually expressing it, and I created a assessment tool for this called the Values Bridge, where you can actually go, get your ranking on every... I did, I did this because I was losing my mind in the classroom that nobody... How many times I stood up and spoke about this with my students, and then they would assess themself on where they were with each value after me talking about it. Then what would happen was they'd stare at their values and they would think, "Oh, I don't want people to know that about me," and they would manually adjust their values for perception. So for instance, there's a value called family centrism, how much you'd like your family to be the organizing principle of your life. Mm-hmm. And people would always see family centrism, or not everybody, would see it show up down at number 11 or 12, and they'd literally cross that out and move it up to number one. Mm-hmm. Because they felt some kinda stink off of it and, and so I had to change it to a behavioral test- Hmm ... where you answer questions. And it also ranks how much you have it and so, how, and how much you're expressing it. So when somebody is authentic,

Suzy Welch 9:25 that authenticity gap is zero. They're living their values fully. Mm-hmm. Um, but very few people are, 1% of the population. Well, well what happens when values are in a conflict? So- That's- Right? So if, if, let's just go with scope and family centrism, right? Absolutely. You, you want big scope- Yes ... but also- That's right ... family centrism is, is key. That's right. And you got, you got little kids, right? Yes. That's a brilliant question. Which, which- In that they are inevitably and invariably in conflict. Uh, so, um, so one of the things that was frustrating to me about the, um, other values assessment tools that existed was that they held that you couldn't have values that were in conflict. Like, you couldn't have that. They would diminish one over the other, and I would say- Mm-hmm ... and my thought to myself was like, "I don't know. Have they never not lived in the real world?" All we do all day is manage our conflicts, our values conflicts. And so I built an algorithm that measures the... And that was not on my bingo card, writing an algorithm at age 60, having been a writer my whole life, but I did it, um, with the help of some great, uh, data scientists. But I would say that, um, that your values will be in conflict, and you have sort of... My general answer is there's two ways to deal with that. Uh, let's take family centrism, and let's take achievement. That's often comes into conflict. That's a value. It's self-explanatory, but just to give it a name, it's, it's how much you want seen success, success that other people can see. Mm-hmm. You care a lot about winning, okay? So, um, it's very hard for working parents, for instance, to hold family centrism and achievement in balance, and you, there's two ways you can go about that. Um, you can, um, repress one of the values, for lack of a better word. You can say, "I'm in 15 years of my life while my kids really, really need me, and I'm just gonna put my achievement in a box for a while, and I'm gonna make certain career decisions, and I'm just gonna, I'm going to..." Um, uh,

Suzy Welch 11:10 you don't, you can't let go, uh, you can't really make a value go away. If you've got it, you've got it, but you can certainly sublimate it. And so you can do that, and that's not, in some ways, that's the easier route. You just make a decision, and you do it. What most people do is they don't realize it's two values that are in conflict. They just think their life stinks. They just live a [censored] show every day. Mm-hmm. And you bounce around, and you're sort of in default, and you bing and you bang, and you're like a pinball machine, uh, binging and banging between these two values. The other, and third better way to do it, I would say, is to live by d- design and say, "Okay, I have two values that are in conflict." Okay, so there you've given some language to it, and, um, I'm gonna be very sort of academic and nerdy here and just say that it, I'm gonna invoke Wittgenstein, which, okay, forgive me for- Our friend Ludwig. Right. Let's just- Yeah ... forgive me for this. And I, is that he said, "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." Okay, so what if you could put words to your values? So my family centrism and my achievement are in strong conflict. Mm-hmm. Okay? Or we give it a rating on the, on the test, but you can, you know yourself what the rating is in your bones. And I am going to carefully and deliberately and explicitly litigate it each day.

Jeff Berman 12:19 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 12:20 I'm going to, um, assess the conflicts, I'm going to manage them, and I'm going to try to keep them in balance as best I can. And I'm gonna do that for the 15 years or 20 years where everybody needs me all at the same time, which is just biology. Um, you know, you sort of have your kids in the same period that your job is, you're in this position to sort of accelerate.

Jeff Berman 12:38 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 12:38 It's like from when you're 25 to 45, say. Um, and so you can manage it with a lot of, of intentionality. Usually, we don't do that. Usually, we just get caught up in the storm, and we swing around. But a lot of values do come into conflict with each other. What feels great is when your values are in harmony, and there are people, uh, who have managed to create lives like that, and I highly recommend

Suzy Welch 13:00 it.

Jeff Berman 13:00 I'm guessing there's some difference between when you're teaching this to young people or students-

Suzy Welch 13:04 Yes

Jeff Berman 13:04 ... at NYU and the 40, 50, 60-year-olds-

Suzy Welch 13:06 Yes

Jeff Berman 13:06 ... who are coming in. What, what are you seeing there?

Suzy Welch 13:08 Oh my God. All right. Look, I taught it to MBAs, and I loved teaching it to the MBAs, but I always thought, "Oh, God, they're young," okay? 'Cause they didn't have the wisdom of their years. And, um, they would say things to me like, "But why do, why do achievement and family centrism have to be in conflict?" Or, "Why, why do affluence and the value for fun," which is eudaimonia, self-care, "why do affluence and eudaimonia have to be in conflict?" And I would say, "I don't know. Ask God." You know, I don't know. Like, ask the universe. I am not here to solve this problem. I'm just here to report the facts that those two things are in conflict. So after a while, the class got a l- a bit of a reputation, and so, um, my bosses came around and said, "Would you please teach the undergraduates?" And I was like, "I'm very scared to teach this to 17 and 18 and 19-year-olds." Um, even though the kids at, uh, Stern Undergraduate are very, very smart, I, they just, they just, they're not ready.

Jeff Berman 13:58 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 13:58 But I have to say that some of my favorite teaching is the 40s and 50s and 60-year-old people who have lived some life, have tested their values, have seen how m- how, how trade-offs feel, and actually, in many ways, are, like, more courageous.

Jeff Berman 14:13 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 14:13 Because they're like, "Okay, the clock is ticking."

Jeff Berman 14:15 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 14:16 And they tend to act on the findings of the process.

Jeff Berman 14:19 I- I'm curious also generationally, you know, boomers for sure, Gen X to a large extent, by and large, careers are conveyor belts, right? You're, you're, you're looking for that, that name brand you're gonna go work for, make as much money as possible, et cetera. And millennials and Gen Z are, are in a world that is less linear. Um, I think you've talked about as a squiggly, uh, career path.

Suzy Welch 14:42 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 14:42 Um, i- is, is generationally their difference, too, for boomers and Gen X? Are they just getting their heads around the idea that they really can, they have permission to go do something wildly different?

Suzy Welch 14:51 Everybody's scared.

Jeff Berman 14:52 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 14:52 They're afraid jobs are going away. And, um, and yet if they're in Becoming You, they're saying, "Help me understand what else there could be for me besides the conveyor belts," 'cause nobody knows where these conveyor belts are going anymore.

Jeff Berman 15:02 I went to law school and, um, the, the groupthink there was clerkship for the right judge onto the law firm where you're gonna make a lot of money. And I spent six weeks at a law firm. It was supposed to be seven weeks one summer, and I, I, I, I, I was like, "I can't do this."

Suzy Welch 15:17 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 15:17 Like, I literally... This is, this is out of integrity for me.

Suzy Welch 15:20 Yes.

Jeff Berman 15:20 I don't know what, what value misalignment it was-

Suzy Welch 15:22 I'm, I'm telling you-

Jeff Berman 15:22 ... but it was-

Suzy Welch 15:22 ... there was all value stuff

Jeff Berman 15:23 ... it was virtue misalignment for sure.

Suzy Welch 15:26 Right.

Jeff Berman 15:26 Um, and I was, uh, one of two people in my class who didn't know what we were doing when we graduated, and, um, 'cause I was, I ended up going in to be a civil rights lawyer.

Suzy Welch 15:35 Right.

Jeff Berman 15:35 And, um, boy, it's hard.

Suzy Welch 15:38 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 15:38 It's really hard. Um, h- h- how, how do, how do we do a better job-

Suzy Welch 15:45 Hmm

Jeff Berman 15:45 ... um, h- helping people avoid the groupthink and, and get to that area of transcendence, get to their purpose?

Suzy Welch 15:52 I'm the least woo-woo girl you've ever met. I mean, people would like me to be more woo-woo. I mean, in the early semesters, I would say to people when they'd come into class, "If you think this class is touchy-feely and woo-woo and it's gonna be easy, please give your seat to somebody on the waitlist."

Jeff Berman 16:04 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 16:04 But you, the way we help people is we say to them, [smacks lips] uh, "The economy has never been more uncertain."

Jeff Berman 16:10 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 16:10 I think it really is, this pace of change and the pace of uncertainty and the lack of visibility for the future, like, is, is very heightened.

Jeff Berman 16:17 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 16:17 So what can you know? What can you know? You can know yourself. We spend a lot of time on figuring out two different types of aptitudes, your cognitive aptitudes. Are you a, are you a generalist or a specialist? Guess what? It really matters.

Jeff Berman 16:27 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 16:27 Are you a future focuser or a present focuser? Guess what? It really matters. How do you process ideas? Are you a brainstormer or an idea contributor? I mean, this matters for what kind of work you should be doing. You should know that. But here's the other piece of aptitudes, and this is a very unpopular notion with my, um, students, is that your personality really matters. Okay, so hear me out. Um, my students will come in and they'll tell me they know their personalities. And most people say, "I know. How could I not know my personality? I'm kind-

Jeff Berman 16:56 Hmm

Suzy Welch 16:56 ... I'm generous, I'm a good listener, I'm, I'm very compassionate." And I always say, "Well, I hope that's true. Let's find out how the world experiences you."

Jeff Berman 17:05 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 17:06 And we actually have to find out how the world experiences us. There's only one way to do that. That's with 360 feedback. And there's no shortcut to it. And we cannot not do that work.

Jeff Berman 17:18 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 17:19 Because then when we know how the world experience... And we only need to know how they experience us on three different dimensions. Once we know that, we can say, "Oh, I thought I was great with people. The world is telling me not so true. I have growth. But really what the world is telling me is when it comes to getting things done, execution, h- um, top five, 95, I'm unbelievably good. Maybe there's a job for me where it plays to my, um, to my dominant hand of my brain. I'm good at execution." So don't go into a client-facing role. Go into an execution role. I mean, I think we've got to get the data of how the world is experiencing us as we figure out our aptitudes. So as I said, that's how we do it. We get a methodology where we collect a lot of data.

Jeff Berman 17:59 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 17:59 And then when armed with this data, we say, "Okay, what are, what work calls me intellectually and emotionally that will pay me according to my, what my values say about money?" Because everybody's got a different value about money.

Suzy Welch 18:10 Um, and, and what's at this intersection? That's where I'm going.

Jeff Berman 18:13 Suzy, you, you mentioned how scared people are. Um, there's a lot of uncertainty in the world. Um, uh, and, and that feels like it's accelerating. That is AI, that is our ... political system that is, you know, industries changing faster than they have in human history.

Suzy Welch 18:32 That's right.

Jeff Berman 18:32 I mean, the, the speed of change makes the Industrial Revolution look like-

Suzy Welch 18:35 Yeah

Jeff Berman 18:35 ... a, a turtle race. Um, when, when you take these three factors, values, aptitude, what you're good at, and, um, and economic viability, um, w- is there an argument that people should compromise values right now for economic security?

Suzy Welch 18:52 You may have to. I mean, I don't, um, it- I don't... You, you compromise on virtues, okay, and I don't think you should ever compromise those. But on values, you can deal with expressing them less than you'd like just to have a job.

Jeff Berman 19:05 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 19:05 And it's less of a... It... There's less stink off of it, okay? Because take a value of, like, beholderism, which is you care about how things look. There may be a period right now where you hunker down and do the best with the job you've got, even if it feels like it's not authentically fulfilling your values. I get it. That's a danger, though.

Jeff Berman 19:21 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 19:21 It's a danger because it starts getting very expedient to stay in that job and then get the job. Then if you don't like it, then you go leave that job, but you get the job that's kinda like it that's just slightly better paying. And then next thing you know, you do have that John Byrne moment, that Talking Heads moment-

Jeff Berman 19:34 Mm-hmm

Suzy Welch 19:34 ... "My God, what have I done?"

Jeff Berman 19:35 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 19:35 Um, and so I don't suggest you do it long term, and that's why I sort of tre- say, speaking with trepidation here, but I get the true reality is that y- there's rent, and there's kids, and there's car payments. Um, but the more you layer up with those expenses, the b- the less flexibility you have.

Jeff Berman 19:54 Yeah. I, I, um, y- I think you've used the term velvet coffin before-

Suzy Welch 19:58 Yes. Yeah

Jeff Berman 19:58 ... which, uh, I found really powerful because the visual of it is-

Suzy Welch 20:02 I know

Jeff Berman 20:02 ... is so strong. Um, and getting, getting into that velvet coffin-

Suzy Welch 20:06 Yeah

Jeff Berman 20:06 ... is one thing. Getting buried in is, is another.

Suzy Welch 20:08 The lid closes.

Jeff Berman 20:08 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 20:09 The lid closes.

Jeff Berman 20:09 Yeah. I'm curious 'cause you've talked about virtues and values.

Suzy Welch 20:12 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Berman 20:12 How do you differentiate between the two?

Suzy Welch 20:14 Okay. So virtues are generally agreed upon by society and our culture that they're good and everyone should have more of them. There's no debate that kindness is something everyone should have more of. Integrity, fairness. They're generally agreed upon societal virtues, and they've been pretty stable since the dawn of time. And, um, I wouldn't recommend people have a lot of sort of choice around these things. These are... Everyone agrees. All right, they're, they're very culturally imposed. There's this... And, and I think they're kind of when we think about right and wrong. Like, virtues are right.

Jeff Berman 20:45 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 20:45 So values are... I'm totally agnostic about

Suzy Welch 20:50 values. I don't care if you're high scope or low scope. That's your choice. You came to it however you came to it, whether it was parents, whether it was your culture, whether it was trauma, whether it was a experience that you had. I, I don't care if you're high or low scope. I expect... I respect your scope. Let's talk about work centrism, okay? This is a value that people judge, judge, judge. I met a woman at a conference, I was speaking about this, and she said, um, you know, "My husband worked at GE. If he, if he could, if he wasn't scared of needles, he'd get the t- the, uh, GE meatball tattooed on his ass." And I said, "You know, you're calling him a workaholic, but a holic is a disease, okay? I- is he sick or does he just love work? Does he just have high work centrism and you have low work centrism? And that's what the conversation you have to have, not that he's sick and you're well, because that's very judgy, isn't it?" And she paused. She said, uh, I think her exact words were, "You're blowing my mind." And I said, "Well, I'm really glad to be blowing your mind because a lot of people fight about this, and what's ending up is we're judging each other's values. Do you wanna be judged for your values? Then stop judging people."

Jeff Berman 21:45 It strikes me also that virtues are fixed and values are dynamic. Is that, is that a-

Suzy Welch 21:51 Well, I think that one of the great things that my research will be able to show me in five years is how dynamic values are.

Jeff Berman 21:57 Mm.

Suzy Welch 21:57 Uh, my empirical observation would be that most people's values are pretty set by age 25, and what changes is how much we're expressing them or repressing them.

Jeff Berman 22:05 Oh, interesting.

Suzy Welch 22:06 So we can go through our whole 30s repressing our value of achievement 'cause of kids-

Jeff Berman 22:09 Yeah

Suzy Welch 22:09 ... or of a marriage or of something, a sick parent.

Jeff Berman 22:11 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 22:12 Um, and then when we finally have the, uh, opportunity, we let it rip, and we full, express our full achievement or our full eudaimonia. This, this is the self-care, um, uh, um, value. And one of the thing- one of the reasons I developed my own values inventory, speaking of eudaimonia, was that I was noticing my students were presenting with having a top value of self-care, and none of the previous values inventories had this. Massive amounts of data now about what every generation's values are.

Jeff Berman 22:38 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 22:38 Um, which is fascinating because I'd just done, cut the data in a bunch of different ways, and it takes a look at Gen Z's values. And then I did some research. I, um, I, uh, did a survey of 1,500 hiring managers and I asked, "What values do you wanna... What hal- values do you hire for among Gen Z?" And I'm gonna tell you, only 2% had the values they wanted.

Jeff Berman 22:57 Really?

Suzy Welch 22:57 Yes.

Jeff Berman 22:57 Where, where, where's the gap?

Suzy Welch 22:59 Uh, eudaimonia is the number one value-

Jeff Berman 23:01 Mm-hmm

Suzy Welch 23:01 ... for si- 65% of Gen Z.

Jeff Berman 23:03 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 23:03 And in 1,500, um, hiring managers over the age of 40 in corporate positions, exactly 0% said they wanted eudaimonia as a top value.

Jeff Berman 23:11 Yeah, I mean, it strikes me that, uh, you know, my, uh... Jeffrey Katzenberg is famous for saying, "If you don't come in Saturday, don't bother coming in on Sunday."

Suzy Welch 23:18 Yeah. [laughs]

Jeff Berman 23:19 Um, uh [laughs] ...

Suzy Welch 23:21 I concur.

Jeff Berman 23:23 And, and my first couple of jobs were, were six-and-a-half day a week kinda jobs, you know, 100-hour weeks were, were not out of the question. Um, and, and, you know, certainly post-pandemic-

Suzy Welch 23:35 Yeah

Jeff Berman 23:35 ... we're just in a wildly different world. Um, when you talk with leaders in their 40s, 50s, 60s who just came up in a different universe-

Suzy Welch 23:46 Yeah

Jeff Berman 23:46 ... um, how, how do, how do you help them think about leading authentically but also leading a workforce that is so values misaligned with them?

Suzy Welch 23:55 Right. I think they have to talk about the fact that their value's misaligned because otherwise a lot of acrimony develops. So what end- what happened during, after the pandemic is, um, the corporate leaders were like, "We're gonna deal with this by telling them that we care about their self-care, and we, we're gonna put in wellbeing programs, and we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna meet their needs," while they were s- secretly fuming inside and privately saying to each other, "They can't make it to an 8:00 AM meeting. When I was their age, I was at the work, uh, it was work at 6:00 AM." And they, now the job market has changed, and it's a buyer's market. And they're starting to say the truth. I mean, look at Jamie Dimon saying, "Everybody in. And if you don't wanna come in, do not work here."

Jeff Berman 24:31 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 24:31 So I think the truth is starting to, uh, emerge, and Gen Z is not saying, "Okay, I'm gonna change my values to your values." They're just gonna be mad about it, and they are. I mean, I was talking to a 25-year-old woman who does some freelance work for us the other day, and she said to me, "Can you please make an Instagram reel about burnout? My friends and I are just so burnt out." And I just looked, and I said, "Y- 25?" And I said, "You're, and you're burnt out?" She goes, "Just so burnt out." So I said, "You know, I don't wanna sound like an oldster, but when I was your age, I worked seven days a week, uh, you know, nonstop, and, and the word burnout never came into my mind. I loved my work. I, this was what you did. You worked. We loved it. We all did it together. We, we would've worked more if we could've."

Jeff Berman 25:07 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 25:08 And then she said a very interesting thing. She said, it, she said, "But you had hope."

Jeff Berman 25:13 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 25:14 And I, and I did have hope. We all did have hope.

Jeff Berman 25:16 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 25:16 We believed that if, if you worked hard, you were rewarded for it. And so this is the disconnect, is that Gen Z thinks, "Yeah, I watched what happened to my parents' career, and I watched what happened to my older sister's career, and they worked very hard, and they still got laid off."

Jeff Berman 25:28 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 25:29 And so I think the problem is, um, is, is deep. It's, it's very deep, and I don't know if employ- employers are not gonna be able to give people hope, um, uh, because there will be layoffs, and there will be, um, people will lose their jobs. They've got to give them some other kind of contract that makes sense to them, which is we're gonna train the living daylights out of you while you're here, um, and if you play by our rules, we'll send you off with a great resume so that you can go get your next job.

Jeff Berman 25:54 Yeah. You know, R- Reid Hoffman has, um, written and spoken about this idea of tours of duty.

Suzy Welch 25:59 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 26:00 Um, and this has been a, a really valuable, um, both recruiting tactic, but also a way, or strategy, but a, a way to make sure that there's a real value exchange there, right?

Suzy Welch 26:09 Yeah.

Jeff Berman 26:09 And saying, "Look, come give us two years, and here's what we're gonna ask of you, but here's what you're gonna get-

Suzy Welch 26:14 Yes

Jeff Berman 26:14 ... for that." Um, I, I'm, I'm curious if you think that's, uh, one way to address it.

Suzy Welch 26:18 I think it's a wonderful way to address it, except for that very few people in Gen Z wanna give what he's asking for.

Jeff Berman 26:24 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 26:24 Okay, so what he's saying is, I, I... The concept in general is exactly right, and I think it's probably the best solution. But the problem is, is that he's asking for people to then display values that they don't have-

Jeff Berman 26:34 Hmm

Suzy Welch 26:34 ... like achievement, work centrism, belonging, belonging is value to be part of something bigger than yourself, to have, um, to, uh, be a part, to be part of a community.

Jeff Berman 26:43 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 26:43 And those values are not anywhere near the top of most Gen Z, um, individuals. They have, um, their number one value is u- unumonia. Their number two value is voice, which is creative self-expression, being authentic. Um, the third value is a beautiful thing. It, we call it non sibi, not for one's self. It's helping other people.

Jeff Berman 27:01 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 27:01 But the values that even when you say, "Okay, here's the deal we're gonna give you. Come for two years, and we'll just, y- you work hard. We'll give you something to go out the door with." Um, and what that is implicitly saying is, "Give us your achievement, give us your work centrism, and give us your, uh, belonging, you know, really wanting to be a part of this." And they're gonna say yes, but guess what? Only 2%-

Jeff Berman 27:21 Hmm

Suzy Welch 27:21 ... actually have those as values at all, and most of those values, those values are down at seven, eight and nine. So I think what's actually gonna happen in, in corporate America largely is it's gonna be kind of a, a cage match for those 2%.

Jeff Berman 27:35 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 27:35 They're gonna confine them younger and younger, like Stern. There are some Stern, uh, undergraduates who start getting offers in their freshman year.

Jeff Berman 27:43 Hmm.

Suzy Welch 27:43 And I think that they're doing this very intuitively. They're finding those kids with that hunger-

Jeff Berman 27:47 Mm-hmm

Suzy Welch 27:47 ... that is so, such a positive trait to the oldsters.

Jeff Berman 27:50 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 27:50 And they're locking them up earlier.

Jeff Berman 27:52 Hmm, because they figure they'll, they'll, they'll train them.

Suzy Welch 27:55 Yes, that's right.

Jeff Berman 27:55 They don't care if they've got the thing that they're looking for.

Suzy Welch 27:57 That's right. They've got the it factor.

Jeff Berman 27:58 Yeah.

Suzy Welch 27:58 They've got the values.

Jeff Berman 27:59 Wow. Um, I benefit from remote work. Um, I can, you know, juggle multiple things-

Suzy Welch 28:05 Yeah

Jeff Berman 28:06 ... in a day and get a lot done. Um, I miss being in an office with people. I miss the social connection. Um, my concern for, um, for people who are much earlier in their career than, than we are is they're missing the interstitial time. They're missing the walk to get a coffee after a meeting and then debriefing on the choices that were made in that room. There's not being able to sit on the side of the room and watch the meeting happen, 'cause it's weird in a Zoom meeting. Um, uh, you referenced Jamie Dimon saying, you know, "Get back in the office." Certainly Silicon Valley, we're seeing a, a push in that direction. Um, how do you see this playing out? How do you see this evolving?

Suzy Welch 28:45 I believe that great things happen with people together in a room, and I, I run a company myself. It's only 10 people, but we're, uh, when we are interviewing, and we're growing right now, we say, "This is a five days a week in the office. We're all together." And I al- often say in the interviews, I always say in the interviews, we text on Saturdays, okay? There's no time. This, we're building something. This is a startup. We couldn't do it remotely.

Jeff Berman 29:06 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 29:06 And we tried. There was such a great candidate, great candidate that we allowed her to work from home two days a week, 'cause she lived in New Jersey, and it didn't work-

Jeff Berman 29:13 Hmm

Suzy Welch 29:13 ... because w- of our culture, our c- And it was, it is the, it is the laughter. It is the subtle stuff. It is the bouncing of ideas off of each other. I do think that it will make the case for itself again, and there's some work that could just very naturally be remote, and it will, uh, it will be filled, those jobs will be filled by people who want to be remote. But the jo- the companies that would benefit from people talking to each other, and that's the vast majority of companies, are gonna slowly go back to it.

Jeff Berman 29:39 I, is it also true that for people who work remotely, there's gonna just be a ceiling on their careers?

Suzy Welch 29:44 Yes, I think so. I mean, I see it all the time. I, I think in general you're, you've gotta be in the office if you wanna be promoted. One time I was interviewed by a young reporter, and I said, "Look, you're never gonna be the CEO of a corporate 500 company in your pajamas at home in the apartment." Okay, so, um, the headline was, "You're never gonna be CEO from in your pajamas." And you would have thought of, of... I called the editor, and I said, "Put in of a corporate 500 company."

Jeff Berman 30:10 Right.

Suzy Welch 30:10 Because that's a relevant data point, okay?

Jeff Berman 30:11 Right.

Suzy Welch 30:12 Um, but you would have thought that I said, um, I advocate the, you know, the, uh, the harm of puppies. You know, and people went completely crazy, and people said things like, "You're a dangerous person," because I suggested that there was a lid to your career if you chose to work at home. And it's not the at home part, and it's, it's not the pajamas part, okay? Because pajamas are comfortable, and basically in Silicon Valley, isn't that what everybody's wearing to work anyway? Um, but I w- um, but I would say that it's the In person, looking in someone's eyes and showing them that they matter and the interactions and the... I was on a business trip the other day and, and my entire team went over to somebody's house, um, and one of the members of the teams, and they made dumplings together. I, I could have wept, I was so happy-

Jeff Berman 30:57 Yeah

Suzy Welch 30:57 ... that they were being together. So I do, I don't know. I, I ha- I hope I'm not being a dangerous person when I say this. I think if you have aspirations of achievement, uh, you're probably gonna have to be in an office.

Jeff Berman 31:06 Yeah, but a certain kind of achievement, right? 'Cause they, they're, I mean-

Suzy Welch 31:08 Yeah

Jeff Berman 31:08 ... Roy Bahat from Bloomberg Beta has talked about how the- we're gonna have a one-person billion-dollar company, and that person could be working from home in pajamas.

Suzy Welch 31:15 That's right.

Jeff Berman 31:15 Fine.

Suzy Welch 31:15 That's fine.

Jeff Berman 31:16 But, but you're not gonna run, you know, uh, z-

Suzy Welch 31:19 Right. You're not gonna run a division of Hasbro-

Jeff Berman 31:21 That's right

Suzy Welch 31:21 ... in your pajamas. Yeah.

Jeff Berman 31:21 Right, right. I'm curious, uh, as you've been on this journey with the book and the class, um, if you go back 25 years-

Suzy Welch 31:30 Mm

Jeff Berman 31:30 ... you're, you're editor of Harvard Business Review at that time.

Suzy Welch 31:33 Yep.

Jeff Berman 31:34 Um, what, what is in what you're teaching right now that would have surprised you, shocked you, is different from, from how you saw the world back then?

Suzy Welch 31:43 Well, you know, when I was at HBR, uh, this thing came, called the internet came along. And there was a big debate about how much it was gonna affect the world. And I remember literally saying something so stupid. Like, I was talking to my team and I said something like, "How much could it change things?"

Jeff Berman 31:57 [laughs]

Suzy Welch 31:58 I was like, "Ugh, a lot." And, um, I think that, um, uh, s- look, there are some truisms that never have changed about business, and that is it's all about the people. That thing I said earlier about people and cash flow, that's, that's never gonna change in a business.

Jeff Berman 32:16 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 32:16 That's what I watch and it's what you've got to be watching is nothing gets done without people and you've got to have the right people on the bus, to quote Jim Collins. That's super hard. Uh, hiring is incredibly hard. I teach hiring to, in my management class. And students are always like, "Oh, I'm gonna be fine at hiring. I'm a people person." And I was like, "If only it was that simple."

Jeff Berman 32:34 Mm.

Suzy Welch 32:34 I mean, getting the right people a- and, and motivating them in a way that matters to them, these are things that will never change in business. Uh, assembling a team that likes each other but can challenge each other in a healthy way, uh, teaching people what radical candor is, you know, saying something that somebody should hear from a place of love, these will always be with us. Ca- managing your cash flow, always be with us. But everything else is different.

Jeff Berman 32:57 Yeah, yeah. Um, uh, last question for you, Suzy. Um, we're having this conversation in June. Um, it is graduation season. There are a lot of young people who are going off into their first full-time job. Um, what's one piece of non-obvious advice that you would offer them?

Suzy Welch 33:13 Yeah. Here it is. Smile with your eyes.

Jeff Berman 33:16 Mm.

Suzy Welch 33:16 Okay, let me explain. So I said this, I'm stealing from myself 'cause I said this at the NYU graduation a few years ago and there was kind of this collective gasp when I said it 'cause I was giving serious, uh, advice and then I said, "Listen, here's my last piece of advice." When you go off into the world, you're told that it's time for you to be a professional and you go into work and you kinda put up a, a, a barrier. "I'm going to be professional now. I'm going to be serious. I'm going to sh- not show my authentic self. I'm not going to be, I'm not gonna be vulnerable. I'm going to be a grown-up and grown-ups are like this." We sort of like are, we're fancy people. And in fact, if you look at anybody who's a successful leader or successful at anything, um, they have taken down those walls, okay? Maybe not in 1950, but now.

Jeff Berman 33:58 Mm.

Suzy Welch 33:59 And they're, they're, they're, they're authentic, they're real, they're, they're voluble. Like think about Ken Langone who ran Home Depot. He, uh, there's not a meeting where that guy doesn't cry, okay?

Jeff Berman 34:07 Mm-hmm.

Suzy Welch 34:07 And he's real and he touches people and, and, and I think that, um, and, you know, what I urge young people to do is to... I mean, look, you wanna be professional and you wanna do the work, but show who you are. Don't be as stiff. When you smile, don't do this phony smile. Like laugh, smile with your eyes. Put yourself into it. Be real. Um, and this is not an excuse to be less, less professional. It's a, it's an, it's a urging to be more human. They're not mutually exclusive. So, so show your humanity. You will be rewarded for it, um, much probably to your skepticism. You will be.

Jeff Berman 34:45 What a lovely place to wrap. Thank you so much for being with us.

Suzy Welch 34:48 Thank you for having me.

Jeff Berman 34:48 [Outro music playing] Thanks so much to Suzy Welch for joining us this week. No matter what stage you're at in your career, Suzy's framework for understanding your values and how much your life is aligned with them is a powerful tool. Her new book is Becoming You. We've put a link to both the book and the values quiz in the show notes. I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. [Outro music playing]