Simon SinekThe Leadership Advice Nobody Follows (But Everyone Should) from Top Leadership Expert
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
60 min read · 11,936 words- 0:00 – 2:02
The Power of Appreciation: What You Look For, You Find
- DYDon Yaeger
I'm constantly looking for things I appreciate, things I love. And if you're looking for things you love in your friendships, in your relationships, if you're looking for things you love, you see more of them.
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh, this is a great lesson.
- DYDon Yaeger
Your job becomes find things I like. You make it your job to find where people are actually going the extra mile, doing a little more, you know, doing good work. Even if it's a small thing, sort of say thank you, and you'll find you get more of it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Don Yaeger is the preeminent expert on John Wooden. John Wooden is the greatest coach in college basketball history. Whether you care about basketball or not, if you're interested in leadership like I am, you have to study John Wooden, which means you have to talk to Don Yaeger. This is why I was so excited to have Don on the podcast, to talk to him about love letters. With the release of his newest book, Mastering the Art of Storytelling, Don has written 44 books, including 13 New York Times bestsellers. A former Associate Editor at Sports Illustrated, he's interviewed the great athletes of our generation: Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps, and of course, Coach John Wooden. And it was Coach Wooden who taught Don the power of a good love letter. After Coach Wooden's wife passed away, he wrote her a love letter.
- DYDon Yaeger
She had passed away on the 21st day of the month, and every month for 25 years, on the 21st day, he wrote a love letter to his wife.
- SSSimon Sinek
When Don asked if there was anything in those letters he wished he would've said while she was alive, Wooden replied, "All of it." Coach Wooden taught Don something simple, but easy to forget. We assume there will always be time, but the best time to tell someone how much they mean to us is now. This is A Bit of Optimism.
- 2:02 – 4:21
Don's Journey: From Journalism to Mentoring
- SSSimon Sinek
Don, it's such a treat to sit down with you. Your ability to tell a story, quite frankly, is captivating. [laughs] And I know you've written a million books, um, and had bazillions of, of New York Times bestsellers, but to, to sit down with you is something completely different.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
I could just sit back and listen to you the whole time. In fact, why don't I just sit back and let you just tell stories, and I'll be very, very happy. You started as a journalist.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
What did you do as a little kid? Like, what did you wanna be when you grew up kind of thing? How did you come to journalism?
- DYDon Yaeger
So it's funny, um, you could argue that I was meant for it. My father was a preacher. Um, we lived in, uh, Hawaii, which is where I was born and raised. We ended up in Japan, and while we were-
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh, military?
- DYDon Yaeger
Uh, no, he was a, no, he was a Methodist preacher.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay.
- DYDon Yaeger
But we were in Japan, and my job was to deliver the newspaper, the Stars and Stripes. So I would get up every morning, 5:00 AM, go to the place, pick up the papers, deliver them to every place. Then I would come home, and I would put, "Recording session in progress" on the outside of my door, and I would, I would read parts of the newspaper into a recorder, and then I would opine about what was happening at that time. And, and I'm 11.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right? And so I, I loved the news. I loved what was happening in the world. I loved curiosity, and journalism really just kinda satiated all those things for me.
- SSSimon Sinek
So you were, you were in the school newspaper in high school.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
I mean, you s- I mean, y- one of the very few people on the planet that literally-
- DYDon Yaeger
I knew
- SSSimon Sinek
... was on a path-
- DYDon Yaeger
Yep
- SSSimon Sinek
... from, from a young age and actually brought that path to life.
- DYDon Yaeger
That's correct.
- SSSimon Sinek
And you studied journalism, and then where did you go? N- you went to Hard News?
- DYDon Yaeger
I went to Ball State University.
- SSSimon Sinek
That's in Indiana, isn't it?
- DYDon Yaeger
In Indiana. I went to the San Antonio newspaper, San Antonio Light. It's the, was the large paper in San Antonio. From there, after a couple of years, I went to the Dallas Morning News. And then I wanted to do politics, so I moved to Florida to be the political editor of a large newspaper. After a few years of that, I got an opportunity to go to Sports Illustrated, which was, um, quite the departure. They only have, you know, about 30 writers for Sports Illustrated at a, at any given time, and I got an opportunity to be wrapped around these people that I thought were so fantastic at every given moment and learn every day about, uh, the great skill that it took to tell stories as they did.
- 4:21 – 6:52
Don’s 12-Year Mentorship with John Wooden
- SSSimon Sinek
So what Sports Illustrated did is it opened up an opportunity for you to meet John Wooden. And you, I think it's fair to say, are the preeminent expert, is that the word to use, on John Wooden. You spent more time than anybody else other than probably his family and his, and maybe his teammates. John Wooden, this great basketball coach-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm
- SSSimon Sinek
... who's considered one of the greatest coaches of all time, his philosophies are sort of counter to what a lot of people think. One of the reasons I wanted to sit down with you, I wanted you to sort of share some of the things you learned from getting to spend so much time with Wooden about leadership and human behavior.
- DYDon Yaeger
He would've been, by the way, he would've been a great Simon Sinek fan, 'cause you and he think so much alike. He believed that performance was fully driven by relationship. In fact, there were times he would run practices without basketballs, right? I mean, think about it. You're a basketball team practicing shooting, but there's no ball in your hand. You had to visualize seeing it through, going in through the net.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- DYDon Yaeger
Because the truth is, if you actually shoot it, there are times it won't go through the net, right? So he actually understood the power of, of, of the mind and how the mind could influence behavior.
- SSSimon Sinek
And for people who don't know who John Wooden was-
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... can you just sort of very quickly say why he's renowned and famous as a, as a, as a coach?
- DYDon Yaeger
He won 10 national championships while being the head coach at UCLA.
- SSSimon Sinek
Is that a lot?
- DYDon Yaeger
That is, uh, twice as many as anybody else in history.
- SSSimon Sinek
And that's, that sta- that statistic stands today.
- DYDon Yaeger
Statistic remains today. Right, in the men's college game.
- SSSimon Sinek
So he won double the amount of the highest winning team.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right. Mike Krzyzewski has five, right? Adolph Rupp at, at, at Kentucky has five. But those two are the next in line after John Wooden's 10.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow. Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right? And so, and he did that in a 12-year window.Right. He won seven championships in a row at one stage.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
And you're playing with different players all the time 'cause kids graduate and just-
- SSSimon Sinek
So you can't simply... People kind of brush it off and say, "Oh, you were lucky you had the best players."
- DYDon Yaeger
For 10 straight years, right, or 12 straight years.
- SSSimon Sinek
Because that's impossible in college.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right, right. They're, they're rotating off, they're moving. And back then, college players could only play for three years. So he had to constantly be developing. And, and the thing that made him so special was that he didn't have a way of winning. He adapted to the players that he brought onto his team. So if he wins the national championship with a 6'5" center, that's awesome, but the next year he has Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's 7'1". And so, you know, now it's a whole different game for him. He changed based upon the assets, the talent that he was graced with.
- 6:52 – 10:33
Coach Wooden's Philosophy: Pyramid of Success
- SSSimon Sinek
The thing that I have found amazing about Wooden is the winning-most coach in college basketball history-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm
- SSSimon Sinek
... was not obsessed with winning.
- DYDon Yaeger
No.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I think for a lot of leaders who are obsessed with performance and obsessed with outcome and obsessed with hitting numbers, to learn that somebody who had greater success than all the others was not obsessed with winning, reconcile that for me.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah. When he was a high school basketball coach, high school coach, he built a Pyramid of Success, right? Of here are the blocks of what it meant to be successful, and its industriousness and its willingness to be team first. It was all of these elements, and you get to the very top, and the top block was greatness. And he believed that you build yourself toward greatness. You don't take greatness on. And he never in any of these conversations talked about, um, what it meant to be a champion. What he talked about was what it meant to be great in our universe. If we're good together, good things will happen.
- SSSimon Sinek
So I understand. He, it wasn't about being a champion, but being a great teammate.
- DYDon Yaeger
Correct. And being a team of great teammates. It's one thing to have-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right, right
- DYDon Yaeger
... so many teams have good superstars and good teammates, and often the teammates are the people that are just lucky to be here, right? This was, your best player also was committed to being a l- a servant leader, right?
- SSSimon Sinek
How did he manage ego? So let's take someone who truly is gifted-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm
- SSSimon Sinek
... in the sport, and maybe even has a remarkable work ethic.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And so they carry themselves like, "I'm the champ. You couldn't win without me." How did he manage ego? How did he teach, you know, teamwork to somebody who truly is a superstar?
- DYDon Yaeger
Because he understood. He... Now, he used to say, "I believe in patting everyone on the back. Some of them a little lower than others, but, you know."
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- DYDon Yaeger
"So, but I, but I pat everybody on the back." But his whole model of leadership was this concept that you need to have a series of standards that you will hold everyone to. Your best player, your worst player, everyone abides by these standards. And sometimes your best players will push that envelope and try to see, "Do you really mean that for me? I'm the best player." He had Bill Walton, right? One of the greatest centers of all time. Bill Walton liked to have hair that was a little longer than everybody else. It was the '70s when he was there. And so one day at, for Bill's senior year, he was the two-time National Player of the Year. Senior year, he shows up for the team photo with long hair. Coach Wooden had a rule, "We don't have long hair here," because he believed that you would shower after a game. Most people don't dry their hair well. You go out into the cold winter of some of the places they played. You catch a cold. If you catch a cold, you're not available. If you're not available, we don't win. You're disappointing the rest of your team by not being available. So he had a rule about hair, but he had a reason for it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right? And Bill Walton decided, "You know what? I'm best player in the world, best player in America. I'm just gonna show up with long hair for senior photo day." And John Wooden said, "Bill, what's the story with your hair?" And he says, "Well, Coach, you always encourage me to think independently, and independently, I think long hair is good." And he says, "You know what, Bill? I'm so glad you think that way, and we'll miss you." And Bill Walton went out, found a kid who was riding by on a bicycle, asked the kid if he could borrow the bike, rode the bike down to a haircut place, came back 30 minutes later with his hair cut because he realized Coach Wooden had a standard, and "We'll miss you" was his answer. And suddenly, Bill Walton didn't wanna test to find out, is being the best player on the team gonna give me a little more grace than anybody
- 10:33 – 14:36
Building Better Humans, Not Just Better Players
- DYDon Yaeger
else?
- SSSimon Sinek
So when you say standards, you don't mean performance standards.
- DYDon Yaeger
Oh, no. These are standards of being. This is what it means to be part of our team. Y- This is how you're gonna cheer for each other. He, he required that if you hit a basket but somebody had passed you the ball, that as you ran down the court, you need to look at him and point and say, "Thank you. Thanks for passing me the ball," right? Because there was joy in recognition, right? And s- and often the person scoring gets all the recognition. The person who passes it doesn't. He required that on the way down the court you look for any point.
- SSSimon Sinek
It's an ego check, too, right?
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah, yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Like you didn't get that basket by yourself.
- DYDon Yaeger
By yourself. We, we do this together. Yeah, one of his players actually said to him, "But Coach, what if I go to run down the court and the guy's not looking at me when I wanna point at him?" Coach said, "If the guy knows you're gonna point, he'll look at you," right?
- SSSimon Sinek
True.
- DYDon Yaeger
And so these are the kinds of things he was doing to try to establish not basketball standards, human standards. And if they were better together as a group of humans, they could win, and they won a lot.
- SSSimon Sinek
And now name some of the players who came out of those teams that went on to the NBA.
- DYDon Yaeger
Oh my gosh.
- SSSimon Sinek
So, like-
- DYDon Yaeger
Well, at one stage he had 26 All-Americans who played for him in, over the course of several years.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow. So Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
- DYDon Yaeger
Bill Walton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sidney Wicks, Henry Bibby, Marcus Johnson. I mean, you know, some of the biggest names in, in college and then ultimately the NBA all came from that window of time when they were best in class.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I, I mean, I'm not a huge basketball fan. I do know Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And one of the things I know about him is he was known for his humility and being a great teammate.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
And even though he was a remarkable talent and a remarkable player unto himself, there was a, and to this day, a humility that he embodies.
- DYDon Yaeger
And so much of that came from the environment.
- SSSimon Sinek
And so much of it came from-
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
You know, this is why I think it's important whether somebody likesYou know, I'm not a basketball fan, but I do love the stories about Wooden because they're so universally applicable.
- DYDon Yaeger
Correct.
- SSSimon Sinek
And, you know, even the stuff I talk about, it's so funny in this modern day and age. You know, I'll talk about Navy SEALs, and I'll talk about these high-performing teams or, or Wooden, and in all those cases, we're talking about high-performing teams.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And people take those ideas and those lessons, and they try to apply them to individuals, and I always get a kick out of that.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
You know? We forget that all of the stuff only works because there's a group of us. A company is literally a group of people. That's what a company means.
- 14:36 – 19:17
Coach Wooden's Love Letter Writing Practice
- SSSimon Sinek
How did he help you be a better husband?
- DYDon Yaeger
Coach Wooden, uh, he's a, a great husband. He married the only woman he ever kissed, and sadly, she had passed away 25 years before he did ultimately. And in that 25-year window, she had passed away on the 21st day of the month. And every month for 25 years, on the 21st day, if you were there to meet John Wooden, if you had an appointment with Coach Wooden, he didn't meet with you in person until he wrote a love letter to his wife. And he wrote these beautiful love letters. His penmanship was fantastic, and they would often be a page, maybe a page and a half long, and then he would seal the envelope, lick it, seal the envelope, and he would walk into her side of the bedroom where her bed was still made up, where she would've slept, and he would take last month's letter and put it in a box, and he would take this month's letter and lay it on the pillow. And, um, you know, one, one year, and I, I, I could probably tell you exactly when it was, um, it was November-ish of that year. I happened to be there on the 21st day, and so I had to sit at the dining room table as Coach sat there at the table and wrote this letter to his wife. And when he came back after putting it at her bed, um, he looked at me, and I said, "Coach, is... You know, you write these letters every month. You've been doing it for years. There are boxes of them. Is there anything there you wish you had said to her while she was alive?" And he said, "All of it."
- SSSimon Sinek
Hmm.
- DYDon Yaeger
And I said, "Excuse me?" And he goes, "Oh, yeah." He said, "It's one of the great weaknesses for most of us as people. Our friends and our loved ones, the people that we are so engaged with, we're so busy telling everybody else how great they are, we forget to tell them how much we love them."
- SSSimon Sinek
Hmm.
- DYDon Yaeger
And he said, "I wished I had said these things when she was alive."
- SSSimon Sinek
He said more to his players than to his wife.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
And he says, "So these letters are my opportunity to get that, get that chance." Well, I was so taken by it that that year I went home, and for Christmas I gave my wife a box with 52 letters in it. 52 letters where I expressed to her something I loved about her in each and every one of them. I had made a list, and I, and I knew what I wanted to write in each letter. And that Christmas, I mean, like, I... It didn't matter what I gave her. That was the gift, right?
- SSSimon Sinek
Hmm.
- DYDon Yaeger
And it meant so much to her that the next Christmas I did it again, and I did it again. You know, just last Friday she opened letter number 848.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
So however many years that is, is how many years it's been since I started doing it. Uh, and they're all different.
- SSSimon Sinek
So she takes the box and opens one a week.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right. She opens one a week.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
And then she keeps all the letters.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
She loves to point them out to my daughter and say, "By the way, I hope one day you, [laughs] you marry somebody that will love you enough to write you a letter."
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
And, um, but yeah, Coach Wooden made me a better fa- made me a better husband. I mean, there have been times when, in our relationship, where I'm pretty sure the letters saved me. [laughs] You know, because my w- I may have done something that really made her mad and whatever it might be, and then, uh, ultimately she'd go, "Yeah, but this guy's written me 500 letters," right?
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- DYDon Yaeger
You know? And so, I mean, there's a little grace that I get, a little extra grace that, that, that probably plays into our marriage. It's been, without question, it's John Wooden changed my life, changed my marriage.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow. What have you learned about your wife in writing a letter a week?
- DYDon Yaeger
Hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
'Cause you're forced to sit down and think. 'Cause I would imagine the first 10 or 15-
- DYDon Yaeger
Were easy
- SSSimon Sinek
... are, were easy. Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah. Smile, lovely-
- 19:17 – 22:23
The Power of Appreciation: What You Look For, You Find
- DYDon Yaeger
I'm always looking for something. I write them all the time. I have a database on my computer of all the letters I've written, and I've got the next 75 or 80 already crafted, right, of what they're gonna be. Next Christmas is already taken care of. Because I'm constantly looking for things I appreciate, things I love. And if you're looking for things you love in your friends, in your friendships, in your relationships, if you're looking for things you love, you see more of them.
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh, this is a great lesson. You know, if you know you have the assignment to write the letter, and you gotta write something good, then as you said, your job becomes find things I like. That becomes your job.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
And this is, you know, Bob Chapman, you know, dear to my heart. He would say of his employees, "Don't catch people doing things wrong, catch, catch people doing things right."
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
And it's the same thing. If you make it your job to find where people are actually-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm
- SSSimon Sinek
... going the extra mile, doing a little more, you know, doing good work, even if it's a small thing, sort of say thank you-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm
- SSSimon Sinek
... and you'll find you get more of it. Plus, it's fun to catch people doing things right, because the other becomes insidious, right?
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
Which is, if you start looking for things wrong, you start-
- DYDon Yaeger
You'll find them
- SSSimon Sinek
... you start looking for things wrong. Just happened to me this morning.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm.
- SSSimon Sinek
Which is, there's a, a couple things that happened at work that I've, like, reacted to and sent a note going, "Hey, this happened. Let's not let it happen again," you know? And then it happened again, and I was like, "Hey, this happened. Let's not let it happen again." And so in a meeting today, I said, "Hey, I don't l- like this. I don't like reacting. I don't want to react. I've gotta believe that it sucks-
- DYDon Yaeger
To be on the other end of it
- SSSimon Sinek
... to be on the other end of me-
- DYDon Yaeger
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... reacting.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Can you tell me what's going on-
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm
- SSSimon Sinek
... that it's not working? And, uh, because I don't wanna be this, and you don't wanna be on the receiving end of it." And they gave me a very logical explanation as to why it happens. Turns out it was just a technological glitch, you know? Not a human, not human failing at all.
- DYDon Yaeger
But where do we go in those moments?
- SSSimon Sinek
We go as like, "Who, who screwed this up?"
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right?
- DYDon Yaeger
And if we were, in fact-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- 22:23 – 33:55
Ed Bastian & Delta: Leading With Employee-First Philosophy
- DYDon Yaeger
life.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay, I'm gonna keep going, because you're a font of this amazing stuff. Great corporate leaders that you've had the opportunity to, to either help them write their books or just help them, you know, maybe writing an article, that somebody who was even better than you expected.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm.
- SSSimon Sinek
Like, yes, they had their reputation, but then you sit down with them, you're like, "Whoa, this is not smoke and mirrors." You know, I'm very curious who you met was n- not just good, as good as their reputation, but even better than wr- their reputation.
- DYDon Yaeger
I will tell you, the one that I'm just so fascinated with and have been working with for the last couple of years is Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
We just finished writing a book together. Um, it'll come out later this year. Many people think, well, you know, the customer's always right. That's not his philosophy. His philosophy is, I really wanna understand my employees, and if they know they're cared for, they will care for the customer so the customer doesn't have to argue about what's right or what's wrong.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- DYDon Yaeger
And so he actually has what he calls a virtuous cycle. I'm gonna go to work every day on making the opportunity for my employees to be successful as real as possible. I'm gonna give them the assets they need. I'm gonna give them the training they need. I'm gonna give them the love they, that will make them feel appreciated. And if those things exist in, in the people that we're hiring and that we're putting out on the front line, they then will treat our customers-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
... with the same level of dignity and, and positivity and energy. And if the customers are feeling that same level, they will then buy our product-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- DYDon Yaeger
... maybe at a premium price, which Delta is known for.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yep.
- DYDon Yaeger
And as a result, I now have the revenue to take care of our employees better. I love it, right? He does, every year, 10% of corporate profit goes back to the employees in profit sharing. It's a cool thing, but he gives it to them on Valentine's Day.
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs]
- DYDon Yaeger
It's a love letter from the CEO.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right? It's an opportunity to, on Valentine's Day, every employee at Delta knows, and for most of them, it's the equivalent of 1/12th of their income, right?
- SSSimon Sinek
Right.
- DYDon Yaeger
They're, they're making that back, if the company's profitable.
- SSSimon Sinek
Sure.
- DYDon Yaeger
When it's not, they, you know-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
... um, they, it doesn't happen. But his ability to just-And to stand up for employees-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- DYDon Yaeger
... and to believe that, that, that he is creating an environment for them that gives them their best chance for success is meaningful.
- SSSimon Sinek
H- hard to do at scale, right? Wooden had five guys on the court at any one time.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
And-
- 33:55 – 38:16
What Is True Mentorship: Beyond Transactions to Transformation
- DYDon Yaeger
left.
- SSSimon Sinek
Are you the John Wooden to somebody?
- DYDon Yaeger
So not every other month.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
But I do have a handful of people that I, um, have intentionally s- uh, agreed to mentor and I, and spend time with. Uh, one of the challenges of telling that story of, like, you know, having a-
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh, yeah
- DYDon Yaeger
... is that every- then suddenly... You get it, right?
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah. Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
Is I suddenly get all these letters going, "Hey, you know what? I heard you tell the story and I'm looking for a mentor too."
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
And so I tried to set some standards that I expect of people if they wanna be in a mentoring relationship with me. Um-
- SSSimon Sinek
I had somebody walk up to me on the street and said some very nice things, and likes my work, which I'm super grateful for, and then, you know, he says, "This is my opportunity. I n- I didn't think I'd ever get to meet you. Will you be my mentor?" And this is my, my absolute honest opinion about mentorship, which is true mentorship, and let's define what mentor is, right? I think we misunderstand mentor.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
We think a mentor is somebody who's achieved something or done more than we have, and we wanna learn from them.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
You know? Which is only partially true. A mentor is somebody who makes time for you.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
I have a mentor by the name of Ron Bruder, and when I first met Ron, somebody introduced us. I was pretty young in my journey. And somebody said, "You guys will get along." And I didn't know who Ron was, and in typical Simon fashion, didn't look it up before I met him.
- DYDon Yaeger
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Somebody said I should meet him. What more do I need, right?
- DYDon Yaeger
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
And so I show up for Ron's office being like, ooh, who's this guy, right? I figure I'd learn, you know, over the conversation who he is. And I literally sit down, and Ron's in a three-piece suit.
- DYDon Yaeger
Hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And he's got a folder filled with stuff about me, and I'm like, "I'm a goner," right?
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And we had such a lovely time [laughs] , and he was so charming and so wonderful.
- DYDon Yaeger
This is because you're a good storyteller.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, exactly right.
- DYDon Yaeger
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
'Cause I'm a good storyteller. And he was just charming and lovely. And I remember a few weeks went by and, like, I had a question or something that was difficult that I didn't know the answer, and I knew, you know, based on my meeting with Ron, I'd been like, "I bet he has a point of view." So I called his office and said, "Is he in?" And he took my call. And a few weeks later, something else came up and I thought, "I wonder what Ron would think about this." And I called his office, and he took my call. And then it became lunch, and then it became, you know, "Why don't you come to my house this weekend and hang out?" And he became a dear mentor and a dear friend. And I remember I s- used the M word for the first time, and I was getting ready to leave and, and I was saying my goodbyes, and I put my arm around him as, sort of sideways as I was getting ready to go, and I'm like, "You know, Ron, I'm so glad you're my mentor."
- 38:16 – 47:06
Finding Mentorship for Every Generation
- SSSimon Sinek
No matter how busy they are, they have time for you, like a friend.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And, and mentorships, like friendships, evolve. Now, that's different than a mentorship program, and though I know the-
- DYDon Yaeger
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... words are the same, it's not quite the same thing.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah, I struggle with those.
- SSSimon Sinek
And a mentor relationship is not a champion.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm.
- SSSimon Sinek
You know, they have no control over your career. They can't put in a good word for your promotion. That's a champion. You should have champions as well.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
And occasionally those things overlap. But the best mentors are not even in your company. They may not even be in your industry. The only thing they care about is you.
- DYDon Yaeger
You. Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
I think everybody has to have a mentor.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And basically it's these friends that the friendship kind of takes on m- a bit more of a parental caring dynamic, not just a let's go out and have a, have a, you know, have a good time and sh- you know, share a meal. They take on more of a I care about you dynamic.
- DYDon Yaeger
The relationship with Coach Wooden for me, I, I mentioned it was, you know, 12 years long. And about the 10th year, Coach looked at me and he said, "Don, you know, you've written all these books. You've written books on this and that, but why have you never asked me to write a book?" And I went, "Because I don't wanna p- pollute our relationship. Like, I love what, what I get the chance to learn. I'm not here to profit from you." And he goes, "But what if we wrote a book on mentorship?" And so we did a book together. It came out on his 99th birthday.
- SSSimon Sinek
Wow.
- DYDon Yaeger
Pretty cool. The first half of the book were seven people, uh, who mentored him. But what was fascinating to me was that he considered two of his mentors Mother Teresa and Abraham Lincoln, two people he never met, but he studied them so completely.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
He believed that mentorship doesn't mean we have to sit-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yes
- DYDon Yaeger
... at a table. I can actually grow by studying you.
- SSSimon Sinek
By studying you.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right. And if I can learn what you've been through, and I can-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yes
- DYDon Yaeger
... read what you've been through, I can consider you-
- SSSimon Sinek
I can, I can take lessons from you
- DYDon Yaeger
... an active part of my growth.
- SSSimon Sinek
I love that. I have a friend who's obsessed with Marshall, you know? And, like, if you go to his house, there's, like, books about Marshall everywhere. He's read all of them.
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah. [laughs]
- 47:06 – 51:53
Why Don't More Leaders Follow Wooden's Example?
- DYDon Yaeger
are obsessed with winning.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- DYDon Yaeger
You know, there's the same, the same thread, the same irony. Like, the best CEOs with some of the highest performance, like Herb Kelleher from Southwest Airlines, Jim Sinegal from, from, uh, Costco, like, none of these guys were obsessed with the outcomes, with the numbers. They were all obsessed with the teams and the people, all of them, every single one of them, and yet they outperformed their competition-
- SSSimon Sinek
Everybody
- DYDon Yaeger
... over the course of time
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
With so much written-
- SSSimon Sinek
Why are more people not doing it?
- DYDon Yaeger
Why, why are these leaders in these companies always the exceptions-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
... rather than the rules?
- SSSimon Sinek
Right. No, I ask that question all the time. I think about coaching, especially 'cause of, 'cause of my relationship in sports. W- we know that that is, that there's something to that, right? That the coaches who are invested in development, and am I gonna make you better? Are you gonna, are we gonna be in a relationship for a lifetime, or is this transactional? Is this gonna end at the end of the season? The coaches who say, "I wanna be in your life for a lifetime," are the ones that win consistently, year in and year out. And yet, and yet, not everybody does it. Why? It makes no sense to me.
- DYDon Yaeger
I think that-
- SSSimon Sinek
It's a lot more work
- DYDon Yaeger
I, it is more work. It is also... So there's a story that David Marquet tells. Um, he was a Navy s- uh, captain, and he talks about how on his submarine, there was one kid who was, like, the best at parking the submarine when they're in port
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- DYDon Yaeger
So every time they came to port, whether he was on shift or not, he parked the submarine. Why? 'Cause he's the best submarine parker in-
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
... the whole crew. And it occurred to Marquet at one point, like, what if he's sick?
- SSSimon Sinek
Right
- DYDon Yaeger
What if he's, like, on leave? Like
- SSSimon Sinek
Who's gonna park the sub? So he took somebody else to park the sub, and turns out he didn't do a good job. So I think when we do-
- DYDon Yaeger
I wonder what that looks like.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right. [laughs]
- DYDon Yaeger
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
I think when... It's like, you know, have, did you ever s- scrape your, your, your wheels-
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah. [laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
... when you park?
- DYDon Yaeger
On a curb?
- SSSimon Sinek
It's like that.
- 51:53 – 53:17
When Short-Termism Destroys Culture
- DYDon Yaeger
And it's-
- SSSimon Sinek
I'll tell you a real-life story that just sort of captures how, when it goes sideways. A bunch of years ago, IBM missed its quarter, right?
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And the CEO of IBM at the time made a video message to the whole company basically chastising the sales f- organization for completely screwing up the numbers this, this quarter.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right? And, like, I saw the video. It was an internal video, but it got leaked, of course. I think The Wall Street Journal reported it. And I talked to people who worked at IBM.
- DYDon Yaeger
Mm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And I said, "Hey, I saw the video." And they were literally like, "Oof, glad I'm not in sales," because you're publicly humiliated by your CEO-
- DYDon Yaeger
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... to the rest of your company because your sales-
- DYDon Yaeger
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... because they screwed up the numbers, right? If you pulled the lens back a little bit, it was the first quarter that they'd missed in something like 137 successful quarters.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
They missed one quarter, and the CEO's response was to yell and chastise and humiliate the sales team.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
How'd that work out? And if memory serves, not well. Like, the company then sort of didn't do well for a while because now everybody's in a panic mode.
- DYDon Yaeger
And my guess is the CEO was the, uh, also paid the price at some stage.
- SSSimon Sinek
But, you know, and-
- DYDon Yaeger
Right
- SSSimon Sinek
... the, the problem is, is, like, at no point did anybody say, "Hey, I don't think that was the right response."
- DYDon Yaeger
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
"You shouldn't have done that." Like-
- DYDon Yaeger
Yeah
- SSSimon Sinek
... let's like... Like, where's... Like, again, it's short-termism. Those are the pressures. Don, I could talk to you all day. That's the problem.
- DYDon Yaeger
We could do this forever.
- SSSimon Sinek
We should just start
- 53:17 – 54:44
Know Your Audience: The Key to Great Storytelling
- SSSimon Sinek
our own podcast. You're one of my favorite storytellers. Um, what's one thing someone can apply today to be a better storyteller?
- DYDon Yaeger
Biggest mistake most people make in storytelling is they don't know enough about who they're telling their story to. They don't invest in taking an opportunity, like you with your mentor, Ron. You showed up and thought it would be cool. You didn't do the research. If you take time to, to just do a little bit of work about who it is that you're getting a chance to spend time with, who it is that you're gonna get a chance to impact with a story, it will allow you to, to make a slightly different tweak to the story that might allow it to be heard differently.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- DYDon Yaeger
Might allow you to have greater impact.
- SSSimon Sinek
Know your audience.
- DYDon Yaeger
Know your audience.
- SSSimon Sinek
Write a-
- DYDon Yaeger
Those who-
- SSSimon Sinek
'Cause you're not writing for yourself. You're writing for s- you're writing a story for someone.
- DYDon Yaeger
Correct.
- SSSimon Sinek
Ah, that's brilliant. And when people... That's so good, yeah. When people screw up narratives, it's because they're writing for themselves. They don't know who they're writing for.
- DYDon Yaeger
Right. It's a me story.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- DYDon Yaeger
If it's a you story-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, yeah
- DYDon Yaeger
... it's a different story.
- SSSimon Sinek
Great advice. Don Yaeger, what a treat.
- DYDon Yaeger
Simon Sinek.
- SSSimon Sinek
What a treat.
- DYDon Yaeger
I'm honored just to be here.
- SSSimon Sinek
So good. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company, lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbinus, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts, and if you want even more cool stuff, visit simonsinek.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
Episode duration: 54:45
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