Guest Episode: Joe Dumars x Adam Grant x Cody Royle

[01:46] Guest 2: Happy to be here. So happy to be here.

[01:49] Guest 3: I am definitely even happier to be here.

[01:53] Paul: So I want to get into why I paired you guys together, but before I do that, Adam, how you and I introduced ourselves— I sent you an email just as I was publishing Where Others Won't to thank you for writing originals, and in particular, there was an example in there of Carmen Medina which really resonated with me. But, and you responded with— do you remember what your response to me was?

[02:18] Guest 3: If this is a test, I'm definitely going to fail.

[02:23] Paul: It was about a certain NBA player that you grew up watching and a particular commentator who had an affinity with pronouncing his name as he sunk 3-pointers from long range.

[02:37] Guest 3: It's coming back to me. Tell me more.

[02:41] Paul: It was definitely about Joe. And obviously, you guys have a Detroit connection. Grew up in the area, and Joe, you played your NBA career there and obviously been a big part of the Pistons family. But particularly why I paired you together, I love the idea of Adam, you've kind of been at the forefront of the academic and business research on humility. And then Joe, you've built teams and a big legacy point of your teams has been not having superstars. So I love that connection.

But why don't we just jump straight in and again, Adam, you've been at the forefront of this for a long time. You've written about it. If anyone follows you on social media, they'll know that you tweet about this regularly. What is humility at a basic level?

[03:33] Guest 3: I think about humility as not seeing yourself as better than other people. So, you know, it can be broken down into a bunch of different parts. One is that you recognize your own weaknesses. Another is that you see other people's strengths. A third is that you're motivated to learn and overcome your weaknesses, not just build on your strengths. And, you know, I think it's really just fundamentally about being grounded, right?

Realizing, look, I'm human. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. I always have ways to improve. And yeah, I really grew up watching Joe as the model for this. I was a huge Pistons fan as a kid, went to as many games as I could, often had the radio on late at night, and I'd hear the announcer say, Joe Dumars!

And you know, you didn't even need to hear what was coming afterwards because you knew that the 3-pointer was going in. And I even spent a couple years trying to perfect Joe's rainbow 3. But what so amazed me about Joe, and I realize I'm talking about you in the third person here, but you're gonna have to bear with it for a moment. What so amazed me was, here's a guy who's an incredible team leader, who, you know, both is not only a great scorer, but also is the guy who guards and shuts down Michael Jordan. And yet it's always about the team. He's never talking about how great he is.

He's never, you know, sort of beating his chest and saying, look at me. He's trying to just kind of show up every day and contribute. And Joe, you're just an incredible role model for that kind of humility.

[05:04] Guest 2: Thank you so much. I appreciate those kind words. Thank you so much, Adam.

[05:09] Paul: And Joe, when we did the interview for my book, we really talked about this. We weren't talking about humility in particular, but we were talking about kind of the process you go through in terms of building your teams. And this doesn't just go for basketball teams either. You're in the business side of things now. And we were talking about how you like to track people's journeys rather than their accolades and achievements. So I'd love it if you could kind of touch on that story that you told me.

And then also just why humility has played such a big role in the teams that you've built.

[05:49] Guest 2: Yeah, I remember the conversation. And, um, you know, Cody, the thing about, uh, building teams for myself, building companies, is that, um, you look at someone's resume and— or you scout a player and you, you, you, you, you see that he scored 30 points in a game. And, or you look at a guy's resume and you see the things that he's accomplished. But I just never thought that that was, that was the be-all and the end-all in terms of evaluating someone. I would always want to get past that and really start talking to the person about their journey. How did they get there?

What were some of the obstacles along the way? What made them choose this route? What was their ultimate goal? I mean, I really talk to people about their journey more than just the accolades of I won this award or I won that award. Because I've often thought that if you're going to be on a journey with someone in terms of trying to accomplish something, whether it be in business or whether it be in sports, I always thought that it was important to understand how these people looked at journeys, how they looked at ups and downs, how they dealt with things like that, because that was going to be more important than just what you read on a resume or the fact that you picked up a box score and he had 30 points. That wouldn't tell you about how he's going to handle, you know, that rocky road to success.

And we all know here on this, on this podcast that, look, man, that road to success is not some smooth road where everything just goes perfectly. So my idea was to always try and dig as deep as possible to get into the mind of a person if I felt like I was going to be on a journey with this person to try to achieve something.

[07:53] Paul: Yeah, it was absolutely brilliant. And it's funny that chapter in the book, people raise that with me consistently. It's actually a really good segue into— I want to talk about Adam your Work-Life podcast that you did about this topic, and it was called The Problem with All-Stars. And you, you focused on Shane Battier, and you had Brad Stevens in there, and the story of the Butler Bulldogs, and, um, and Michael Lewis was in there, and he kind of weaved it all together in terms of, you know, high-value activities and things like that. But one of the things I've been dying to ask you is, uh, you posed a question to the Butler coach about whether if they found the next LeBron James, but he wasn't a subscriber to the Butler way, or he wasn't a Butler-type player. And he responded to say that they wouldn't recruit him, and you sounded absolutely dumbfounded.

So I'd love your thoughts looking back on that and kind of what you were thinking at the time.

[08:51] Guest 3: Yeah, I remember being pretty shocked because, yeah, look, I, I've spent the last 15 years working with, with all kinds of organizations, uh, you know, across industries. I've worked with some pro sports teams and they all— I think the reason I get brought in as an organizational psychologist is they're trying to figure out how to invest in character and improve culture.

And I think the request often comes in to me as, "OK, we really want to draft a player who's a giver, not a taker, and then we want to build that ethos in our team." And yet, every time the name of a player comes up who's extremely selfish but extremely talented, They say, "Yeah, yeah, but we can't not have that guy on the team because he's so good." And I think in sports, the discrepancies in talent can be so big that it's hard to make a case that if you have a LeBron-level of talent who's a pretty selfish player, who's narcissistic instead of humble, you kind of need him anyway because he's that much better than everybody else on the court.

And when LaVelle Jordan told me he wouldn't take LeBron if he was a taker or a narcissist, you know, it was the first person I've ever heard say, you know, hey, I'd be willing to walk away from the best talent in the world if he doesn't fit into our culture. And so I guess I was wondering in part, did he really believe it? And, you know, what would he do if the next LeBron walked into his door? But Joe, I'm curious, where would you draw the line on that?

[10:26] Guest 2: That's a good question. Listen, I would say this. I wouldn't across the board say that I wouldn't sign him or that I wouldn't recruit him. Um, it wouldn't be because he was a taker or that he wasn't— in my case, he wasn't a piston. My test to determine whether or not I would want the guy is if I thought that he had the ability to adjust and change to our way of doing things. Most of the guys you get aren't your type of guys when you first sign them or get them.

It's rare that you can go out and sign 10, 12 guys and they're all your guys. They know— they don't even really know your system. One example, um, Adam, that, that I'm sure that you'll appreciate is Rasheed Wallace. Yeah, this guy, he, he holds the record for the most technicals in a season, 41 technicals in one season. And so when I was talking about trading for him, I had several people tell me, oh my God, he's going to disrupt everything that you're doing here. You guys on the right track, and you know, don't do that.

And they inevitably asked me, why would you And I said, because I can talk to him, because I can, I can under— I can, I can make him understand that this is bigger than him or his technicals. And, and they said, well, he's going to continue to get texts. I said, that's fine with me. My thing— and I'll give you one little, uh, story, Adam and, and Cody— is this, is that I said to Rasheed, listen, look, I know you're going to be you. And I know you're going to be hot-tempered and you're going to get into it with the referees. I got one rule though for you with these texts.

And I played against Rasheed, so I know him. It's different relationship. So I— so he said, what's that, Jody? And I said, I cannot have texts fourth quarter, game on the line, and you do something stupid and get a text. First three quarters, have at it, my man. But when it's crunch time, And so he's like, oh, I can do that.

Because by the time the first 3 quarters go by, Joe, I promise you, I would have said everything I need to say to those referees. But I said, okay, as long as you get it out of your system in the first 3 quarters, just don't screw the game up in the 4th quarter. So to say no, I don't want to take him because he's this guy that he's volatile, hot-tempered, you— for me personally, I've had to sign, trade, draft too many guys to think that I'm going to get the perfect guy. Sometimes it's about your system, your culture, your environment that really is the true test of whether you can bring that guy in or not, because every guy in sports is not going to be a Butler type of guy or a Piston type of guy or whatever. It just— it's not as simple as that.

[13:28] Guest 3: That's amazing. And Cody, Cody, I got to ask you, because you wrote the book on this. In terms of breaking the mold in the way that we draft and manage people in the locker room. Where do you come down on this?

[13:42] Paul: Well, this was actually going to be my follow-up here because in my sport, which is Aussie Rules football, obviously there's 18 guys on the field at any given time and another 4 on the bench, and then you've got expanded squads. So you're looking at your team can be up to about 45 guys. And so we're talking talking about, or for me, I look at the NBA as a microcosm because it's, you know, 10 or 12 guys together. When you expand that out to such a huge level, obviously trying to find everyone that's, you know, a Sydney guy or a Melbourne guy is incredibly tough. What I've tried to do is, is lay the groundwork, so have those core guys so that you can add a Rasheed Wallace. Like, you— I think in terms of winning championships or, you know, developing cultures in companies, you're going to need an X-factor guy.

And so to your point, Joe, that person is going to be needed, I think, to reach a championship level. You have to play on the edge, but it's about, you know, finding those core guys and putting them in place and allowing them to thrive first and then kind of adding that X-factor guy on top. And I've seen that happen multiple times in the AFL, again, my sport back in Australia. Where teams have won premierships and then added the super talented guy that's a little bit of a wild child at the end to kind of give them that, that little kick in the butt.

[15:11] Guest 2: Totally. Totally. It's imperative. I was talking to someone a few weeks ago about this, a guy who was a GM, actually a good friend of mine named John Hammond. He was my assistant GM in Detroit for I don't know, probably 10 years. And I was talking to him about this, and I said to him, I said, you know, John, if you look at the teams who have drafted, traded for guys, or signed guys as free agents, and the guys are doing what they're supposed to do, they're, they're doing exactly what the teams signed them to do, I said, most of the times those teams will never win.

You can, you can draft 10 guys, you can sign 5 guys, you can trade foot, and they can all do exactly what you thought they were going to do. I said, yeah, the difference in winning though, and I'm talking, I'm not talking about making the playoffs, I'm talking about being the champions at the end of the year. The difference is when guys outplay what you expected them to do. Steph Curry was a good player, the lottery pick. No one, when they drafted him, thought this may be the best shooter ever. Draymond Green was drafted by that team.

Kid who grew up at my house with my son. He's from Saginaw, Michigan, played for my son's AAU team since they was 13, 14 years old. Draymond spent all his summers with me. I didn't think he was going to be what he is. The Golden State Warriors, it's, it's why he went second round. And I said, to be great, some people in your organization are going to have to be— they're going to have to exceed expectations.

And I told John, I said, John, there are teams I can look at right now and tell you, oh, wow, they're doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. But nobody has exceeded what they were supposed to be doing. And then when that happens, that's when you have a chance to win. That's— if you look at these teams around, if you look at Tom Brady as the ultimate a guy that you can point to with that. 6-round draft pick, okay. If he played like a 6-round draft pick, we wouldn't be talking about it.

But he exceeded. And so when— for me, that's what it really comes to. And those guys who do that, sometimes those are the temperamental guys. And so to pass on them, you're really passing on giving yourself a chance to be a champion if you pass on them because 'Well, he's not my type of guy,' but he's the guy that's going to exceed what everybody else is doing.

[17:44] Paul: Yeah. Adam, I'm really curious on this. Has there been any research or anything come up in your world about that? Like, I'm thinking like a Randy Moss who goes into the Patriots organization with that kind of that Draymond Green type reputation as, you know, a little bit of a hothead, potentially doesn't listen to rules. And then obviously has the self-awareness to be able to adjust to the Patriots organization. Has anything come up in terms of— it's like a dormant self-awareness?

[18:17] Guest 3: Yeah, you know, I'd love to see some research on this. I don't think it's a topic that's well studied, in part because in my world, at least in social science, we tend to take snapshots of people at a particular moment in time, and we're not very good at following them over time. When we do that, we rarely get to follow people at that elite level of performance. It's something we're actually starting to do in the— we have a Wharton People at Olympics initiative where we're going to be studying both business and sports high performers and trying to figure out what makes them tick, but also what makes them evolve. I'll say anecdotally that the thing that stands out for me when I think about this is I think that one common denominator for a lot of these people is they've been excellent at everything every level.

And then suddenly they hit a level where they actually have to work to stand out, right? So, you know, my read of Randy Moss— I imagine Draymond was the same— is that, you know, it came really easy to them for the most part, you know, athletically. And then, you know, you hit the pros, all of a sudden you have people who are just as talented as you but work a lot harder than you. And it's got to be frustrating. And then at some point your drive for excellence kicks in and you say, okay, I can either accept myself as a bust or as an underperformer or as somebody who never reached my potential, or I can step up. And I think a lot of that maturity probably comes from the, you know, the people that surround you, whether, you know, whether it's a coach, a captain, a GM, you know, somebody who does see that potential in you.

I know, Joe, I know that one of your, you know, your big moves when you were Pistons GM was really trying to focus on and seeing more potential in people than they saw in themselves. And Cody, you wrote about that in the book, right? And I think it's so critical to have that person there with you.

[20:08] Guest 2: A big part of it also, guys, is respect. And I'm gonna tell you, those type of guys, it's imperative that they respect someone of authority in that organization. It's a must. Those guys when you saw them being temperamental and not reaching their potential, there's no way you can point to somebody in the organization and say they had the utmost respect. I mean, like, look, Moss goes there because he respects Belichick. He respects what this guy's done.

Draymond respects Kerr and what he's accomplished in his career. Rasheed respected myself and Larry Brown, who was there with us as well. So with those type of guys. That's why I go back to this and I say what you said, what Brad was saying. I understand what Brad is saying, but sometimes it's about the organization and who you have in the organization, because those guys will conform when they can look at somebody and say, I have ultimate respect for that guy. That's when they conform.

But boy, if you have people in there and they don't respect those guys, oh, you're in for some sleepless nights, man.

[21:19] Paul: I love that you said that because at the moment I'm reading Mike Lombardi's book Gridiron Genius. And Mike Lombardi is someone who's had exposure to the best of the best— Bill Walsh, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick. And he has said exactly that, what you just said there, Joe, about Randy Moss in his book. It was the respect that allowed him to adapt to the Patriot way. And when you look through his history of his career, where he acted up was in places where either they didn't respect his intelligence, he didn't have respect for the head coach, or someone was trying to fool him. And that obviously didn't exist.

And obviously has a love affair with Bill Belichick and mentioned him in his Hall of Fame speech. And that was that ultimate respect, like you said.

[22:10] Guest 3: Yeah. You know, as I listen to you guys talk, I was thinking about this study that came out a few years ago out of Cornell which showed that if you are a former NBA All-Star and you become a coach, you have a higher winning percentage both in the regular season and in the playoffs in that first season than coaches who didn't either play in the NBA or didn't achieve All-Star status. And I always thought that as an All-Star, you just know something that other coaches don't. So you're more of an expert. But I think this lens of respect is really important too, and it makes me wonder whether And anybody who's had experience playing at the very, very top and standing out at the top, that person immediately has credibility in the room. I'm curious, Joe, in your world, how you've seen that play out, and then Cody also in the AFL.

What's the path if you're not— so let's say I wanted to come in as a coach or a GM. I have no street cred as a basketball player. What's the path to earning respect if it's, if it's not already a given?

[23:14] Paul: I'll jump in first there. In terms of the AFL, I think there's maybe been one head coach ever that didn't actually play in the league. And so I think that speaks volumes in terms of kind of answering your question, at least anecdotally. And I think it's, it's starting to find its way more towards players that played in the league but weren't superstars are the best head coaches. And I think it's potentially that, you know, to kind of round out this discussion, I think they surround themselves with better people than the all-star players that become coaches do. So they go and grab guys and they understand their weaknesses and they'll go and grab other coaches that can supplement on top of that.

But again, that's, that's not to say that the superstars of the league haven't gone on to make magnificent coaches. In fact, you know, the grand final that played out last month, there was two head coaches that were, you know, supreme players. And so, yeah, it's a little bit of both, funnily enough, in the AFL. What about— what's your perspective on that, Joe?

[24:24] Guest 2: Look, I think that what former players tend to do is they don't sweat the inconsequential things, and they don't get caught into that. And that's a huge benefit with them, with the players, because they understand that some of these things that happen are, are really not things that are going to make the difference or not. Here, let me give you an example exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, and obviously I'll shoot— I'll use Rasheed Wallace again. John Hammond, who's the GM of the Orlando Magic right now, and I are sitting on, on the, um, on the sideline of the practice court. Practice starts at 11.

Guys have been out on the court since 10:15, 10:30, just shooting around, stretching, getting loose. At 11 Coach blows the whistle, Larry Brown blows the whistle, guys walk to the center of the court. Coaches usually talk for 5 minutes and then we break up and we start practicing. He's talking, he's in the— Larry Brown is maybe a minute, maybe 30 seconds into that 5-minute talk before practice starts. As he's talking, Rasheed walks out of the locker room. He has to walk across the court because the players and the coach are there on the other side of the court.

He's walking slowly across the court. So when he's walking, John, he gets there, John turns to me and he says, are you going to do anything? Are you going to say something? Are you going to find him? I said, for what? He said, well, he was late walking out.

I said, listen, Here's a guy that's going to get attacked. Here's a guy that might get into a fight. Here's a guy that might get suspended, and I may have to call the league office to try to deal with some serious stuff that this guy got into. And you want me to fine him for walking out here 30 seconds late? I said, man, you are— you're creating problems. I said The best thing that I can do is tell you that he's here.

He didn't miss practice. We don't have to look for him. He— I said, listen, I said, John, this is where guys make mistakes. They'll tell you, oh, it's these little things that's going to make the difference. And I said, no, here's the thing, what's going to make a difference, the fact that I don't blow something up small like this with him. I said, you blow this up with him, You've created something that is not necessary.

Wait till the big things happen and deal with those things, but don't create them yourself. And so for me, I think as a former player, the fact that, you know, there was not one player, guys, that would have said he was late that day because we haven't even started yet. The coach is just talking. You know, generally in a situation like that, when that coach is talking 5 minutes, A guy may have to say, Coach, I got to go run to the bathroom. He may miss a minute of that conversation. So to the players, we haven't even started yet.

So to find him in a situation like that— and I know a lot of people who probably didn't play would, and I'm saying to myself, that's a mistake. Don't do that. You're going to have enough things to fight, you know, as the season unfolds. You're going to have enough things to fill your day. With issues, don't create them yourself. And I think that's where it's little things like that with players where you look at it and go, when I saw him walk out of the locker room, I was like, oh wow, yeah, that's great.

Rasheed's here today. You know, I don't have to worry about him.

[28:15] Paul: And does that come from playing with Dennis Rodman, where you— that's the, we don't need to go looking for him? Is that where that example comes from?

[28:25] Guest 2: Among others on that team. Yes, he was the only one. So yeah, I mean, but yeah, I've been around guys like that. But I also knew this, and the same thing that we said when I was playing with the Bad Boys, I said to Rasheed, let nothing affect you at 7:30 PM. If it affects you at 7:30, we have a problem. But if you can do what you do and you can show up and be that guy at 7:30 for us and you're not going to hurt the organization, you're not going to hurt your teammates, you're not going to hurt this, this mission that we're on, I can roll with you.

But the minute it starts affecting us, affecting our goals, our things that we're trying to accomplish, then we have a problem. And so, and so when you give guys that leeway, hey, man, be yourself, be who you are. But do not let— and what people say is, do not let it affect 7:30, right? And everybody knows what you mean when you say that. If it affects you at 7:30, now we have a problem.

[29:30] Guest 3: Love that. Oh, I love that. You know, I didn't, I didn't realize this, uh, Cody. I'm sure you, you are aware that, uh, I think, Joe, you won the first ever NBA Sportsmanship Award, right? Yes. And I, I always thought you won that for how you treated opposing teams, and I'm now starting to think it was actually because you had to deal with Bad Boys internally.

Oh, God.

[29:52] Guest 2: The Bad Boys. Yeah, that was kind of a— you know, we feel for your award, Joe. But no, you know what? I tried to treat everybody great, man. I thought that— I think that people mistake in sports loud, boisterous, you know, over-the-top actions. I think people mistake that with toughness.

They mistake that with leadership. You know, if a guy's yelling and screaming, oh, man, he's a great leader. I never believed that. I never thought that. I thought leadership came in all forms. And so for me, it just— I was comfortable being myself and not having to try and create this persona of something that I wasn't, you know, because I knew it wasn't going to affect my toughness or my focus or determination.

If anything, it would have disrupted it if I was trying to be something that I wasn't.

[30:43] Paul: Totally. And that's a great point. And Adam, you talked about this in your podcast as well. Like, how do we get away from that notion of promoting the peacocks and kind of falling into that trap of the person that screams the loudest or, you know, sells the most, just promoting that person into a position of leadership rather than really analyzing the situation and looking for those true leadership traits, one of which is obviously self-awareness that we're kind of talking about. How do we get away from that? Particularly in the business world?

[31:17] Guest 3: Yeah, this drives me crazy. I think the first thing we have to do is we have to stop confusing confidence with competence. Just because somebody talks a big game does not mean they can actually deliver on that game. I think in sports we're pretty good at distinguishing trash-talking from performance because we have all the stats. We can see who actually showed up and excelled. I think in the business world we struggle with that because so much of performance is invisible.

And we don't really know how productive you are. We don't know how effective you are as a leader. And so if you talk a good game, we take that as a signal that you could back it up, which sadly is often not true. The research on narcissists basically suggests that they end up being really charismatic and charming on first impressions because the confidence that they exude is is kind of energizing. You think, all right, this person knows what they're doing, they're larger than life. And then the more closely you have to work with them, the more you dislike them and realize that they're not good at listening, they tend not to share information, they're obsessed with their own status as opposed to actually making the team effective.

And so I think just beyond recognizing that we don't We don't need to take confidence as a signal of competence. I think there are ways we can spot these traits early on and weed them out. So I love the research on narcissistic CEOs, which shows that they, if you look at their company's annual reports, they actually have larger pictures of themselves. They're also more likely to be pictured alone, which sends a pretty clear message, right? I am the most important person in this company. It is all about me.

Totally. They also over— yeah, they also overpay themselves. So in the computer hardware and software industry, for example, the average CEO might make about 2 to 2.5 times the annual compensation of the number 2 highest paid executive. The average narcissistic CEO makes 7 times that annual comp of the number 2 executive. So they're literally just saying, yeah, this is all mine to take. They have bigger signatures when they sign their names.

And they use more I's and me's when talking about success. And I think if you see those cues, instead of saying, wow, this person can really get things done, what you're supposed to do is say, wow, this person thinks the whole world revolves around them and probably not somebody who's going to make other people successful.

[33:47] Paul: Love it. That's a great segue, actually, because I want to jump into— I've got a little bit of a case study here and I kind of want to unfurl a couple of the ideas that we've been talking about. So here's the case study I'm going to put in front of you guys, and I really want to dive into some of those behaviours and things and ways we can start to address some of the themes that we've been talking about. So imagine that the NBA has come to the three of us and they've said, you know what, guys, we're missing out on the cash in Las Vegas. We're going to start a franchise there. They're going to be called the Flamingos.

And to the surprise of many, they do a public poll in town and humility comes back as one of the core values that Las Vegans— are they Las Vegans? Las Vegasites? I guess they're Las Vegans.

[34:39] Guest 3: They're definitely not vegans.

[34:42] Paul: They're definitely not vegans. Las Vegans, yes. So humility is one of the the top values that they'd like to see represented in their new team. So how do we go about building this team? We're talking about what are the behaviors that we'd like to see from the very top, like we were talking about there, Adam, with the CEOs, right the way down to the person in the ticket box, and how do we create alignment around that? And then how do we create a value system within the team itself?

How do we infuse those daily behaviours and language and values into our workflows, both on the corporate side and the sports side. So I'd love to start with recruitment, which again was a kind of a major hot-button topic for you, Adam, in your podcast, and clearly Joe, as a president, was big in your world as well. So on the recruiting front, what are some of the things that we can do to create this this humility, you know, even starting from the interview process? How do we grab onto the people that exude humility?

[35:55] Guest 3: Well, my favorite starting point on that is to say, look, you know, it's really hard to ask people about it directly because they know what the right answer is. Right. Although I have met a few narcissists in their day who've tried to claim that they're the most humble person I've ever met. But That's a red flag. That aside, yeah, giant red flag. But I think that oftentimes you learn the most about people by asking them questions about other people's motivations and values.

And so when I've done work on screening givers and takers, for example, one of the things I find is that if you ask people to predict how common selfish behavior is in the team, The, the takers actually expect more selfishness than others, and they, they kind of project their own motivations, and they're like, hey, you know, I'm not selfish, but all those other people, you know, man, like, I gotta protect myself against them. And so if I don't put myself first, no one else will. And I think that, you know, that humble people expect others to show some humility. I think that, you know, narcissists tend to have the, the opposite expectation. They tend to assume that that other people will strut around like peacocks.

And so I think that the first thing I want to do if I don't have a chance to actually see them in action is I'd want to ask, "What do you think the humility level is in your teammates on your current team?" And get a little bit of a sense of whether they see the best in people or the worst in them.

[37:29] Guest 2: Right.

[37:30] Paul: And do you think— one thing that I'd love to see here is, to your point there, is actually almost doing away with this one-to-one interview process and actually grab more of a, not a roundtable necessarily, but an opportunity for more people across that team to speak to that person and gauge them from more sets of eyes rather than just kind of the traditional one-on-one sit-down with the interview questions. And, you know, we ask about the time that something went wrong and how they reacted. I'd love to kind of do away with that and find a way for us to get more perspectives on that one person.

[38:12] Guest 3: Yeah, I would love to see more of that happen too. And, you know, I think obviously scouts are often really good at that. I think the problem is, though, teammates, coaches, they've been coached, right? They know what the right answer is too. And we see the same problem in business with reference checks. Yeah, that even the worst possible person can line up a bunch of people to say nice things about them, either because they have a few good relationships or because some of those references are trying to just foist that person on another team so they can be rid of them.

And I think one of the workarounds that I've found really useful anyway is to give those references a forced choice between two negatives. So, you know, I might say, you know, instead of, hey, tell me about what this player's like, tell me about humility levels, I might say, okay, what's more likely, that this player is too humble, too self-effacing, never takes any credit, or, you know, occasionally a little self-absorbed and attention-seeking? And the reference doesn't know what the right answer is, and so they tend to gravitate toward the real answer. And then I know I'm much more interested in working with the person who's too humble to try to build up their confidence than I am trying to break down the confidence of the narcissist.

[39:26] Guest 2: Right, right.

[39:28] Guest 3: Very good.

[39:29] Paul: And Joe, did you have any particular— did you have any favorite questions either on the, uh, the business side or the, the actual basketball side?

[39:38] Guest 2: So, so real quickly, I'll, I'll, I'll go both. So the basketball side, when I would have a free agent coming in or let's say I drafted a kid and he's going to fly in the next day or 2 days later for the press conference. I may have one of the interns or young guys in my office pick him up from the airport, but the young guy is not an intern for me. He's just a driver from a company as far as the player and his family knows. So, so I would have your young guy tell me how he treated the, the, the, the, the bellman. Tell me how he checked into the hotel.

[40:26] Guest 3: Yeah.

[40:27] Guest 2: How did he treat the skycap? So he doesn't know the young guy works for me. He thinks it's just a driver. And so what I do is I have the young guy pay attention to every single thing he does from the time he he gets off that plane to the time you get him checked into the hotel. And let me know. The night before, the kid may go out with some of the young guys in my organization, and he— you know, they're paying attention.

You know, it's young guys, so he can loosen up. It's not Joe D and the front office staff yet. It's just some young guys working the organization. Young players are going to loosen up then. They're going to really talk then. And, and they'll tell me, you know, the young guys will tell me, Joe, he's pretty cool, you don't have to worry about him.

Or, man, he was a jerk to people. Now, that same guy who was a jerk to people, the next day he's the nicest guy in the world to me. But I already know how you treated the bellman and the people that checked into the hotel. So you could ask this— I'm so with you, Adam, when you say they know the answers to the test. So if you give them a test You're giving them a test that they already know the answers to. So, you know, that, that test, they're going to ace that test no matter what.

So the test has to come from when they least expect it, which is then. On the business side, what I would do is I would tell a guy, look, the interview is going to be at, uh, 2 o'clock, but you know what though, come in a little bit early. Let's just grab some lunch before we do the interview. Really, the lunch is the interview. How does he treat the waiter? How does he treat the, the maître d'?

How— you understand what I'm saying? That, that lunch is sitting there because I'm gonna get to see him interact with other people at that point too. And I can just talk casually because he thinks the interview is coming in 2 hours, but really, the stuff that I'm asking you right now is, is stuff that's really important to me, and it has probably nothing to do with the job itself. It's just in general. So your family, so your last job, man, what happened there? You know, so it's a casual conversation.

So for me, I just try to stay away from the formal test because like Adam said, man, Cody, everybody know, you know, you guys know, man, you guys are smart guys. Everybody knows the answers, man. They— you can't, you can't, you can't ask them those questions and think you're going to get something in depth where, you know, you go, oh my God, I can't believe he said that. They're not going to say that. Whatever that is, they're not going to say it.

[42:57] Paul: Totally. And it's incredible how much we talk about this and how prevalent it is in major leadership and management magazines and Harvard Business Review. But to this day, coming from the corporate space, there's still those just Googled interview questions, the standard test, and everyone's asking the same things. And we all know how to answer the questions. We know how to answer the one about adversity, and we know how to answer the one about our negatives and kind of spin that into a positive. And kind of everyone has that built in.

And for me, it's really about creating, not about creating something that's standardized, but actually individualized. So whether that's individualized to the company, whether it's individualized to that role. Because it might be a customer-facing person, you know, like I talked about, the person in the ticket booth. That might be a particular interview process versus the person in accounting that's doing, you know, accounts payable or receivable or whatever it may be. They might have a separate one that all tries to still create an alignment of those cultural values, but obviously show up like you talked about. How do they treat the receptionist?

How do they treat the maître d' at lunch? And so, you know, coming from the recruitment space, I spent a decade in recruiting. That's something that's still very much missing in the broader business landscape.

[44:30] Guest 3: Yeah, and I would also— I mean, what I love about this discussion is that it's going beyond talk to action, right? So I think we've all had experience around how important it is to see how people treat the people below them. Because every, like, in my world, every taker is motivated to be a good faker when dealing with powerful people, because they know that's how they get ahead. It's the people lateral and especially downward who kind of get to see the true colors. And so I wonder, you know, you look at somebody, let's say you're going to recruit somebody who's coming out of high school or college as a senior, when they bring in freshmen, do they try to help them, or are they busy hazing them?

[45:08] Paul: Totally. And then what's also interesting, and I'd love your guys' opinions on this, how do we create that accountability system? And so that, that's not the end result, is the, the interview process and the onboarding process. How do we get it so that the teams are— the team that this person joins, it creates accountability for those actions on an ongoing basis? So how do we weave that into the daily practices so that It's not that standard case where everyone works when the boss is there, and then when the boss leaves at 3 o'clock to go and pick up their kids from school, everyone stops working. How do we get to that kind of process?

[45:47] Guest 2: People are going to take their lead from, from the top, and at the top is, is, is in it for self and, and make selfish decisions. That's going to always, always trickle down. And so I think if your leadership is showing that they are making decisions that's best for everybody, it's easier for that culture to take hold. I've said this running the Pistons, I've said this here on the business side, hey guys, there's nothing too big or too small that I won't do. Every morning when I come into the office and I fix coffee at the little break room, They see me like cleaning up after— they see me with napkins out cleaning up and if I'm dropping something, I'm cleaning up. Because I think your example as a top person is going to spread through throughout the organization.

So we can implement whatever we want, but if that top person is not living that on a daily basis and people aren't seeing that from the top person, it's going to be hard for that to become a part of your culture. That's been my experience anyway.

[46:56] Paul: It's that emotional contagion like you talked about, Adam.

[46:59] Guest 3: Yeah. I mean, yeah, the reality is that we spend a lot more time paying attention to leaders than we do to peers. And so the values, the attitudes, the actions of leaders do tend to be more contagious. I think it's interesting, though, to see that sometimes informal leadership is a good substitute, right? You know, you may have a GM or a coach or a CEO who maybe sets a bad example, but you've got a captain who kind of says, "Look, I'm going to take the high road here." And yeah, I think in some cases that can substitute. I've certainly seen it in a couple of organizations.

And I think the interesting thing to me is that creates kind of a more relevant mirror for people, right? When I've worked with NBA teams, for example, it's kind of a fool's errand for me to try to convince people to be more team-oriented. If they wanted to be, they already would be. And if their coach or their GM or their president wanted them to be, they probably tried that. It hasn't worked. The question I've gotten much more traction with is to ask them, "Who's the person you look up to most on this team who actually makes you better?" And, you know, often that's the role model, right?

That's the person who's showing up early and staying late after practice. That's the person who, you know, who knows the stats on every opposing player and can prepare the rest of the team. And so, you know, I think sometimes when, you know, when that tone at the top that Joe described, which is so critical, is lacking, I think that, you know, sometimes what you do is you try to figure out, OK, who is the person Who, you know, who people would look up to and listen to. And then what's the behavior they're modeling and how do I make that more salient for everybody on the team?

[48:46] Paul: Definitely. And I think to clue on to that idea as well is to empower those— the members of the team with language to be able to keep themselves accountable, whether that's the captain or whether that's the rookie. This is something that's quite prevalent in Aussie Rules at the moment, is actually finding, you know, the starts of sentences. To allow people to pull up teammates when they step out of line or when they're getting close to the boundary in terms of, you know, going away from, let's call it, the Las Vegas way, when they're moving close to the boundary and they're about to step out of line or they have stepped out of line, giving them the start of a sentence, you know, I saw what you did there, dot, dot, dot. And it allows the team to start to police itself rather than, yeah, that, that kind of authority figure always having to pull everyone back into line.

And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everyone starts policing each other, and they, they kind of still test the boundaries but stay within those boundaries. Have you guys seen a specific language started amongst teams that allows them to, to do similar things?

[49:54] Guest 2: Well, Cody, I will say this in terms Being held accountable for your actions. We started something back in the Bad Boys where before the season started, we'd have a meeting the night before the first day of practice. And everyone would have to stand up. Every player, every coach would have to stand up and say to the group two things that we could count on for them for the entire season. It could not be I'm going to play hard every night, or I'm going to try to win. It couldn't be anything as vague and just, you know, broad as that.

You had to be specific. Example, myself, I would say one of the things I would say is we will not have to double team anybody I'm guarding. No double teams. I'll guard my man 82 nights. I don't need any help. I even MJ, even MJ.

But, and listen, but here's the thing though, that wasn't— that wouldn't stop Chuck from saying we're going to— Chuck Daly to say we're going to double in this situation right here. But me personally, I could not come back for 82 games and say I need help. I made a commitment, and, and, and the only way out of that commitment and this, it's happened sometimes, is somebody has gotten hot and I'm not shutting them down, and my teammates will say, we're coming to help. And if they said they were coming to help, then I accepted it. But I was not going to them because I may— I gave them my word that I would not come to them for that. So you had guys like, like Lambert saying, look, I will be the leading rebounder, I'll get every rebound I can.

So you had to say something specific that you were going to do, that the team could count on you every night. And the difference is a coach saying to you, hey, Cody, hey, Adam, I want you to do this and this. In your mind, you may think, man, I really should be doing that and that. He shouldn't have me doing this. But when you stand up and say it, you have to own it, man. You have to own it.

And I've seen guys try to run through walls to hold up to what they said that they were going to do. As soon as you get an athlete to stand in front of everybody else and say what he's going to bring every night, I promise you those two things that he say, you don't have to coach him much on those because no one wants to stand up and say those things and then have to go back and say, I can't hold up my end. Coaches, the same thing. Coaches had to stand up and say what they were going to do. Assistant coaches, hey, I will have us prepared. We will not get beat in any game because we didn't know what was coming on a last-second shot.

I'll know everything that's coming. And so if we got hit on the last-second shot, everybody's going to turn and look at that guy and go, are you kidding me? So these guys, man, they'd stay up all night to make sure that they knew exactly what was going to happen. So it's when you make that commitment yourself to the group, as opposed to someone who's ahead of the group telling you, well, you do this, this, this. And look, you still need that, but I'm saying specifically, when you ask people to stand up and speak to the group and say what they're going to bring, my goodness, man, I'm telling you, it's incredible to see how people buy in at that point.

[53:29] Guest 3: That's such a cool example.

[53:31] Paul: Yeah, it's that specificity, isn't it? You don't want the guys to— and this is a lesson for everyone, I think— you don't want the 'I'm going to play hard.' You want the specifics of it so that it does create an accountability system, right?

[53:44] Guest 2: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, you want to own it, man. You want them to own it, you know?

[53:51] Guest 3: Yeah. When I think about the public commitment idea, I think it's such a powerful way to get people to take responsibility for their contribution. In the corporate world, I've seen a variation on this that's not just about what I'm going to bring to the team, but also how I'm going to be better for the team. So I spent a lot of time working with Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, and one of the best things that I've watched her do is open a meeting by actually describing all the areas she's trying to improve in. And I think Sheryl found that as she climbed up the corporate ladder, people were less and less likely to give her radically honest feedback. Especially criticism.

And so she found that she had to criticize herself out loud in order to get other people to open up. And not only then, you know, when she says, "Hey, I know I talk too much in meetings," you're like, "Okay, now it's safe to point out, hey Cheryl, you're talking too much in the meeting." But also, anything you don't hear on that list is a potential blind spot, and you feel like it's maybe more important to raise it. And it's been, you know, it's been interesting. It's been sort of contagious in the culture. There's a a vice president at Facebook, Carolyn Everson, who decided one day that she was just going to take her performance review from her boss and she was going to share it openly with her team. And I don't know a lot of leaders who do that.

But she said, look, you know, I'm a work in progress and I want everyone who works with me to know what I'm trying to get better on so that they can give me pointers and, you know, they can also help me hold myself accountable. And that's pretty unusual. It's extra unusual when you realize there are over 2,000 people who work under her. So she basically open-sourced her performance review to a huge part of the company. And I think that we, we spend so much time hiding, you know, mistakes, poor performance, weaknesses. And if we could be a little bit more open about them, then I think it would enhance the commitment we have then to working on them.

[55:45] Paul: Yeah. And that has to come from the leader from an authentic place too. And I think of, again, going back to listened to your podcast, Adam, that's a topic that came up with Butler, was admitting their mistakes back to their players. And then again, it's something that I've read quite frequently, funnily enough, about Bill Belichick, in that he's willing to say, I was the one that screwed up there, I overruled that call and it didn't go our way. And then reiterating that, you know, he does things that he believes are going to be best for the team. This one didn't work out, but he's putting his hand up.

And yeah, it's something that I've never seen in the corporate world, but obviously it's nice to hear from you, Adam, that it does exist. But yeah, I think there's a lot of learnings there from leaders. You don't have to have all the answers. In fact, you're not expected to. And going the other way, you're actually expected to show your vulnerability particularly in this modern workplace that we work in now.

[56:48] Guest 2: Absolutely. Yeah, totally agree.

[56:50] Guest 3: Although I think, I think you have to be careful because, you know, there are lots of times that I've seen people show vulnerability and, and the folks who work with them walk away and think, oh, wow, that person's totally incompetent. And so I think the, you know, the safe place to start is to say, look, you know, let me, let me admit, you know, uncertainty or, or some struggle. In an area that I'm not expected to be competent in. And that way I'm not going to undermine my credibility completely.

[57:19] Paul: Great point. Love it. I think our Flamingos are in a really good spot here. There was a ton of interesting ideas that came out of that. Here's a couple that stood out to me immediately. I love the idea of asking the receptionist about how they were treated by a candidate during the interview process.

It's a, it's a 2 or 3 minute interaction there, but you can learn so much in that time. Another one was, as the leader, you are being watched more than you know. It's like being a parent. And so you need to embody the culture that you're trying to create. And then the other one that stood out for me was asking each individual on the team what they can be counted for. And that creates an accountability loop and a dialogue that most of our companies and most of our teams don't have at the moment.

Okay, changing gears for a second here. I want to talk about what's hot in your guys' world right now. I'm studying a bunch of different things. I'm just interested in general. Adam, what's big on your plate? What articles have you got racked up in your iPhone and what are you really kind of intellectually engaged by at the moment?

[58:30] Guest 3: Oh, I'm fascinated with the behavior of of culture carriers. So, you know, I think that we all know the people in a team who kind of, they live the values, they shape the norms, they have a disproportionate impact on what the culture becomes. And I think despite the fact that we know that behavior exists, we know how valuable it is, we consistently undervalue culture carriers. I have a paper that I'm working on with Constantinos Tudafaris who's an amazing doctoral student here at Wharton. And we collected a bunch of data from a tech company, and we found that the more you were a culture carrier, the less likely you were to get promoted and the less likely you were to perform well when we looked at your supervisor's evaluations of your effectiveness.

And yeah, I think it may be that there are a couple of factors at play there, but I Probably the main one is it's just, it's a huge time and energy sink, right? All, all the effort you put in into shaping the culture detracts away from being able to excel in the tasks that you're doing. And so one of the things I want to try to figure out is how do we make sure that culture carriers don't underperform and how do we make sure that they're, they're really appreciated and recognized for the contributions they make?

[59:49] Paul: Love it. Much needed.

[59:53] Guest 2: Yes, yes, it is.

[59:54] Paul: What about you, Joe? You send me texts every, uh, every day or so with new ideas and, and, uh, stuff that you love. What, what's, um, what are you loving at the moment?

[01:00:04] Guest 2: What I'm loving at the moment is the— is, is trying to dig as deep as I possibly can on this generation of young teenagers and 20-some-year-olds, who— what motivates them? Their motivations are different than, than my generation's motivations, and they're still trying to accomplish a lot of the same things. And I, uh, fortunately I have two millennial kids, 27 and 25, Detroit Country Day graduates, Adam. And, um, they, they, uh, they, um, and, and they teach me a lot just about this generation. My son said to me one day, he said, Dad, you know, your generation grew up thinking about, uh, the white picket fence and the nice home and this lifestyle, and my generation We crave experiences. We, we don't grow up thinking about, you know, the house with the nice picket fence.

We think about the incredible experiences we can have. And so therefore, we, we don't even think like your generation thinks in terms of certain things going on in the world today. And so for me, you know, I still deal with a lot of 20-some, 30-some-year-old athletes, some teenagers, and So it's important to understand what makes them tick and not get caught in this idea that they all think like we did or like I did when I was coming along. You have to radically change your way you look at young people and how they go about trying to achieve success and what they call success. Certain things that we call success, they don't call success. So for me, that's, that's the hot thing right now for me and has been for the last couple of years, just always trying to stay a step ahead and understand exactly what's happening with this generation.

[01:02:13] Guest 3: You know what that reminds me of, Joe, as I think about— my kids aren't old enough to be millennials, but as I think about the students I teach, the most powerful thing I've heard the last few years came from Hailey Brewer at IDEO, who said they've done a whole bunch of work on, you know, what's driving young people today. And they found that young people are not trying to maximize net worth. They were trying to maximize net freedom. And it was just such a simple way of capturing this idea that, yeah, I want the opportunity to have any experience that I could as opposed to just sticking my head down for 35 years and earning as much money as possible. Cody, I'm curious about how that generalizes cross-culturally. Is this an American phenomenon?

Are we behind that, Paul?

[01:03:05] Paul: No, I don't think so. And, you know, I've been in North America for 9 years now. But, you know, my experiences here in terms of, you know, coaching the National Aussie Rules Program and then, you know, obviously watching people back in Australia, I think it's a global phenomenon, you know, to the point where I was in New York City on Friday night and I got into the lift in the hotel with my business partner and there was 4, you know, 20-something Aussie kids in there. One had a Steph Curry jersey on. They were going across the street to the Warriors game. And, you know, to your point, to both of your points, they were there because of that, that net freedom and the ability to travel that we now have that, you know, our grandparents' generation never had.

And so, yeah, I don't think it's isolated to North America. Now, that could be— it could be the Western world. I'm not too sure about that. But I think everything that I've seen here is definitely replicated in Australia.

[01:04:11] Guest 2: I was in Belgrade last summer and I was talking to a young guy there and he said to me, he said, you know, Joe, every every young Serbian kid's dream is to, to go to America and to be free and to do whatever we want to do because we, we still are limited what we can do here. So even if you go to Eastern Europe and they don't have the same opportunities, they still have the same dreams. And it's so, it's really interesting because I'm talking to this young guy and he was the same age as my son and they didn't sound much different in terms of what was important to them.