Leading With Vulnerability: Radical Honesty, Facing Conflict & Less Authority | Keith Ferrazzi

What if there was a revolutionary approach that could transform your team from a group of individuals to a cohesive, collaborative unit?

Instead of realizing that a team is a set of individuals with a commitment to a mission, but also a commitment to pushing each other higher to get there.

Have you ever felt like you were working on a team that just wasn't quite clicking?

Meetings are the poorest form of collaboration to be had.

How do you build a team that genuinely cares for each other?

Let's agree that in the In these small groups, we will bring up the outrageous, the difficult, and the challenging, and we won't let each other fail. And then we'll have the real tough conversation. You don't have to have the same struggle. You just have to know that we're human and we struggle together.

Welcome back, Kwik Brains. I am your host and your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Today we have a very special guest, a very— a long, long-time friend, Keith Ferrazzi. He's renowned as an executive team coach, keynote speaker, a New York Times bestselling author. Keith has spent over 20 years coaching Fortune 500 companies and startups on how to build collaborative, high-performing teams. He's the author of one of my favorite books, the iconic Never Eat Alone, which I read over 10 years ago. In his latest book, Never Lead Alone, which I highly recommend all our Kwik readers get their copy, 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship. Keith challenges the traditional notions of leadership and makes the case that the real secret to success lies in building true teamship, a radical new vision for how teams can work together to drive innovation and growth. We always talk about brain health and how, and building your positive peer group, uh, and how important it is for your brain. So I'm really excited to have this conversation. We're gonna dive deep into this concept of teamship. and learn how teams can move beyond just leadership to become truly collaborative, supportive, and high-performing. Keith, thank you so much for joining us, buddy.

Jim, this is going to be a blast. I can't wait to meet your audience.

Yes. So I was just with Keith this month. We went out, got to spend some time together in Manhattan, and you put together some amazing gatherings. I think about some of the most significant connections that I've had in And a lot of them came from you. So I want to thank you right up front with that. Let's start with a big question. How do you build a team that genuinely cares for each other and trusts each other?

First of all, let me step back a second for your listeners and make everybody recognize I'm not just talking about a team that is a team in an organization around an org chart. I want to be very clear that my definition of team is a group of individuals who together are trying to achieve something extraordinary. And that's true whether you're in a big corporation. One of the biggest difficulties of being in a company is all the silos, all the bureaucracy. And a part of that is mindset where you think a team is an org chart. So I'm going to work on my thing and then I'm going to go get buy-in, which means you're trying to sell something to somebody else. Instead of realizing that a team is a, is a set of individuals with a, a commitment to a mission, but also a commitment to pushing each other higher to get there. Now, in a personal basis, Jim, I've always thought of you as a member of my team.

Yeah.

You and I and our friend Peter Diamandis, during the pandemic, I teamed out and started to create teams. investor teams that were focused on finding really innovative new things to invest in. We became members and advisors of each other's companies. These are teams, and, and everyone who's listening, all of your followers, have to recognize that you are a leader today of a team that is just waiting for you to enlist them. And that is a team that whatever mission or vision you have and the reason you're listening to Jim's podcast. You have a mission, you have a passion. I know you do. Who's your team? That's the first question you should ask. And that's what we address in chapter 1, that teams are unbundled by org charts or who gets paid. Now, the next thing is, was Jim's question, how do you begin to form that team? Now, when I think of a group of individuals trying to get something done together, I think of a social contract. And the social contract is what is our assumption of each other? And you need to define that clearly among a group of people working together. Is the social contract that we will tell each other the truth and kick each other in the butt and push each other harder? That's a high-performing team. Is the social contract that we'll feed each other BS and not tell each other the truth because we're kind to each other? That's not a high-performing team. That's a prescription for mediocrity. And is it a prescription that we have each other's back, which would mean, are we willing periodically to share what we're struggling with? Are we comfortable being vulnerable with each other? Are we able to not only be vulnerable, but hear that vulnerability with a belief that it's our job to be of service to each other? Now, I just defined a construct, uh, what we call a social contract among a group of people. That I put a word to it. I call it co-elevation, a group of people committed to a shared mission and pushing each other higher at the same time.

I have fond memories of gatherings at your home, everything from Friendsgivings to social gatherings. And occasionally when I've been to your home, we've gone to your rooftop and you would lead these discussions where we would sit around the fire and you would ask everybody to share a couple of things. And this is also just another example that this is beyond just what happens in the workplace. Maybe you could share what that is. Yeah. 'Cause that's something everybody could engage with. It's a great suggestion.

So what you're referencing is something that over 20 years of research, our organization has refined. which is called a high-return practice. And you're referencing a practice that I use that creates what I call instant intimacy. And I'll go into the actual practice, but let me give you a little bit of the science beforehand. So over 20 years, we've had a dataset of 3,000 teams. And what we do is we study high-performing teams. I literally had the invitation and the blessing of sitting watching Jeff Bezos's team early on in its formation. And seeing the practices of high-performing teams like that. When I watch a team, I observe the practices, and you might call them a best practice. And when I see something that looks like it's replicable, I take it out of the team and I dust it off, turn it into something that I can teach, and I apply it to a statistically significant number of other teams. And if it moves the needle on one of 10 dimensions of a high-performing team, based on diagnostics that we do, then it becomes what we call an HRP, high return practice. You're pointing out one of 32 practices that is in the book, and it's, it's a practice to move from serendipitous accidental relationships to purposeful bonding, and it's called a personal professional check-in. So a personal professional check-in is when a group of individuals come to the table and they recognize that their job is to share with each other in a very short period of time. It could be anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute, what you are struggling with personally and professionally. What we know is that your ability to share vulnerably with another human, it's the golden key that opens up empathy. It opens up a sense of collectivism. It opens up a sense of shared experience. You don't have to have the same struggle. You just have to know that we're human and we struggle together. So, yes, I use this at dinner parties. I use this at Friendsgivings, as Jim's suggesting. But I also use it in the formation of a team where everybody goes around on a monthly basis and does this personal professional check-in. And I call it an energy check. What's draining your energy on a scale of 0 to 5? What's draining your energy and why, personally and professionally? And I would always share first, as you know, Jim, because if you just threw that out, most people don't have the social comfort of being deeply vulnerable in front of a group of individuals. But I'll tell you folks, that's what leadership is. Leadership is your ability to lay the ground for other people to share who they are so that the team can begin to be of service to each other and lift each other's energy. So I would normally share something on a personal basis, and With 6 boys, as you know, I usually have one of them that's a bit off of the rails and that I could share. Like right now, I'm really struggling with my, with my youngest who has been through mental health support in Phoenix and is dropping out with a great deal of fanfare and violence. And I'm trying to get him back on the rail and back integrated into the family, and it's crushing me. And I would share that with a group of individuals of what I'm going through with that particular experience. And then I would do something professionally as well. The reason we do this, and a lot of people think that, well, I don't share my life in a professional context. If you don't show up fully authentically as yourself in work today, you're really you're really handicapping yourself in terms of high degrees of productivity. In the old days, you had decades of working with the same group of, of individuals repeatedly where you grew empathetic and caring with each other.

Mm-hmm.

You suffered deaths in families, celebration of children's graduations, et cetera. All of that formed the fabric of a team. Today, you, you, you create a team in a second in a Zoom call, and you're expected to be productive and psychologically safe, but we don't have the tools To accelerate the connectivity and the bonding of that group of individuals. And that vulnerability unleash is really the key. So one of the 30-some practices that we have is this intimate instant intimacy, this energy check, this personal professional check-in. You've experienced it on a personal basis. I bring it into large corporations as well as startups, as you suggested. And, you know, where titans aren't used to being vulnerable. And yet we've got to become purposeful in every action in order for a group of people to come together and crush it as a team.

And this vulnerability is really a strength in modern leadership. I love this idea of co-elevation because I feel that because you're one of those individuals that you practice what you post, if you will. There's so much alignment. And feeling safe is something that we need in every relationship, whether it's personal or professional, creating psychological safety in teams. You know, I, I, when you were talking about empathy and, and connection, I was thinking about our, our mutual friend, Tony Hsieh. And, you know, I know you, I know you, you, you've honored him in, in a number of ways.

This is, this is actually the Tony Hsieh Award. Right here, which is given to people like Tony who have been radical innovators in human capital and corporations. Something we created called the Tony Hsieh Award.

Yeah, I remember when we started doing programs at Zappos in 2010, you know, when he was designing even his office where everybody was, even his desk was all in the pit with everybody else's and everyone would take different roles and customer service and so on. You'd be able to experience empathy for the, for their customers and also even where they put the bathrooms so would create collisions and, you know, whereas natural and, and so much of a, I've talked about this 'cause I, you know, I, you know, I get, I get a little flustered, you know, thinking about the, his, his memory and his legacy. But I did, well, you did mention virtual and I, I was wanted to ask, you know, have things with people working remotely, can you build that teamship remotely and virtually? Many companies are moving back to full time in, you know, in-person office. But a lot of people still feel more comfortable working remotely. And big companies like Amazon are starting to reinforce a 5-day-in-the-office mandate, which has pushed almost, what, something like 73% of their staff to consider resignation. How can we foster this new way of living and leading instead of automatically moving back to old ways?

Let me also span out just a little bit to talk about the methodology of the research and how we've structured the book at the foundational level, which is what we started talking about. It's that relational level, that social contract that says we've got each other's back, we won't let each other fail. That foundation is so important. And every chapter of the book, and there's 3 chapters in that foundational layer, gives you a hero story like Tony and how he created, let's say, deep relationships in the organization or how he actually celebrated and created a celebratory culture, et cetera. And then some real simple practices to implement it. The next layer up, before we get to the virtual, the next layer up is a layer around high performance. So once you have the foundational psychological safety, you can't then just be polite and nice to each other without leaning on each other and pushing each other. The candor level is probably the most important. A team of individuals committed to telling each other the truth, committed to every year leveling up 30%. You know, who are your lifelines that aren't going to let you fail? And they will tell you the truth when you don't want to hear it because they believe in you so richly. They'll hold you accountable to the things that you want to achieve in your life. I wrote an entire book on that called Who's Got Your Back? And what we found is that most Americans don't have a group of people that they feel have their back because we are either not building the strength of the foundation of the real relationships, or we're not leaning on those relationships to hold each other accountable to what we can achieve. That's that second layer.

There's this conflict avoidance sometimes in teams with peers or even seniors. You know, how do they feel comfortable or safe to tell their seniors that they need to change their approach without feeling like they're overstepping or challenging without them feeling like you're throwing them under the bus?

That is the most important chapter of the book. That's chapter 3 of the book. Once I set up the tenet of what a high-performing team is and that teamship is actually more important than leadership in performance, I then lean into that point. How do we move from conflict avoidance to candor? That conflict avoidance is the most erosive element of all of our lives. Our inability to speak the truth and to have truth be spoken to us is what keeps us mediocre. Now, what we learn, and this was what I was mentioning earlier about the high-return practices, you don't— I understand that mindsets are what we focus on, and you're certainly the shining North Star of mindsets, but I'm more of a behavioral scientist in our research. We believe that you don't think your way to a new way of acting. You act your way to a new way of thinking. It's the practices that I give you, the 30-some practices. That can actually change you from believing that conflict avoidance is polite, instead to make you believe that candor and courageous dialogue means that you love someone so much you won't let them fail. That's the mindset. But what's the practice? 85% increase in psychological safety happens in small group dialogue. If you have a meeting of 5 people—

Wow.

If you have a meeting of 5 people and you ask them, A courageous question like, what's not being said that should be said in the room today? You'll hear crickets if you go into groups of 3 that are outside it. So let's say you have 5 people, you push the Zoom button, you go into a group of 3 and a group of 2, and you assign to them, I want you to speak for 5 minutes on what's not being said in the room that should be said. Write it down in a Google Doc and then come back into the main room. And now let's have another conversation with full transparency and candor. 85% increase in psychological safety in that small group.

Wow.

And there's no dissipation when you come back. You've taken the culture of the team that you'd like to have, and you've assigned it as a practice into a simple activity. So the practice of what I just, what I just called, what I just described to you is what we call the practice of a candor break. In the middle of a dialogue with people that are meaningful to you, where you're trying to co-create together, on every agenda should be a simple candor break where people get a chance to go into small group and say, let's really remember our commitment to push each other higher. And let's agree that in these small groups, we will bring up the outrageous, the difficult, and the challenging, and we won't let each other fail. And then we'll have the real tough conversation. So it's a simple practice. It's called a candor break. Right now, what's interesting about that, going up to the 3rd layer, which is the virtual layer, what I call all teams now need to understand how to embrace 21st century collaboration. Meetings are the poorest form of collaboration to be had.

Wow. And they're probably the most popular.

Well, that's the problem in terms of time.

They are time-consuming.

They are absolutely eroding trillions of dollars worth of value in our society. Um, the average meeting of 12 people have 4 people think that they've been heard. If you move to asynchronous collaboration prior to a meeting of people, you ask people, what's the real problem we're trying to solve here? Write it down. What's a bold solution for that problem? Write it down. Then you all read it before the meeting. First of all, you might not even need the meeting. You might have just answered the question in the asynchronous collaboration. But if you do have the meeting, you may only need 3 people in that room to land the plane and be done. If on the other hand, you had started the conversation in the meeting, very few people would be heard. You'd have the private DMing, the meeting after the meeting, the multiple meetings to land the plane afterward. You've elongated the cycle time of getting stuff done, and you've actually watered down the courage of the dialogue that could have been had in the asynchronous collaboration. If you do it the way I'm talking about, I call it meeting shifting, where you shift out of meetings to electronic collaboration. You actually have 10 out of 12 people think that they're heard and you have bolder solutions. This is the way Peter and I, Peter Diamandis and I used to work with people like Tony Robbins and others. We would, we would do asynchronous collaboration in with busy schedules, and then we sometimes never even needed a meeting.

Right?

That's the way these bright Stanford kids coming out of college who are birthing companies, disrupting Fortune 50s, that's how they work. So remember, there's 3 layers. There's the layer of the foundation of the social commitment to not let each other fail, to love on each other, to lift up each other's energy. The next layer of a high-performing team is the focus on a group of people pushing each other. Growing together, courageous dialogues, accountability. And then the final layer is the world of technology that we live in today that allows us to achieve extraordinary things. And by the way, you can invite people into your team that would never drive across town to be in a room with you because they don't have time. But now we have an abundant group of people that can be on each other's team. that could achieve extraordinary things without ever having to be in the same time zone. So 3 layers of what it means to be a high-performing team and whatever you're trying to achieve is what we're trying to advocate for.

I love the frameworks, and I love how your book here on Never Lead Alone is full of practices. You mentioned some meeting shifting, stress testing, candor breaks, Yoda in the room. I mean, there's so many gems. So again, I highly recommend people get their copy for themselves and their team. You also discuss the importance of building relational and collaborative muscles. You know, where, what, what are, what, what's an exercise or practice that our aspiring leaders or established leaders, they could implement daily to strengthen these, these muscles? Do you have too much to read, but too little time? Are your shelves full of books that you haven't read yet and become Shelf help, not self-help. And that's why I created the Kwik Reading Course. 15 minutes a day, 21 days will absolutely transform your life. Just go to kwikbrain.com/reading, use the code PODCAST15, and you'll get instant access.

This really goes— it's a throwback for me. So for 20 years, I've been studying the relational sciences. It started with Never Eat Alone, which is a book all about opening the doors of opportunity. And I was a poor kid, grew up in Pittsburgh. My old man was an unemployed steelworker. My mom was a cleaning lady. My achievement of the wonderful things that I've been blessed to achieve have all because of doors that have been opened for me by other people. And those doors were opened for me because I learned the basics of relationship management. Which is you lead with inherent generosity, being of service to the world. And by virtue of leading with authenticity, with generosity, you follow that up with real authenticity, vulnerability, and care, and that solidifies loyalty. So those foundations of leading with generosity, quickly following with authenticity, vulnerability, and that solidifies the relationship. They can be practiced in every time you get together. Simple practices like the personal professional check-in. Like you and I, every time we get together, unbeknownst to either of us, we naturally fall into a practice check of where's your energy? What are you struggling with? What are you excited about in your life? And those are the simple practices. We've got to deviate away from the natural inclination to engage in small talk. We've got to deviate away from the natural inclination of not having the tough conversations. And you can do it with these practices. You know, we started a community called Beyond Connections that over an 8-week period, anybody who really wants to reboot their DNA can do so in a community of peer learners. And I really, It's a throwback for me because I left Never Eat Alone, which was the book that put me on the map. I left it behind 20 years ago and I started studying high-performing teams and organizations. And I had to pause in the last year and realize what richness still exists in that body of work that I wanted to start bringing forward because the essence of how we connect with each other, how we learn to grow care and loyalty and intimacy. It's as important today when you're networking in organizations or networking in the world to achieve your mission. It's as important today as it was 20 years ago when we wrote the book. So that's why we started Beyond Connections.

And how do you get the courage? I mean, I imagine a lot of our listeners, they're avoiding these difficult conversations, right? These critical conversations. And, you know, I often find that the treasure that we seek is hidden in the, in the work we're avoiding. You know, is there, uh, do you have an approach for like building up the courage?

100%. You are the perfect person to ask me that question. It goes right back to what we talked about earlier. Um, the courage to step up and do things that feel, uh, anxiety-ridden all has to do with your peer community. So when you and I showed up at Andrew Yang's birthday party, um, we were each other's wingmen.

Yeah.

There were a set of people that you wanted to meet. There was a set of people I wanted to meet. Both of us are introverts. Despite the fact that people were coming up to both of us saying how much they admired our work, we, we both show up at these things awkwardly. Like, it's, it's crazy. Nobody would ever imagine how introverted and awkward you and I would be individually at an event like that, but we both are, and we both know we are. Now, when we were together, it was different.

Yeah.

Like, we were able to have courage to go up to people. We were able to help each other when we would go up to people, tee up a conversation. We had each other's backs because we care for each other, and we were there for each other. Now, in life, you need wingmen and wingwomen and people who will hold you accountable for what you say you're going to do this week, hold you accountable and give you the courage to step up and make those kind of connections and keep moving forward in achieving what you're trying to achieve. Like I said, I wrote an entire book called Who's Got Your Back, which is a part of this Beyond Connections series. We need people in our lives who are lifelines, co-elevating partners who won't let us fail. That is your secret sauce. 100%. You will unlikely marshal the courage by yourself. We studied programs like AA. We studied programs like Weight Watchers. And what we found was that the secret sauce of success was a small group of individuals committing to not let each other fail. And any of you can enlist that in your team. I'm going to use in quotes, in your team. That is a group of people co-creating whatever it is your mission. And it could be as simple as co-creating each other's future together, right? You could create a peer-to-peer group, a lifeline group that checks in with each other on a weekly basis, coaches each other into giving each other courageous, candid dialogue, caring about each other, giving each other energy, and pushing each other higher. That's what a team should be doing for you in your life. Teams are readily available. If you enlist them and create them. And that's the intention here. Yeah.

I wanna let our audience know that I was, I definitely, I think I was a lot more awkward in these situations than, than you. But it's so much, it's so natural. It comes across very natural and authentic cuz you've done the work. You have it in your muscle memory. We left that—

Exactly.

50th birthday celebration to go to another birthday party with our, our mutual friend, the founder of Automattic WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, and just, It's just very organic, and I can appreciate that. If, uh, what's, what's the website to your, the Beyond Connect, your, your program? Do you know?

Uh, beyondconnections.com, I believe.

Okay. We'll put that, we'll put that link as we, for all of this in the show notes, as we always do at jimkwik.com/notes. Um, we have a lot of amazing readers in our, we train people to read smarter. Uh, if there's one takeaway you hope every reader gets from Never Lead Alone, what would it be? And why do you think it's so vital for the future of leadership?

The biggest takeaway is that there's an old way of thinking about transformation and leadership, and it puts way too much weight on the shoulders of the leader. We need to redefine what's expected of the team to step up and meet the leader in leadership. It's one thing for a leader to give feedback. I want the team to give each other feedback. I want the team to keep each other's energy strong. I want the team to hold accountable each other. You mentioned my friend, your friend, Tony Hsieh. Tony had real practices to the crazy point where teams may someday not need leaders, where teams are holocratic entities holding each other accountable, creating a social contract, Achieving disproportionate things as teams. And I fully feel in the world of AI that that's exactly where we're heading. The barrier or the constraint of abundant transformation will not exist in how well your managers are managing. It's about the team. So I really wanna usher in the thought that holocratic independent teams that you can create with a shared mission, And a new social contract to not let each other fail can in fact be the tipping point of the transformation that is promised us with this new technology and ahead of us today.

How does the concept of leading without authority play in the strategies you discussed in Never Lead Alone, that you don't— might not have that title, but you could still create impact?

So, I mean, all of my books have actually been my own learning path and stepping stones. From Never Eat Alone, the opening of relationships as a science, to Who's Got Your Back, recognizing that small groups of people can be transformative of each other, to Leading Without Authority, which made me realize that small groups of people have to recognize that they are each other's leaders and each other's coaches. So the reality is that we can achieve everything that we want to achieve without having been granted the edict to achieve it. You know, the, the greatest leaders in this world, um, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, these were not individuals anointed. These are individuals who learned how to build movements by enlisting followership. And, and the co-creation and the expansion of movements really comes from organic followership. Leading without authority makes you recognize that you can lead a team. You just have to enlist a team. And it has nothing to do with what anybody has granted you, the resources that have been given you under control. Those are, those are ideas of yesterday. Going forward in the future, we are working in matrixed organizations. We are working across networks. of systems, your ability to marshal resources and pull them together as a team with a shared mission. That is what leadership looks like. But it's not then about the leadership. I'm working with organizations like the World Economic Forum that has such audacious vision for how they want to transform the world. They're running networks. How do you help networks help each other? So that's the key. Get out of your mind that leadership is a hub and spoke around you. It puts too much burden on you. Your job is to enable and enrich teams to achieve disproportionate and extraordinary things.

Very well said. To end the episode, this show is all about learning. What is one thing that you're currently learning or studying that's lighting you up personally or professionally? Anything you're learning or studying that has you particularly excited?

Most of my life has been focused on Fortune 100s and coaching the executive teams of the premier companies in the world. A couple years ago, I enlisted an organization. It's a venture capital. It's called Lightspeed. It's one of the largest VCs in the world. And they have brought me on board to help them coach their young portfolio company. I am blown away. You and I have both been in the universe of Peter Diamandis and his futurism and how technology— you and I have been hearing about AI for 10 years from Peter and the likes of Eric Schmidt and others. But what I love, I love, and what I'm learning is spending time with these kids getting out of Stanford, birthing disruptive new companies that have Absolutely blow away all of our perceptions of what an organization looks like or what technology could or couldn't do. I am absolutely blown away and feeling abundant in the future. Now, the question is, and that's why I'm learning, I'm getting right down with these kids and generously trying to serve them with my intellectual property around high-performing interdependent relationships. But frankly, I'm soaking in so much about what's possible in the future of technology that we can't even imagine today, but these kids see so clearly.

I want to thank you, Keith, so much for your time, for your talent. Everyone get your copy of Never Lead Alone: 10 Shifts from Leadership to Teamship. Where can people go deeper with you, Keith, or where can they stay connected with you?

Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is a great place. I'm in all of the social medias. We love to share in the early stages of all of our thinking. So come along the journey with us. And if you want to go deep with us, join Beyond Connections. It's a lot of fun. It always culminates in a big party at my home with every class, which is a lot of fun. We get to know each other a little bit better. And look, Jim, your community is so inspiring and your service is so inspiring. It's meaningful to me that you've opened up this aperture. I know this is a little adjacent to what you normally reveal to your folks, but I appreciate the value of how much relationships and interdependency and how the brain works, uh, really all comes together. And, uh, I'm just honored to be here with you, my friend.

Yeah, thank you for your friendship, uh, your teamship. Yes, it's not just your neurological networks, everyone listening, it's, it's also our social networks. Building a depth there, I feel like it makes a, a life worth There's a Bruce Lee quote saying the key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering. And I want to thank you for being on this journey with us. Everyone, as you know, you could find more ways to fuel your brain's performance on our YouTube channel where we put the extended version of this conversation. Please join us there. It's twice as long for this episode. You could join 1.8 million subscribers there. Make sure you follow Keith on social media, LinkedIn. We'll put his website and all the links to his books. I highly recommend Never Eat Alone, which is an iconic book I've read 3 times. Make sure you hit the subscribe button as always and leave a comment. I read every single one. Let us know what you think. And this is your brain coach, Jim Kwik. Until next time, be limitless.