Transforming Team Culture Through People with Martin Gonzalez

In this episode of the Leadership Vision podcast,  Nathan Freeburg, Dr. Linda, and Brian Schubring sit down with Martin Gonzalez, creator of Google's effectiveness founders project and author of 'The Bonfire Moment.' Martin shares insights on the importance of addressing people-related issues in startups, the value of high-quality feedback, and strategies for fostering a strong organizational culture. The discussion covers various tools and methods from Martin's book and workshops, including the 'bonfire moment,' which helps leaders reflect on their leadership journey. With a background in organizational psychology, Martin highlights real-world challenges and solutions, drawing from his extensive experience with global leaders. The episode is a rich resource for leaders aiming to create a positive team culture and build mentally engaged, emotionally healthy teams.

00:57 Introductions
07:08 Why do Companies Fail?
11:02 Co-Founder Failures
13:41 Psychological Safety
24:10 Drop The Mask
25:59 The Workshop  
25:59 The Three Masks

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

People just don't spend any time expecting that. People issues become a part of the journey, and when you give people a structured time to confront a lot of these issues, they really grab at it and they find so much value in it and then they go back into building the tech that they've dreamt of building. You know, I share that because I think it's so important for leaders who are in the trenches to really not forget that if you feel like this is so difficult, that the people aspect of the job is so difficult, like this is, every leader out there thinks this way or believes the same. This way or believes the same. We start the book with a very poignant quote from Bill Curran, who is a former Google executive and is now in Sequoia Capital, one of the premier venture capitalists in the world, and he says that engineering is easy, people are hard.

Speaker 2: 0:57

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build a positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and in today's episode we sit down with Martin Gonzalez, creator of Google's Effectiveness Founders Project and author of the new book the Bonfire Moment. Martin is a seasoned expert in organizational leadership and we discuss the critical importance of addressing people issues yes, there are a lot of those within startups and really all teams and how this significantly impacts success.

Speaker 2: 1:37

Now, drawing from personal experiences and in-depth research, martin highlights the challenges that leaders face, such as co-founder conflicts and maintaining strong organizational culture, among many other things. Brian Linda, martin and I also discuss a bit about the effectiveness of the bonfire workshops, the concept of confidence traps and the necessity of receiving high quality feedback. With a background in organizational psychology and behavioral science from Columbia in the London School of Economics, and extensive experience advising leaders globally and just being a really cool, fun guy, martin shares invaluable insights on the human side of leadership and its vital role for all of us in any industry. Enjoy any industry. Enjoy Well, martin. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us.

Speaker 1: 2:30

It's such a pleasure to meet the three of you. Wow, I'm just blown away. You know, in many ways I got started in this whole career because of the StrengthsFinder. And. I know it's got different branding and you'd have to update me on the branding, but I've known it in my mind as StrengthsFinder. There was a 2.0.

Speaker 2: 2:50

There was Clifton's and all that.

Speaker 1: 2:52

But yeah, I grew up in the Philippines, started my career there. Strengthsfinder was one of the few things that I picked up and thought one day I'd love to do this work. I was a product manager with Johnson Johnson Philippines then. But so when people ask me about my career, I tend to talk about it in kind of three platforms. The first one is my core work at Google, and I do a lot of organ leadership development work with our AI research and engineering group. So I've been spending a lot of time with our deep mind folks, just folks who are basically building our future future which has been incredibly humbling and exciting to kind of be a part of. The second one is I've been doing a lot of work with startup founders through through a 20 project. So google allows us to invest time in these passion projects, um, which which kind of led ultimately to this book, um. So this book is actually a side gig. It's very much a core to what I do professionally.

Speaker 1: 3:51

And then the third one is just I love teaching and teach. I come from a line of teachers. My grandparents, my uncles, they're all. My aunts are all teachers. So I spent a lot of time in stanford mostly especially during the winter term teaching a course around people analytics and org behavior, um, but I also spent a lot of time in like wharton and in sead um teaching there as well, um, so yeah, that's me. I have three kids um ages 8, 10 and 11. They're at a wonderful age, a bit bit more independent, but not yet rejecting, you know, dad time, and so it's a good, it's a good period, oh, that's perfect, we'll talk to you in 10.

Speaker 4: 4:35

We'll see how you're interviewing a different podcast.

Speaker 2: 4:37

Start a dad podcast about that. Yeah, that's, that's fun.

Speaker 4: 4:40

Wow, wow. And how long have you been married?

Speaker 3: 4:50

Gosh yeah, wow, wow and um how long have you been married um?

Speaker 4: 4:51

gosh oh 12 years.

Speaker 3: 4:52

I know, I know, don't quiz me 12 years 12 years okay yeah, how the two of you meet.

Speaker 1: 4:56

So we met in our first jobs, actually in jane in johnson and johnson um, and then we. So we dated for five years and in the 12 years we've been married we've lived in Jakarta, Singapore, Taiwan and now here in the Bay Area.

Speaker 3: 5:14

And then kind of.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Basically when we hit 10 years I think, we realized we had moved nine different homes and just crazy amount of like immigrating. So we're now trying to settle in here and grow roots in the Bay.

Speaker 4: 5:27

Area and what part of Singapore do you live in?

Speaker 1: 5:30

Well, it's not a very big place but we were in. The last apartment we were at was near Newton's Circle and if you're familiar with Crazy Rich Asians, that was one of the sites that they filmed the Hawker Center scene.

Speaker 4: 5:42

Yes, we know it. We worked in Singapore for five years with the Singapore American School and we would commute from Minneapolis to there five times a year during the school year. So we're very familiar with Singapore.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Yeah, yeah, it's a great city. We'd live there again. It's just so hot so hot, it is really hot.

Speaker 4: 6:01

Yeah, you're joking. All right, martin. Well, I have a question, and this is purely selfish. Like I said earlier, we in our business, we try to help accelerate an executive's understanding of their people. We get called because executives have people problems. You start by saying startups have people problems. We say Fortune 100 companies have people problems. Startups have people problems. We say fortune 100 companies have people problems. So when, when you focus on the people problem, what does that mean to you? What did you discover? Like what's kind of your framework of how it is that you kind of zeroed in on people are the problem or there's a people problem?

Speaker 1: 6:39

I started with a conviction that once you're a fortune 500 company, your people problems are so much harder to fix at that point, and the best time to really address a lot of these issues that become ultimately part of the DNA or are a result of the DNA of the company is at the very beginning, and so working closely with founders and startups have been a big driver of my convictions around how to do this well.

Speaker 1: 7:08

But to add to that, I think where it really ultimately began was when Google was building its accelerator program, and my co-author, josh, was one of the early leaders that built this accelerator program.

Speaker 1: 7:21

There was a big preoccupation around let's build this, around the technology, around design thinking, marketing, sales, et cetera, and I told Josh, like okay, give me some time, I want to just dig into the research a little bit, and I found this classic study that we cite in the book out of Harvard and McKinsey, where they survey venture capitalists around the world.

Speaker 1: 7:44

They try to understand, of all the companies in your portfolio that had recently failed, what were the top reasons for the failure, and it showed that 65% of companies that failed failed because of people-related issues. Number one in that list would be co-founder conflict. Number two, number two, three, four, five are all the many other things around not hiring or being sloppy in the way you hire, you know, not letting go of the right people, kind of keeping the wrong people, um, being so indebted to that loyal friend that was there from the very beginning and now that they're not scaling, like how do I and it's all these many things that kind of are underneath the surface and things that aren't usually part of the exciting narrative of building a startup.

Speaker 4: 8:30

That's really interesting because you mentioned several key words in there that I want to follow up on. How big of a role does organizational culture play to being able to address individuals and individual needs? Is there a connection there that you've seen?

Speaker 1: 8:47

It's an interesting question because I tend to think about that question in the context of the economics of the company. But I think when you think about the needs of the individual, when you have a really strong culture, strong cultures are able to weed out the kind of behavior that kind of violate the core tenets of that culture. When a culture is not well understood, not consistently practiced, then all sorts of behavior can thrive within a company. I think where it also impacts a lot of things is really when you think of the economics of it. All also impacts a lot of things is really when you think of the economics of it all.

Speaker 1: 9:24

There's actually a pretty nuanced study that was done by some French scholars where they looked at the best companies to work for list and you know one could say these are signals of good culture. It isn't kind of the definitive way to determine it but you know it's good enough signal. What they do is they look at a few decades of those companies and look at market returns and they wanted to understand is there a true delta that is achieved or that is linked to strong cultures? And what they found was pretty nuanced. They found that actually on good years the benefits are there, but they're fairly subtle. They're fairly subtle. They're fairly subtle. It's in the crisis years where you see this big upside of a strong culture. It's the time when you need your employees the most to really be helping the company through these difficult times, where you see that delta. So I think it's an important thing for leaders to pay attention to it. There's an incredible benefit on both making work feel less sucky to go through and then making companies truly effective during these difficult times.

Speaker 3: 10:35

So, as you've worked with startup and founders, that that's part of the second part of the three parts that you do in the world. That you are in the world is you talk to some of the leaders, the founders.

Speaker 1: 10:48

What parts of your research, of your work really was resonate with them, you know the different parts and I find it, at different stages of the journey different things resonates. Give us some examples. So I spent a lot of time at the beginning of these founders journeys talking about the co-founder choice, like that is by far. It's a little bit like marriage You're making the right or wrong choice of who to partner with in life. Can you know, can make or break. It's the same with co-founder relationships. What we know from the research is that most founders will pull in a friend or family member, two of which I'm facing right now, to build a business. We also know from the research and a lot of this research comes from Noam Wasserman, who was then in Harvard Business School we know that those are the most unstable relationships.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Founders who come together with an origin story of being friends and family.

Speaker 1: 11:54

They tend to break up faster than those who maybe meet each other through a kind of interview-like process or who were former co-workers, like process, or who were former co-workers. And the reason for that is the price of that relationship. The cost of that relationship is doubly expensive. You not only have a professional relationship but also a personal relationship at stake, and so when the cost is high, then your willingness perhaps to have those really tough conversations, comes down significantly. So that's the first area where we kind of right at the beginning, really the counsel that I am compelled to give to a lot of young founders is to go really slow, to be very clear, like what exactly you need from a founder, and then, soon after they get started, we talk in the book about this trap of confidence, where founders really need to recognize that insecurity and self-doubt are a big part of the journey and you should not fool yourself to think that you will escape some of that Anyway. So those are a few of the things that really resonate with folks.

Speaker 4: 13:04

Martin, you touched on two topics that are very familiar to me, and one is about the founder co-founder relationship. Now, whether that is like a family relationship or someone that has been with a company for a long, long period of time, that type of relationship can also serve as an anchor because of the dynamics of you know well, we've been in this together for how many years. So that's is that part of what you're talking about? Is those those deep personal relationships from you know, some of the founding partners per se?

Speaker 1: 13:42

Yeah and um. You know, there was a time where, at Google especially, we had we were talking quite a bit about psychological safety as being an important feature of an effect of an effective team, and I think what people tend to misunderstand about this idea of psychological safety kind of the concept creep that comes into this idea is that we want an environment where people are so deeply trusting of each other, are so familiar with one another that there's almost this kind of unconditional love, somehow that exists. And that's actually not what you want in well-functioning teams. In well-functioning teams, you actually want an environment, and the real tell of a psychologically safe team is that they have a lot of conflict.

Speaker 1: 14:27

But, it's usually a conflict of ideas and a conflict of thinking, as opposed to personality conflicts. A covenant, maybe, or with team members who've been together for way too long, is, I think you begin to think in the same frames of mind and you begin to maybe make assumptions about how other people are thinking, and some of that actually can, over time, create an environment of group think which you don't want yep.

Speaker 4: 14:58

The second thing I want to ask you about, martin, is what you talk about with your chapter five in the book of the trap of confidence. Now I also see, and I'm very close to people where you know that confidence meter or something is is like a roller coaster. There are times when they are very confident, overconfident, have no confidence at all, they lack the kind of self-assurance and self-acceptance that's needed. What role does confidence play in this whole equation?

Speaker 1: 15:27

Yeah. So the first thing to say is that overconfidence is an important feature of any entrepreneur.

Speaker 1: 15:34

You will not find an entrepreneur that did not have at least a moment of overconfidence. You almost need it, it's almost a requirement to get started. There's a really interesting economist I believe he did this research in University of Chicago or perhaps in Harvard where he studied large CapEx projects so building bridges, airports, kind of really big and he asks the question like why is it that all these projects are always over budget and get launched kind of much later than initially planned, like there's some kind of a planning fallacy that almost is a feature of these large endeavors. And he talks about the law of the hiding hand which is in these large endeavors. You almost have to be deluded a little bit around what the true cost of this endeavor is, because otherwise, if you knew exactly what it would take, the actual cost, you would never get started. So overconfidence is an important part of this journey, but what we find from the research is that it almost becomes exclusively a liability after those early days.

Speaker 1: 16:44

We see from the research overconfident CEOs will tend to overpay for M&A deals.

Speaker 1: 16:50

For instance, there's a really interesting study out of a close collaborator of mine, amir Goldberg from Stanford, where he studies performative behavior by CEOs in these kinds of revenue earnings calls and he shows that when you have these really bombastic type CEO personalities who seem to kind of make markets because of such bold claims of the future, when they study that very closely, that behavior very closely, what they actually find is that you erode value by doing that, because what happens is that you increase expectations by analysts and then, as those expectations don't get met, naturally because these claims are so outlandish, you actually see a drop in stock return.

Speaker 1: 17:35

So in many ways, you want a leader who is actually as they're leading their organization. You want them to have this kind of confident humility. Confident in the vision and the mission that you're trying to pursue, but bent towards humility where you're clear about where your gaps are, where you need to depend on others, and in the context of large companies this is so real. In the context of small companies, this often comes in the form of I might bring in adult supervision. As a young 20 or 30 something year old, I needed like a, like a you know an adult in the room and you know there are many examples of this in tech. But we also know from the research that if you don't release some control and and rely on them for you know for for making some of these key decisions, you won't get any of that upside, even if you had the adult in the room.

Speaker 4: 18:28

Oh my gosh, martin, I can't wait to hear that on playback. This is probably not going on the podcast. I'm going to pause here.

Speaker 3: 18:36

It usually goes on the podcast.

Speaker 4: 18:37

Whatever, martin, that monologue for lack of a better word was just saturated with critical phrases. I'm sure you said that all intentionally, but I'm kind of caught in the vernacular of what it is that you're describing meaning. There were so many nuggets I couldn't capture in my note taking that I think are just critical principles for what it is you're trying to teach. I don't know what to do with that right now, because I could do an entire coaching session with an executive about the hidden hand. Like just those phrases you use, I think, capture someone's imagination and also puts them on call Like that diluted or whatever the confidence and cost that confident in the vision, bent to humility. That's a strong, strong statement. Now, this is just self-interest. Is that just how you think? Like, do you think in those kind of phrases, or is that a result of your writing or both?

Speaker 1: 19:40

I probably more the writing I I'd like to say I okay, I don't always talk in soundbitey kind of statements, but when you write things out and you have the benefit of, I guess, seeing it play out and for them to arrive at the conclusion that I'm already seeing right in front of me, and so part of me wants to capture what I'm seeing in like very succinct ideas and you know, throw it over the fence. But again, maybe I need to grow more as a leader that way.

Speaker 3: 20:22

I don't know.

Speaker 4: 20:23

Maybe that's just not your thing. What I'm saying is being in the consulting and coaching role for 25 years, as we have. It's shocking to me what phrases people remember from what you say in front of people. So my curiosity is If you're writing like this, I just wonder what phrase is going to capture someone's attention that's going to open that doorway for people to have a greater sense of who they are? Because topically, these topics we're talking about, they make sense to leaders and topically they're very applicable to individuals. And that's just why I'm drawing it up is because you are capturing so many key principles for human development. I just hope readers catch that, because I'm finding it very valuable to hear the way you're saying this.

Speaker 3: 21:20

Yeah, we're not saying that, or I don't hear you saying and you don't know us very well, but the you just meant, we just meant. It doesn't feel like soundbitey or cliche. You are giving handles, you are giving, you are helping. Even consultants, coaches, like us, use some of this language to be able to unlock some of the places that have really been stuck. So I'm thinking of all the people that we're working with right now. I'm like oh, I might try this, or I might, I might say that. So I think what we're trying to say is you're offering a gift to the world, and I think there are times where, as leaders, we need, we need the poets of research every once in a while to to help us get to that next stage of growth or level of maturity.

Speaker 1: 22:16

How many languages do you speak? I speak English most proficiently, and then I have my home language, filipino. Two other dialogues that I know a little bit of I had to learn Bahasa when I lived in Jakarta, and then I had to learn bahasa when I lived in jakarta and then had to learn some mandarin when I lived in taiwan.

Speaker 4: 22:34

But I yeah, okay. Well, the reason why I ask is because I have often found that people who know multiple languages are really great translators of their written language, like so as so, as you're writing, the way your brain is is thinking is almost like translating ideas in in a relatively unique way, versus people who only speak one language.

Speaker 1: 22:58

So you know, I, I I tell a story in my book in deep in the book, in chapter 10, about some insecurity that I have born because of speaking multiple languages, some insecurity that I have borne because of speaking multiple languages, because then it's so much harder to stay within one lane of a language in conversation, especially with people who are just pure, like English speakers, because then ideas come much faster anyway. So I I appreciate you saying that, brian.

Speaker 3: 23:25

I'm drawn to that chapter called drop the masks that you're that you're mentioning. I remember a mentor once in my early 20s. I just said, everyone's fake. They're all wearing these masks. And he said just get them to take it off once. And I was like, well, what does that mean? He said, if you take it off once, the face will start to distort and the max mask will not fit. The same way again.

Speaker 2: 23:49

I, I love that Right.

Speaker 3: 23:50

Wow, and and for me it was okay. I don't need to have you know, we don't have to put all the masks in the bonfire. Um, how do we create the kind of courage right in those true psychologically safe places where you can be a little bit vulnerable, take it off and just allow some of the shifting to happen? Can you stay or can you speak a little bit vulnerable, take it off and just allow some of the shifting to happen?

Speaker 4: 24:11

Can you speak a little bit more to the idea of what it means to drop the mask, Because I believe that in the midst of this whole process there's a deep sense of authenticity and need for vulnerability to make any progress here. So can you just explain some more about this idea of what it means to drop the mask.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Yeah, so it comes back to some of the data we've collected on founders. That shows that if you believe that confidence grows over time as you get better, you would actually be dead wrong. Your confidence is typically highest at the beginning. Your confidence drops precipitously as you begin to realize just what good looks like and you realize the true cost of what needs to be done here. And it does increase over time, but it never comes back to the original highs of the past. Now, that period of time where confidence is dropping, a lot of founders will interpret that as a signal of future failure. And well what the data shows? That it's actually a signal of growth instead. What we find, though, in that moment is what we very affectionately call the bullshit zone. I love that.

Speaker 4: 25:19

Which is?

Speaker 1: 25:19

that is a time when you need somehow to protect your ego or to project confidence, to project some kind of success, to project confidence, to project some kind of, you know success. And in the process of doing that, in wearing these masks, you can create a toxic environment for your team, especially when they don't understand that this is actually a mask as opposed to you know, that this is actually a source of insecurity as opposed to somehow, you know, a sense of overconfidence. So what we do in, you know, the book, is both a book of insights, but it's also a book that open sources. This workshop that we had scaled to about 70 countries around the world.

Speaker 1: 25:59

So in these workshops, we invite founders to reflect on you know where they really begin to wear these masks, and we talk about three kind of masks that we've observed founders pretty frequently wear, and it's false optimism, false strength and false detachment. False optimism is where, when leaders feel this self-doubt, they instead project kind of this positivity, this over-helpfulness, this trying to make sure people feel bright about the future. And then there's false strength, which is maybe puffing up, projecting a bit of prestige, talking about past successes and because of that we will succeed here as well. And then false detachment which is wanting to be incognito, wanting to maybe show calm and independence, and we find that leaders will pick one or two or three of these masks and then teams will struggle to really figure out what the heck's going on with them. Wow.

Speaker 4: 27:03

I did all three last week. I think last Thursday and Friday I covered all three of those.

Speaker 3: 27:09

Back to you, martin, keep going, keep going.

Speaker 1: 27:14

No, but look, I think it's so important. I mean, brian, it's great that you're aware. I mean, you're in the business, so I would only hope that you're aware of this. It took me a while to really understand that when I lean on research, when I show kind of my intellectual side, like this was actually in many ways a mask of strength, and a lot of that really and I tell the story in chapter 10, a lot of that comes from an insecurity around having grown up in the Philippines, having maybe spoken multiple languages, not able to maybe engage as eloquently with my peers. So I think it's it's important to cause then. Cause then my teammates, people who work with me. They want to know that I'm not just a walking encyclopedia, that I actually do care deeply about them as individuals and that I do have emotions and all that Right.

Speaker 4: 28:02

Martin, do you like in this workshop when you speak about false optimism? Now I'm one that exists in a world of polarity. I'm married to polarity.

Speaker 1: 28:14

But when you talk about it it's so sweet, so sweet. It's just a love language.

Speaker 4: 28:20

With the false optimism. When you said that and then began the comparison, I swung immediately to its polarity of also people being trapped with false pessimism or false weakness and false attachments. Is that part of what you're getting at as well, Because I'm also thinking of people that can come at it from different points of view.

Speaker 1: 28:40

So I do think that that is also a dysfunction that I don't see too much among founders. I think they err on the side of optimism and pessimism. I think where they sometimes make a mistake is where they sometimes maybe over-project the enemy to be, or they get the team to feel invulnerable against the quote-unquote enemy and sometimes that's a competitor, a regulator, some kind of industry that's maybe calcified in their old ways and so. So that's where I see some amount of like oh, you don't want to actually be too negative in, you know, yeah, yeah when it, when it comes to the outside enemy that's really good.

Speaker 4: 29:31

Nathan um, nathan texas.

Speaker 2: 29:32

Well, I don't.

Speaker 4: 29:33

It's going back a little bit oh, go ahead, you're the, I don't, yeah, but I want to break this flow good throb, but since it's broken.

Speaker 2: 29:41

Uh, martin, you said that you're not a good coach because you don't have the patience to like sit with people and they're whatever. But. But when you said that, I immediately wondered if maybe you're the best coach, because do not just like founders, but do all leaders need someone that can just cut through it all and say this is your problem, fire that person, stop doing this. And I'm wondering how you know cause this whole thing started by, like all the, all the reasons that like the people problem, or the problem it sounds like it's you know, a lack of will, or people are like they maybe know the right thing to do, uh, but they, uh, they can't do it.

Speaker 2: 30:21

I read a book in college uh called like I don't remember the title, but it's basically like when you're dating someone, you know pretty quickly whether or not this thing is going to last, but most people don't want to admit to themselves that this isn't the right person for me, so they drag it out for six months and then have a miserable breakup. I wonder how much of this whole people problem is just because there aren't enough Martins in the world that can just say do this, stop doing that and I'm wondering how do you maybe deal with that or encourage people to sort of have some more Tough conversations? Yeah, exactly, tough conversations. That's really, I guess, what this is about. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 30:58

So I'm definitely a tough love kind of need like advisor. In fact, when I was looking for a coach for myself at some point years ago, I thought, okay, my ideal coach would be, uh, robin Williams and Goodwill hunting, who would kind of pin Matt Damon to the wall and kind of kind of shout out the demons from within.

Speaker 2: 31:19

It's not your fault.

Speaker 3: 31:20

It's not your fault. It's not your fault, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:29

So I mean, look, I'm clear. I'm clear that some people just need some clear thinking that sometimes kind of coaching them through it might take a lot. I also see the value of a good coach right where you want people to actually own the problem, because they actually are closest to the context. So I'm clear that I that style isn't always useful, though, that said, I am the friend who would typically tell you know a good?

Speaker 2: 31:57

friend, like it's time to break up with that, you know of a boyfriend or you know like it is.

Speaker 1: 32:03

So that's partly my personality, partly because I think I think it's so. So a lot of the work I do, especially in my teaching, is I I'm a big advocate of this idea of evidence-based management, you know, and a lot of that comes back to, like the medical field. There was a time in medicine that they said look, these ideas are having protocols and doing clinical studies. Every single person is unique. Everyone's context is different. So a good physician needs to address the need of the person. And look, that would not be a doctor I want to go to. In this day and age, you want doctors who see patterns and who understand what actually works, and I think, when there's really well-done research, I think it would behoove us to really pay attention to that. While our context isn't always going to be the way the study is framed up, you somehow need to lean on good advice that's based on evidence, and so I think that's where my tough love approach comes from because I'm so convicted about the value of research and evidence in doing this work.

Speaker 2: 33:24

You can tell someone this is what you need to do, but until they internalize it and realize it for themselves, uh, you know, it's like that intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation thing. So how do you, you know, when working with founders or even in the workshop, how do you, like you know this is the right thing to do? Here's all the evidence why. But until a leader is like, gets that you know what I mean like, how do you balance those things? This?

Speaker 1: 33:48

is true like yeah so this is this is how I, this is how I think about that, because part of it is managing my own eagerness to solve their problem for them and then also, which sometimes we can see so clearly as an outsider right that's right.

Speaker 1: 34:03

That's right. I think the way I think of this question is how do you help smart motivated people to grow or to develop? Yeah, right, and I think the way I think of this question is how do you help smart motivated people to grow or to develop? And I think the core, the basic mechanism of growth for smart motivated people, I think it's high quality feedback.

Speaker 1: 34:21

I think it is and this is where and Brian and Linda, we can debate this out but this is where I think StrengthsFinder is an incredibly powerful tool, but I think it's also not enough, because I think it's so useful to understand your strengths from your own perspective, but I think it's probably more valuable to understand it from other people's perspective Strengths and possibly also your gaps in your strength. So I see this workshop that we've brought to founders around the world to be almost a mechanism to engineer these moments of crises, these moments of feedback loops, so that they can begin to see the problem. And if they can see the problem, then you almost don't have to help them solve it. They can, kind of, but they need to see it in a compelling, you know, in a compelling way that is I don't.

Speaker 3: 35:13

I think we won't debate you on um.

Speaker 3: 35:18

We will agree with you on your perspective of strengths, because what we have found is that strengths is kind of oh, it makes you feel good and then when you, when you start to apply it to your context, you realize, realize that in crisis moments, usually your strengths come out sideways. They can either rise to the challenge or they can be detrimental to an organization. So a lot of times we're helping people with the levers, with that high quality feedback, to help people in some ways get back on track and not use strengths as an excuse. Well, I just don't do that. It's like no, all hands on deck means all hands. Martin, I would love you to talk to us about the bonfire moment. Just pitch your book to us. Pitch your book to our leaders.

Speaker 1: 36:07

So in my work with startup founders all around the world, there's a misconception around what leads to success. It's usually a combination of having the right product, launching it at the right time and making sure you don't run out of cash, and oftentimes we forget what the research actually shows that the number one killer of of startups um are the people issues. And um we see time and time again that, while these soft problems are are kind of relegated, you know, outsourced to hr uh. It is so important for the founders and the leaders of any company to understand that this is the number one role that they need to play in securing the future of their company.

Speaker 2: 36:54

You said earlier that one of the reasons you're maybe focused on startups is because it's easier to fix some of those people problems right from the get-go than in a Fortune 100 company that's been around for 100 years. So how could a leader listening to this who is not in a startup, how could they in some ways adapt or adopt rather, how could they adopt some of those startup mentality things that you talk about in this book to create more of that entrepreneurial maybe environment where they can have these hard conversations, where they cannot be so entrenched in the way things have been done? How do you take an old dog and teach it new tricks?

Speaker 1: 37:35

So the one thing I would say is spend a day a week focusing on the people issues. Start with that. Don't rely on your head of HR to do this work. This is your work. Don't rely on your head of HR to do this work. This is your work.

Speaker 1: 37:50

And I think, secondly, it's so important to really get close and make sure that you have ways in which you're listening to your people and that you're hearing what's really going on.

Speaker 1: 38:01

In some ways, this is where a good consultant, a good external third party who doesn't have skin in the game, this is where they can be really valuable, because then they can see things a little bit more objectively. But this is your work. It is your work to make sure you're listening and that you hear it clearly. I think that's where it all begins, and I would say nine out of 10 times when I work with leaders, the number one thing we work on is just hearing the issues plainly, without the posturing that comes from. You know the person maybe the head of HR or your business unit head who's reporting it out to you. I think really try to listen to it really closely and I know that once you get clear on those issues, you'll be able to figure out. You know what needs to happen, but spend most of your time making sure you're clear on all those things.

Speaker 2: 38:54

That's good. The bonfire analogy I think I have this right is sort of this like when you're sitting around the bonfire, there's this aha moment that happens right and to kind of figure out oh, this is what we need to do, here's how we move forward. But I'm wondering and you talk about this later in the book after the fire goes out and you've had this aha, but how do you keep the flame going? For lack of a better term, what do you do after that initial moment of clarity has come? Because sometimes we have this great idea late at night or we decide we're going to do something and then when the rubber meets the road, it's like this is harder than I thought it's going to be. How do I keep going?

Speaker 1: 39:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 39:37

So so the reason for the, for the analogy of the bonfire moment, is we just find that founders are constantly like the experience of building a company feels like you're constantly dancing in the flames, like it's this high intensity, very in, you know, high pressure, environment, um, and the bonfire moment is both the book, but it's also this workshop that we've engaged thousands of founders around the world, where we ask them to step out of the fire for a day and, you know, use that time to examine the fire together, the work together, you know, bandage up relational wounds, get back in touch with the mission and that's one day right.

Speaker 1: 40:13

And we actually spent a whole chapter at the end of the book chapter 12, where we talk about ways in which you can really embed that in the operating rhythms of your company. Things that we do in the workshop include things like receiving really tough feedback, coaching each other through some of these challenges. We ask people to write up what we call a user guide, where folks can be very explicit about how to work best with us and how to best troubleshoot me if I'm kind of going haywire, and that's kind of the user guide. And we encourage leaders and teams to really carry some of these tools beyond the bonfire moment, the workshop, and bring it into their weekly, monthly cadences as a company.

Speaker 2: 41:00

I like how you equated being a startup and really any leadership position, as being. You're just in the middle of this fire. You're like trying to dance around it and figure out how not to burn yourself. That's right, we've got a few minutes left. Martin, is there anything that we should have asked you that we didn't anything? I know you said that. Uh, you know you're tired of answering the same old questions, but is any anything else here?

Speaker 1: 41:26

brian, linda, any, you know your final thoughts you know, maybe an interesting question to explore here is you know, one thing that I've known to be true in tech is that the tech is infinitely more exciting than the people see. You're not wrong.

Speaker 2: 41:49

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 41:51

And in this moment where we're going through this tech revolution again, it's the tech that's most exciting. And and then you, and then I, and then I'm forced to ask the question why is it that a humble workshop like this, where we take people for one day to deal with the non-tech part of their work, like why did it somehow go viral? In the way workshops go viral, it's reached thousands of founders in 70 countries and and and it's and I'm very clear it's not because of the quality of the content or the insight. I think what it is is people just don't spend any time expecting that people issues become a part of the journey, and when you give people a structured time to confront a lot of these issues, they really grab at it and they find so much value in it and then they go back into building the tech that they've dreamt of building.

Speaker 1: 42:43

You know, at the beginning of this journey, and I think that just you know I share that, because I think it's so important for leaders who are in the trenches to really not forget that if you feel like this is so difficult, that the people aspect of the job is so difficult, like this is, every leader out there thinks this way or believes the same. We start the book with a very poignant quote from Bill Curran, who is a former Google executive and is now in Sequoia Capital, one of the premier venture capitalists in the world, and he says that engineering is easy. People are hard.

Speaker 3: 43:22

Well, people are excited by a variety of you know the new advances in technology, but there is still that undeniable need for human connection and wanting to feel the sense of belonging or to realize I can control all these things with the code I write, but I can't control another human being and I just I love your thoughts around that. I appreciate that, martin.

Speaker 4: 43:51

Bringing humanity back into any workplace, I think is one of the keys to unlocking success and well-being on all levels. Some of the most fundamental psychological human needs are the need for meaning, belonging and significance. To take a break in the development of tech to investigate the landscape of who we are as individuals creates a meaningful moment that transcends the work. It becomes galvanizing in a way that the work can't so. Credit to your workshop for bringing that moment of pause to recognize the who. That's part of the process and part of the work that that's happening. I think it's needed around the world.

Speaker 1: 44:31

Thank you. Yeah, that's so well said. Oh, you're welcome Martin.

Speaker 4: 44:35

This has been phenomenal. I just want to reiterate what I said earlier. I truly recognize and value your linguistic quality to put together a great thought provoking and soul awakening idea. I believe that people that read your book and listen to you will unknowingly have something touch them on the inside that they didn't expect, because you're you're you're addressing specific professional needs in a thought-provoking way and you create that type of dissonance we all know. The mind, the heart and the soul opens in a way to receive truth that it wouldn't if something was too cliche or too familiar. You have a, you really have um on the way you communicate.

Speaker 4: 45:23

I think that's huge Five stars, double thumbs up, whatever happy emoji you want to use, but, um, truly, I think that there is something brilliant and genius about the beauty that you're bringing to this work.

Speaker 3: 45:35

Thank you. Brian Cause, it's bringing healing yeah it's bringing healing martin. This isn't just a interesting research and good, good information um founders. They want to be seen um and they want to be valued as well, and for you to be able to speak their language and then help them to the next. The next um point in their journey is healing um, so thank you for the healing nature of this work.

Speaker 4: 46:01

When's your TED Talk coming?

Speaker 1: 46:04

Not soon, but I hear it's a lot of work to get on it. That's on my 2025 list of goals.

Speaker 4: 46:12

perhaps you wrote a book. You know how to do the hard work Well.

Speaker 1: 46:18

I should say thank you for this chat. I had so much fun. You're so generous in, I mean I I need to remind myself I'm speaking to, to strengths coaches and, like it's your, the gift you bring to the world is you spot. You know it's the ability to spot ability in others. So thank you for your generosity in that and I'm, and I'm sure your clients are, all really lucky to have you by their side.

Speaker 4: 46:41

Wow, thank you.

Speaker 2: 46:43

Martin, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and chat with Brian, linda and myself. It was a really a great conversation. I edited a little bit out just for for for time. We could have chatted a lot, a lot more. And sometimes when I do these interviews I feel like the first hour is just kind of getting to know the person and then we really start to get into it. So who knows, maybe we'll start doing two or three hour long interviews and then just taking the best parts of it, because some of these guests we've had are really interesting people beyond just what their book is. But again, thank you, martin, for taking the time to chat.

Speaker 2: 47:19

The book is the Bonfire Moment. If you want to learn more about it, you can go to bonfiremomentcom or you can get it wherever you get your books. There's a link in the description if you want to check that out. And thank you again for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast. We hope this is bringing value to you, helping you build more positive team culture.

Speaker 2: 47:40

I know some of the stuff that Martin was sharing there just about if you can make hard decisions faster, things will be better in the long term, and I'd love to go through his bonfire workshop sometime. We'll see if that can happen, but thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast. Like I said, I hope it brings you value, that you found something valuable from this and, if you have, we would love it if you could pass this on to someone else that you think could benefit from growing deeper in their strengths, the strengths of their team or the strengths of their organization, to create mentally strong and emotionally healthy people and leaders. My name is Nathan Freeberg. On behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.