Your Difference Is the Superpower

Most people who hear the word "superpowers" brace for a motivational cliché. What Sandy Gould means by it is more specific, and more useful: the thing that makes you different is the same thing that lets you create what no one else can.

Sandy has spent 36 years studying where that difference comes from. He started recruiting in tech in 1990, interviewed thousands of people across HR and leadership roles, and eventually left a strong corporate career to work with GLAAD, where he's spent the last two years helping accelerate acceptance and representation for LGBTQ and other underrepresented communities. Trained as both a rabbi and a psychoanalyst, he's spent his life trying to decode why people become who they become. That work turned into a book, Interlightening: Unleashing Your Superpowers.

His core claim is that the why leads to the what and the how. Ask anyone about a defining moment in their first twenty years and they'll find it, and that moment usually explains the mission they've been running ever since, no matter what job title sits on top of it.

The part that matters most for leaders is what happens when you scale that idea up. Sandy treats an organization as one big person: it has an ego, it gets insecure after a win, it freezes at the top of the mountain instead of climbing the next one. So the same rules apply: name the superpowers out loud, reframe mistakes as experiments, and say "I don't know" when you don't, because honesty is what earns the trust to invite people into the problem.

He and Eric get into why conformity feels safe and isn't, why teams should see their leaders disagree, and why the savior complex every leader carries is the wrong instinct. They close on three principles Sandy uses to defuse the fights that go nowhere: aim for unity through division, replace "who's right" with human rights, and enter every hard conversation trying to broaden your lens instead of win.

Episode Highlights:

[00:01:30] Born sick, told he'd never recover, and the belief that rewrote his life

[00:03:00] From tech recruiting to GLAAD: a career built on unleashing people

[00:05:30] Why the "why" leads to the what and the how

[00:07:00] We're all born broken, and why the answer is both individual and collective

[00:08:30] How one word, "should," quietly holds people back

[00:13:00] Reframing every mistake as an experiment

[00:15:30] Your organization is just one big person

[00:16:30] Why success is the scariest moment for a team

[00:25:00] The politician's rule for honest leadership

[00:26:30] Why your team should see you fight

[00:32:30] The savior complex every leader falls into

[00:41:00] Three principles for turning debate into something worth building

Notable Quotes:

[00:05:35]: "The first thing I learned is that the why leads to the what and the how." Sandy Gould 

[00:19:25]: "The difference engine is what drives every human, every group of people, and our life and our world. If you and I were exactly the same, this conversation would be nothing." Sandy Gould 

[00:24:15]: "'I don't know' is a very powerful, honest thing to say. But honesty is more important. First, establish trust, then invite them in to help you figure it out." Sandy Gould 

[00:27:00]: "If you don't show them you fight, they just think you're hiding something, and that lowers trust." Sandy Gould 

[00:33:00]: "No one can save anyone else. anything you do to actually save them that doesn't put agency in their hands is not only secondary, it can become risky, because then it's a dependency, versus self-sufficiency." Sandy Gould 

[00:41:35]: "Let's replace who's right with human rights, and make that our priority." Sandy Gould

Resources & Links:

• GLAAD — the LGBTQ media advocacy organization where Sandy works to accelerate acceptance and representation
• Sandy Gould on LinkedIn — where he posts about creating, superpowers, and careers
• Sandy Gould on Instagram (@spidersandy) — his "Spider Sandy" handle
• Interlightening: Unleashing Your Superpowers (book by Sandy Gould) — forthcoming and slated for Amazon.

Full Transcript:

Eric Ressler [00:01:10]: Sandy Gould, thank you so much for joining me today.

Sandy Gould [00:01:10]: It is my pleasure, Eric.

Eric Ressler [00:01:10]: I often like to just dig right in with our guests, but today I actually want you to give me an abridged version of your backstory and how you got to where you are, because I think it's quite interesting.

Sandy Gould [00:01:25]: Thank you for saying that. Here it goes. So I was born sick. Mom got sick in pregnancy. The doctor said I'd be sick forever. My parents told me, "Don't believe what other people tell you is true. You can do anything if you work hard enough." I figured out as a kid, by watching people, that everyone was different, that their creativity came from their difference, which means every one of the people who've ever lived creates in a way that no one else who will ever live creates. So they're exclusively unique. I fell in love with difference. I realized it was a superpower. I used that inspiration to start working really hard. By the time I was 16, I had overcome the illness, and I was all-pro football, basketball, track. I was ranked in the top fastest people in my region, won all my sprint races, and realized my parents were right.

Anything's possible if you work really hard and you live your authentic truth and you unleash the superpowers of your difference. That became my mission in life. I went to school, trained as a rabbi and a psychoanalyst, because I wanted to decode everything for everybody, which takes a lifetime, so I'm still working on that one. But then I fell into recruiting in the tech space, and eventually HR and leadership. My mission in all my roles was very focused on working with CEOs who wanted to unleash the superpowers of all their people to change the world for the better. I had a great career doing that, with many different kinds of tech and new emerging technology organizations. Then, after my corporate career hit some really great high points, I decided it was time to find a mission that would help the world move even further in advancement of these superpowers, and of people's right and ability to be their authentic identity.

And the universe answered by having me get a call from GLAAD. I've been working with them for the last two years to really help accelerate acceptance, ensure equality, drive representation and storytelling for the LGBTQ and all diverse communities, and just making sure we are helping people create and be and live the identity that they've always dreamed of. That's what I do. And that's led to a book I'm about to publish about how I discovered that superpowers were real.

Eric Ressler [00:03:35]: Great. And what's the title of that book? It should be coming out pretty shortly after we drop this episode, so plug away, man.

Sandy Gould [00:03:45]: Thank you. It's so fun, exciting, and weird to plug my book, but it's called Interlightening: Unleashing Your Superpowers. It really is about, from the start of my life and fighting the illness and the power and inspiration my parents brought me, to how I figured out that I had superpowers and was able to unlock them with the help of a lot of great people and coaches, and then how I started to study it in other people. I started recruiting in 1990, so between 1990 and now, over the 36 years of my career, I've interviewed thousands and thousands of people, and I started really studying where the superpowers of their difference turned into their mission, and then created the superpowers to fulfill that mission and allowed them to shape the world in ways nobody else was. The more I did it, the more of their stories I understood, and I was able to analyze and really identify what it was that activated those superpowers and unleashed them, so that I could then start, hopefully, helping people do that too.

So the book is about turning that into a process, so that you can take the steering wheel of your destiny, of your mission, build those superpowers, and go change the world and have a great time doing it.

Eric Ressler [00:05:00]: So I feel like you're in a very unique position, and have unique experience, to have developed this framework, this point of view around superpowers and how people can dig into those and translate them and focus them toward missions. I'd love to hear more about what you've learned in doing all those interviews, in writing this book, in working in the corporate world, and now in an impact-driven way. What are some of the big themes that you see? What gets people stuck and prevents them from taking their superpowers and activating them?

Sandy Gould [00:05:35]: Great questions. So the first thing I learned is that the why leads to the what and the how. I always want to know people's origin stories, and when I interview, that's what I do. I ask them to start with their origin story the way I just told you mine. Once they give me the why, you can find, in a person's first 18 to 20 years of life, the significant single moment that defined their mission and activated their superpowers. People don't think that moment exists. When I ask them, "Tell me about a really profound moment that shaped you," they always end up finding it pretty quickly.

Eric Ressler [00:06:15]: Wow.

Sandy Gould [00:06:15]: Once they talk about it, and then I ask them a few questions, and then they tell me what they proceeded to go do as a result of it, the why turns into the what and the how. I would actually contend it doesn't matter what job you give them. They will do that same mission, expressed through every one of those jobs.

Eric Ressler [00:06:30]: Interesting.

Sandy Gould [00:06:30]: That's the first big thing I learned. The second thing I learned was that people build their superpowers off of a combination of what they know they're good at, what their friends tell them they're good at, and then what they find out they're good at through work and creating. That process is really important to both frame and decode. And then the third thing is, we are all born broken. Every one of us thinks we used to be the universe and now we're just us, and we're all trying to reclaim the universe. There are two ways to do that: be unique and be the best, or conform and align to what everyone else is doing. So, individual or collective. The real answer is both.

We have to express and create and connect to others from who we are and what is unique about us, which everyone shares. It's the one thing we all share. And then we do have to be collective, because it gives us meaning, and align to that collective. But you define the collectives you're in. You define how you want to be in those collectives. We grow up thinking the way to be in the collective is to conform and be like them. That's not the answer. The answer that actually works the best for the human, because we're both individual and collective, is to be a part of a community because we're different, and in our difference, let our difference be the thing that makes us part of a community. Celebrate that difference, and then celebrate the connection points too. But we discover that, and that takes life and experience.

Another big thing I learned: we're experiential learners. Even though our brain is an idealistic machine and it wants to know all the answers immediately, we don't know anything until we experience it, usually five, six, or seven times. Then we start to figure it out. So one of the most powerful things that I knew early, and I credit my parents, is I knew that the word "should" did not make sense.

My joke is "should" should never be used, even though I'm using it to set the rule. That's the one time "should" works. So why is that? What's the problem with "should"? The problem is it's the conflict between what I just described, which is that we think we are an idealistic thought machine, a brain of ideas, but we are actually an experiential learning being. The mind wants to know everything on day one and then know it forever. Experience means we're not going to know it until we experience it many times from many different points of view, which is why in life I think we all go through cycles and repeat them a lot. And then at some point we make them or we break them. I call it the difference between recycling and free-cycling, but that's another topic. We'll talk about that later. What I noted early on, and it gets to your question about what holds people back: "should" holds people back.

People think, if I'm not perfect, should I really express my unique nature, or is it safer to conform? Our human animal brain wants to avoid risk. It wants safety, and conformity feels safer. It's actually not. It turns out differentiation is what's better for humans, and even for animals. Those that differentiate move to the top of the pack, and it's necessary. It's how they evolve too. But it's scary, and we're very fear-controlled. Eventually we will turn that fear into inspiration to create, and being scared will be an exciting part of it. I remember, early on and throughout my career and my life, I would hear "should." The first time I heard "should" was in high school, in gym class. I was wearing two different socks, and I was wearing shorts and a jersey. All my friends were like, "You have to wear the same socks." I said, "Why?" And they said, "You should wear the same socks. You're supposed to. Everyone's supposed to do it." I said, "It doesn't make any sense to me. It's gym class. The socks don't matter. And normally I'm wearing pants, you can't see them."

I literally didn't understand why that was some sort of weird imperative. But what I knew is that expressing that I was different was exciting and felt great. And I not only liked it in me, I liked it in everyone else around me. That was the beginning of me recognizing this weird social "should" that didn't make sense, that we imposed on ourselves. And then one day I was talking to somebody, and now I'll go forward into career, and they were telling me they had pulled off an event and it was a huge success. Then they did a second event and it wasn't a huge success. They said it should have been as good as the first one. They said, "I know I could do better." And I had this revelation. I said, "I want to try and divide these into two different things. Knowing you could do better, that there's more in you, you have more superpowers and more to create, more to learn, that's great. The reason that's great is you're setting this higher bar knowing you have it within you, you have faith that there's more to you, more you can create. So 'I can do more' is a really good motivator. But the opposite, 'I'm not good enough,' is a terrible demotivator, because that form of guilt, they're both kind of intellectual guilts, and the secondary one holds you back."

The first one moves you forward, because it's not "I'm not good enough," it's the opposite: "I am good enough, I just haven't harnessed that yet."

So that became a guiding principle for me, for myself and to other people. I would say to people who worked for me, "When you experience guilt because you made a mistake, only use the first nanosecond of guilt that says to you, 'you could do more,' let it motivate you to go learn the lesson, fix it, and do more, but then release the rest, because it's just going to hold you in place, and it's kind of a fear strategy, and it's just not helpful." So stick with the beginning, and then don't feel bad, because I didn't want people to feel bad, number one. And number two, that's a waste of time and it's a passive strategy. The other thing I did is I started to learn, and this came from rabbinical school where we studied all the time and argued all the time, I learned that you had to reframe mistakes into experiential learning and experiments. If we were all scientists working in a lab, every single mistake we would look at and say, "Oh, we're now one mistake closer to the answer, because we're experimenting." So that reframing became very powerful, and that became a very powerful attribute in people who became successful: reframing, adapting, and knowing they were meant to change, liking change.

Eric Ressler [00:13:20]: So the whole time you were sharing all those perspectives, I was thinking about how you were talking about it through the lens of individuals. And the whole time I was also thinking this is so directly applicable at the organizational level, for orgs who are trying to move their missions forward, create an impact, grow their fundraising. You talk about differentiation, you talk about experimentation and adapting, and I think these are a lot of the same modalities. But even this entire framing around finding a superpower, and understanding this tension between the psychological safety of conformity and how that's actually a trap, and that standing apart and doing things differently, and to a degree questioning some of these norms and standards, is actually what allows you to thrive long term. So I'd be curious to hear, have you thought about this at that level, even though your work is more primarily with individuals?

Sandy Gould [00:14:15]: Yes. When I started, I remember I thought of myself, and I would even frame this to people, I'd say, "I'm really a champion of the individual." When I worked in recruiting at a small boutique agency in Seattle, Washington, I was consulting organizations, large corporations, Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera, and people would say, "Well, are you ever going to join one of those organizations on the inside?" I would say, "Oh no, I'm too much of an individual. I'm too weird. I'm too much of a champion for individuals. I could never do that." And then eventually I did, and I loved it. But I did bring the spirit of individuality and a focus on human amplification, of which business was a part, or nonprofit mission was a part, as the way I was going to approach it. So I approached it very differently. For me, that made sense.

I remember one day someone was saying to me, "Oh, all of our employees are having this reaction to growth of the organization." The organization had grown. So suddenly there was a line of people out the door saying, "We want raises." The CEO said to me, "What is going on?" And the head of marketing asked me the same question. This was the moment I created this concept. I said, "You know what? Think of an organization as just one big person. Really simple model. Just think of it as one big human. It's like one big collective human. It goes through the same thing, has ego, self-awareness, eyes get opened. So all these people are working on the mission, and suddenly the org is making a lot of money. So they're like, 'Oh, I did this,' which is good. We want them to feel that pride. But with that pride comes 'compensate me,' because the org's now making hundreds of millions. I should be making millions." That opened a door for me that would continue throughout my career, which is: whenever I wanted to think about what's going on in the culture, because I'm a student really focused on the culture and understanding it, if I think of it as a person, the model fits. It has an ego, and it contracts, and then it's successful, and then it has more confidence, then it gets insecure about whether it can maintain that level of success.

A few weeks ago, I went to do a keynote for an offsite of a company I used to work for. I'm now going back to them, and I've seen that they've doubled in size. So they've grown, they've had big success, they broke through some big barriers. I showed up to tell them, "I'm so proud of you, and look at this change you created, and look at the superpowers you used to do it. Now you can take all that information and use it to prepare for the next summit up the mountain you're going to have to go to, and the wall you're going to have to break through."

And I realized, and then I could see, they were all nervous. Their leader said to me, "Why are they nervous? We've just had success." I said, "No, that's when it's scariest." Because they'd rather sit on that success instead of have to prove themselves again, number one. Number two, they don't want to blow it. When you were at the bottom, there was nothing to blow, there was nothing to break, everything was up. But now they're up, and they don't want to be the one who loses it or causes the organization to fall back down the mountain. So you have to help them be aware that that's what's going on, and then do what I was doing with them, which was pointing to what they had just done. Because this is the other thing that happens. We're humans, we're born broken, and we're neurotics. We spend all of our time on the bad list, the "I didn't get done" list, instead of what we did get done and what's good. Famous thing: we all go to sleep at night worrying about what might happen bad tomorrow. We don't go to sleep pro-worrying about what great things are going to happen tomorrow, but we should. We should actually balance it. So when you do recognition in an organization, like I was doing with them, and say, "Look at the last two years, look at what you managed to overcome," the reason that's powerful, it's nice, it's a nice thing to do, but that's not why it's powerful. It's powerful because if an individual and a group of people, an organization, all have a collective superpower rating, every time they accomplish something, they realize they can do more. The superpower rating goes up. But if you call it out and recognize it, it goes up even more. And when does it need to really go up? Right before they're about to take on something really hard, so that they can be reminded, and remind themselves, "We've figured this out before, we're going to figure it out again." That's where faith in yourself matters, because you don't know what the answer is yet.

Great leaders. I remember a great CEO in 2002 or 2003 that I was working for got all their leaders together and said, "Oh, we have to now go from level four to level five of success." And level four was hard to get to. They said, "How are we going to do it?" And we were all like, "Oh good, he's going to tell us the answer." And he goes, "I don't know." He said, "But I know everyone in this room can figure it out, because look at how you figured out four."

Sandy Gould [00:19:05]: I remember looking at him going, "Wow, what a great leader. That was smart." And we figured it out, and we got to the next level. So your point about individual to org, to me, it is the same blueprint, just expand it out. When you think about encouraging all the things, the most powerful thing being diversity, diversity of thought, I think the difference engine is what drives every human, every group of people, and our life and our world. If you and I were exactly the same, this conversation would be nothing. So you have to cultivate that all the time, because everyone does think they're different, and they are. We have to help and support that, encourage that. And the more people feel comfortable expressing that, which is why diversity matters so much for communities that are underrepresented and need to be more represented, the more enriched our lives will be. I think difference gives meaning, and that's a big part of the book too.

Eric Ressler [00:20:00]: So I'm hearing a couple things. One of the things that I'm hearing is that belief is such an important part of this. Not necessarily knowing how you're going to get to the next level individually or as an organization or for your mission, but believing in yourself, believing in the collective. "Hey, we've gotten to level four, so we're going to get to level five with the same crew." And reflecting back on that, even myself running Cosmic over the last 16 years, having many breakthroughs and many setbacks, and that ebb and flow of things feeling like they're gelled and easy and things feeling like they're not easy: when I don't have self-confidence individually, or self-confidence as an org, and I lose that belief, where it feels like you're spinning in place, you can't get traction, everything feels like it's going against you, the experiments are all failing, that to me is one of the things that's hardest to hold onto, that belief that we can figure this out. We haven't yet, but I know that we can. And I think it's a hard balance to strike, because you also need to be willing to admit when your ideas are bad or your hypothesis has failed, even though of course you always want it to be the one that's going to win, that's going to get you to that next level. So how do you find, and how do you coach and advise folks at the individual level and at the org level, to strike that balance of belief, but also realism around, "Hey, this strategy failed, we need a new one"?

Sandy Gould [00:21:35]: Yeah, that's a great question. So we all do this interesting thing. We equate confidence and hope and faith with bullshit, and they're two different things. Faith that you can figure it out, hope that you will, confidence in your ability, those are all about investing in something you can create. Bullshit is saying something is other than what it is.

Authenticity actually is more significant, and so is trust, in order to activate superpowers and the ability to seize opportunity. I remember when I joined the corporate world, one of the first things I experienced was spin. I had to start coaching leaders how to communicate. In the old days when I was growing up, leadership was: know the answer, have confidence, and tell people what to do. But in the emerging generations we've found ourselves in, I believe it's really shifted to be a power learner, adapt, and get the most out of your people, help them figure things out. So it's the "figure it out," because we've all lived through so much change.

I had to start coaching leaders, and when something bad happened, either they wanted to hide it, or not talk about it, or spin it. I remember I was preparing a leader for a conversation with the company about something bad that happened. They said, "I'm going to tell everyone that it's okay." And I said, "How do you know that? What do you mean it's okay? What does that mean, and how do you know?" And he couldn't answer the question. I said, "Don't say anything you don't know."

I said, "Also, don't tell people how to feel. Only say things that are true. And if you don't acknowledge something as bad, number one, you have lost trust. They stop listening to everything else you say." So he's like, "Well, but what do I say?" So I'm going to give you an example. This one company I worked at, we lost a really big deal, and it was a time the company was struggling, so the loss of this deal, this client, was a blow. And they're like, "What do we say?" I said, "If you knew it was coming, say you knew it was coming, and that you prepared a plan, that you've identified other accounts you're going to replace this account with. Or if you're going to get it back, that. Or if you don't know, say, 'We're on the road figuring it out, and here's how we're going to do that, and we'll keep you updated as we do.'"

"I don't know" is a very powerful, honest thing to say. But honesty is more important. First, establish trust, then invite them in to help you figure it out. I said, "Say all those things. You can say, 'I know we'll figure it out, I have faith in that,' but don't tell people how to feel, and don't tell people the outcome when you don't know it." I also remember one time a CEO was talking about some difficult changes we were making at the org, and they didn't want to say anything bad. They said, "I don't want to deflate everyone." And I said, "But you have to answer honestly. If you don't know, you don't know, which is powerful, because you show that it's okay not to know. And a lot of times we don't know."

I said, the other thing is, I had to give this person a rule. I said, "I want to give you a rule. We're going to call it the politician's rule. When someone asks you a question, the very first thing you have to say is yes, or no, or whatever the answer is. Yes, no, or X. Do not go on a story. Do not distract or divert. Do not deflect. Because the moment you don't answer the question in your first word, they don't even hear your second word. They know you're not answering the question." And that rule has served many a leader, and me too, when we are all so tempted as leaders to want to make it okay, or explain context before giving the painful truth. So start with the answer. So someone says, "Did we fire people?" Yes. "Are we going to fire more?" If the answer is yes, yes. And if it's maybe, maybe. And if it's we don't know, we don't know.

And if we can't tell you, it's "we can't tell you. Why?" So those become really important to that build of trust and confidence. Then once people know they're in it with you, you'll figure it out. Now, here's the other thing I want to address that you said. Stuff is bad sometimes. That's life. And there's a great book that a close friend of mine had me read, one of my favorite things, my friend Jason had me read this book, and everyone's read this book, but I can't remember the name of it right now. One of his principles is, why do humans avoid pain? It is life. You can't avoid it. It's coming for you whether you do or you don't. And it's how we learn, and in pain we are forged, that builds us. So recently I was coaching a leadership team, and they're like, "Oh, we need to be aligned, because we don't want the team to see us fight." I'm like, "No, that's not true. You should be 70 or 80% aligned. You should not be 100%, because diversity should keep breeding different ideas. And everyone knows that no two people or more are 100% anyway. They should see you fight. They should just know that you know how to do it, and how to get to resolution in a way where it's collective. We've come to an agreement, we've agreed and committed, we've disagreed and committed, we are aligned in the go-forward. That's what they need to see. If you don't show them you fight, they just think you're hiding something, and that lowers trust. But if they see fight, and they're like, 'Oh, fight is fine, we get through it and then we have better ideas at the end,' that is power, because you've got to adapt, and adapt will mean friction." So that's the other thing. When people say to me, "We're really off right now, the org feels off," or "I feel awful, we're all uncertain," that is the feeling of your being telling you it's time to change something. And let yourself feel that way until you change something.

Eric Ressler [00:27:30]: Hey friends, real quick before we continue today's episode. I'm Eric Ressler, founder and creative director at Cosmic. Cosmic is a creative agency purpose-built for nonprofits and mission-driven organizations. For the last 15 years, we've helped leaders like you nail your impact story and sharpen your strategy. But we're not here to just leave you with a fancy slide deck and a pat on the back. We roll up our sleeves and help you bring your ideas to life through campaigns, creative, and digital experiences. Our work together helps you earn trust, connect deeply with your supporters, and grow your fundraising and your impact. If you value the thinking we share here and want it applied to your biggest challenges, let's talk at designbycosmic.com. All right, back to today's conversation.

Eric Ressler [00:28:20]: That rings so true for me. I'm reflecting on some of the harder points in our trajectory. I've talked about this before on the show, and I don't want to get too into it again, but last year was a particularly difficult year for us, and for a lot of social impact organizations, just with all the stuff going on with the funding ecosystem changing, orgs, especially progressive orgs, being under extra scrutiny from the current US administration. And basically we saw a lot of orgs, and I don't say this judgmentally, essentially freeze up, hunker down and wait, see what's going on. How do you plan in a year like last year when so much is uncertain and chaotic? And what that does to an agency like ours, that helps organizations through transformational, pivotal moments, is that a lot fewer people are calling folks like us to help them get through those moments. And I had to have a lot of really tough conversations with my team about some of that uncertainty and some of the not knowing, and the reality of, "Hey, here's where we're at, here's the trajectory, here's what's going to happen if this doesn't start to go better, we're going to have to do pay cuts or reductions." And I struggle with that a lot, frankly. To figure out, in a time like that where my team is also uncertain, and they're smart folks, they're looking at the space and looking at who we are and putting two and two together pretty quickly, there's an impetus for me to be like, "Don't worry, it's going to be okay, we're going to get through this," or to paper over the difficulty. And I chose instead to follow a lot of the advice that you just outlined in your earlier response, which was to be transparent about here's what might happen. We don't really know what's going to happen, we can't make promises because we don't know. And it's really hard as a leader to say "we don't know" or "we're not sure," because you want to be able to provide that certainty for your team. "Hey, you're safe, you're okay, we're going to figure this out." And one of the other things I've struggled with too as a leader, that I've heard other leaders express to me as well, is you feel a sense of wanting to take care of the team, of wanting to keep them safe. And even, "Hey, it's not their job sometimes for these folks to figure out how to keep the business alive. They didn't sign up for that. They signed up for their role." But I do think there is a shift, and I think a healthy shift if it's done in the right way, where everyone gets ownership over keeping the ship alive. And this obviously depends very highly on the type of org and the size of the org. But at the end of the day, to your point, an organization is just one organism made up of people. And we're not in a place, and I think this is healthy, where leadership figures it out, develops a strategy, and it's just top-down, "hunker down, do your job, and everything will work." First of all, that's not how it's ever been. It's not going to work in this current world where things are evolving so quickly. It's not going to be possible. And so I think there's a tension there for me around, how do I engage my team deeply and authentically without asking them to do things that maybe they didn't sign up for, that feels like, "Hey, these are high stakes. You hired me as a designer or a developer, you're asking me about our business strategy now?" Now, what I found is that my team steps up to those and feels good about being included in those levels. But I still think there's a balance around how there are certain things that leadership probably should be responsible for at the end of the day. And I think everyone's going to have to find their own balance there. So I'd be curious to hear how you think about advising leaders on where to strike that balance, and how to think about making those choices.

Sandy Gould [00:32:05]: Yeah. That's a great point, and just a great framing question about that balance, because we've had to deal with that, and I've had to deal with that at almost every organization I've been at.

Okay, a few things. With the kind of social and tectonic world shifts that have happened in the last few years, even going back to COVID, where suddenly survival was mingled with daily existence and no longer a given, you had so many situations where all of us as leaders, and when you are a leader, there is a built-in salvation, savior complex, just like paternal, maternal: protect, take care of, help them, save them, and get them to happiness and safety and survival. And as we all know, no one can save anyone else, generally. So what do you find? You find that you discover what it is you can do to help somebody, and to help empower and unleash them. And that is the most you will do for them, because anything you do to actually save them that doesn't put agency in their hands is not only secondary, it can become risky, because then it's a dependency, versus self-sufficiency, which is more foolproof.

If humans are like a tool in the world, this tool is meant to function. So a human is meant to create, their identity is meant to mature, and they have to be the driver of that. We just have to support and equip them. I remember right after COVID, I was training and meeting with a bunch of managers, and I asked them how successful they were in the last few years, and 53% said they failed. I said, "Why?" And they said, "Because we couldn't make our people feel safe during both COVID and the racism that followed." And I said, "That means you're becoming a really good manager, when you realize you can't do that. All you could do in that situation, and it's a really good example, is let them know you were there for them, engage them in what they were experiencing, and understand the best ways you could support them in all those situations: being an ally, standing up, helping to drive and unleash and support diversity, guiding them on the things they needed to do to stay safe through COVID, et cetera." And it's always the case. So if you think now, over the last year or two, when suddenly the world for many turned upside down again, leaders have to say, "Well, what can we provide?" So transparency, inclusion, co-designing with them where they have the ability to co-design, but then knowing where there's not enough expertise for co-design, so it's more like input or awareness, and then where they want you to own more of it.

So if I'm in the house with my parents and we go for a drive, it doesn't make sense for them to ask me to drive also if I'm eight years old. And if I'm 10 and we have to get out of the house because there's a fire, again, I don't think I should be co-designing that process. They should just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. But then there are other areas where either I'm learning and I can offer input that actually is guidance and material, and then, as I'm even more senior, like senior employees in an organization, or domain experts in an area, then there's more you can put in their hands. So as an example, I believe in a leadership model around distributed leadership: put as many decisions in the hands of the employees doing the work as you can, because they're closest to it, and they have the expertise, and they have the context. And then balance with decisions that might be more remote to them, or less familiar, or perhaps tied to bigger-picture elements where there's different domain expertise required in different context, and then just share and help in learning and teaching that. But you have to invite people and say, "This is what this now means, here's what we want you to participate in." And sometimes you have to experiment and see when it doesn't work. So the last few companies, I've had moments where an employee said, "We don't want to co-design." A lot of times they want to co-design, but sometimes they're like, "No, you just tell us the answer." And that's fair, right? And then sometimes we put stuff in people's hands, and then we see that it didn't work, or they can't handle it, or they're handling too much.

So we take it back and say, "This didn't totally work in the way we wanted it to support you. So that means we just need to do some more build if we're ready for this kind of co-design. So let's stage that." And I'm a big believer in roadmaps. One of the things you made me think of just now: I've played Dungeons & Dragons since I was 12, and it's all about maps. So I think when an organization exists, it should have a map of where it is now, where it was in the last two years, and where it's going to be in the next two. And it should say one or two things that'll be changing about the major business and vision, and then the one, two, or three things the people, the process, and the technology will need to do to keep up and to help. That should just be there. And eventually you have all your employees building that together and putting it on the walls as cool art, with milestone moments for offsites and things like that. It makes a huge difference. It really does. It's the difference between, if you're driving the car and I'm in the back seat and I'm your kid, and we hit a bump and you didn't say a word to me, how I'll react, versus if you told me there's about to be a bump, don't worry about it.

So it's the same thing with organizations, but multiplied. It allows people to know, "Oh, next we're going to have to adapt more, we go to fewer meetings," or "we proxy more of our perspective," or "we need to spend a lot more time sharing our worldviews and aligning them," or "this part of the company's most important this year, but then next year that part will be, and everyone gets a turn." All those things become really helpful, as you're defining too what unique contributions and unique superpowers the individuals and the teams bring. Because just like we were comparing individual to collective, self-esteem is the same way. There's corporate self-esteem. So what I found, there was this one point where we had this organization I was at, we were very centralized. There were a lot of satellite offices. We had a new CEO, and we'd moved a lot of decision-making back to the headquarters, but it was a global organization, and of course everyone else felt really excluded and suddenly unimportant and a bit dethroned. So everyone's like, "What do we do?" And I said, "Well, each one of those offices has an expertise. They have a set of superpowers that we rely on." Singapore is great at payments, London is great at mobile. We had all these different things. And I said, "We should make that known, because humans are need-based. When they understand we need them in London, because they are mobile experts and mobile is the tip of the spear for our business, they will get a lot more comfortable with their position." And that worked. That actually worked. You have to build it and make it real. You can't just say it at a meeting. It has to show up in the decisions you give them to make, and the responsibility and the resources they get. But once we did that, then that became a really strong unifying force, an identity-unifying force for each different team. And it gave them support when they weren't going to be the center of something going on. But then we were also honest and said, "The headquarters is the headquarters. It is the steering wheel of the organization. So just know that when we do meetings, we'll make sure we're super inclusive. Other offices will present, other people will be involved, there'll be communication." We designed strategies to support distributed staff, but the headquarters is the headquarters, and that's where the CEO is. So our CEO made a really smart move, which was, she said, "That is the reality. So we're going to balance those, but we're going to be honest with you too. Working in London is not the same as working in wherever the headquarters is." So I think that learning helped too.

So to your point about teams, it is a lot. This last period of time has been so intense, and we're in a fractured state of media, we're in divided nations and worlds, there's so much conflict. And that's when you have to get into: everyone has different worldviews. Success for a community and an organization and an individual is when you can understand other worldviews and yours, and connect them, and then see what happens when they come together through their difference to create something different. So I came up with three principles, after trying to moderate a lot of debate about really intense issues over the last two years, that have helped. One was, whenever I'm dealing with parties who are really going into debate, I say, "Let's focus on getting to unity through division. Let's make that our goal. What will we decide? What will we go forward with? We'll do the debate, but the idea is to get to a point of unity." And then the second one was, because a lot was coming up about being right, who's right, I said, "How about we just focus on, let's replace who's right with human rights, and make that our priority, more than who's right, because who's ever right?" And then my third one was, can we enter into a conversation with the goal being, "I'm going to broaden my lens by understanding what you're thinking," instead of "I'm going to share what I'm thinking"? And if those are our goals, I think we get to better outcomes. But then, what do we have an opportunity to now create by bringing these different elements together, instead of just a war of worldviews? Which — It's endless. That doesn't end.

Eric Ressler [00:42:20]: It's not constructive, right?

Sandy Gould [00:42:20]: No. There's a possibility to get to something amazing if we combine what you and I are thinking, and then so on and so forth, and multiply that exponentially. But that has to be your goal. That has to be your framework. Otherwise, all conversations are ridiculous. They're just me going, "This is my worldview," and then you go, "This is my worldview," and I go, "Okay, well, mine's right," and you go, "Yeah, mine too. What a coincidence."

Eric Ressler [00:42:40]: Right. Yeah. We've learned, through some work with clients, this concept of constructive disagreement, which I think is basically what you're describing. And one of the things that stood out to me about that is you have to go into those conversations with the goal not being to prove yourself right, but the goal being to truly, deeply, and fully understand the other party's point of view, and to really empathize with it. Even if you don't end up agreeing with it, even at the end of the day you walk away saying, "Hey, you know what? I understand more about your perspective, and I still feel that mine is actually more accurate, or that my idea is the right one, but now I have a better understanding of where you're coming from and how you got to your idea."

Sandy Gould [00:43:20]: And it broadens your lens. So early on in my career, after I joined the corporate world and saw this constant debate of who's right, two principles I formulated based on the logic training I did in rabbinical school. One was, whenever someone would come to me and say, "I'm going to fight with this other team," my first question, first premise: what are they thinking?

Eric Ressler [00:43:40]: Yeah, right, exactly.

Sandy Gould [00:43:45]: I want you to know what they're thinking. I want them to know what you're thinking. Second premise: you can't challenge an idea until you understand why it might be right.

Eric Ressler [00:43:50]: Yes.

Sandy Gould [00:43:50]: So defend the other side first, then we can talk about the challenge. And then the third one is, you've got to be able to debate and battle through things to get to a better conclusion of what happens when they come together. So we all have to be comfortable with that. We have to accept the personal, the passionate, but focus on: we are going to get to this collective shared goal together, that'll take us further than if we just did it individually.

Eric Ressler [00:44:20]: Right, right. And if you have that shared vision, then there's something to have a debate about, and we should welcome diverse opinions and ideas and hypotheses around how to get there, and not just pick one and go all in on it. Let's try a couple things. Now, you can't always do that, but I think often you can. You don't need to make a choice that's like, "Well, we all disagree, so we're going with this strategy." How about, we all have different ideas around how to get there, let's test them and let the world decide which one's going to win. I think that's more of a scientific method, experimental approach to doing the work.

Sandy Gould [00:44:50]: I agree. And it leads me to an idea that I want to share, that I came to. Someone said something to me in an interview years ago that made me realize this. I've been reading comics since I was eight, right? I read 30 a week. And so I realized, when we share our stories with each other through media, we end up creating ourselves in each other. We're all walking amalgams of all the people that we've met and are in our lives. So when you think about it that way, every time you interact, you're creating and being created anew. So looking at it as, I'm about to go into a meeting and debate with Eric about whatever, it's going to become Sandy plus Eric and Eric plus Sandy, and that new equation is more. And that's the experiential learners that we are. So if we start framing it like that, then anything is possible, because we'll always come up with something new, we'll always be able to go somewhere new, because it's going to be more than just me or you. And that discovery, if you center that, I do think people can do anything, as we've seen.

Eric Ressler [00:46:05]: Sandy, I think that's a great place to wrap up. Before we do, where can folks who are interested in learning more about you follow you, see your work, eventually buy the book, and get a little bit more of this thinking? Because I think it's so important for people to be considering these things in their journey as individuals, as leaders, as organizations. This is your time to just plug all the things.

Sandy Gould [00:46:25]: Awesome, thank you so much. And for this conversation, I love conversations like this, because they're transformative, and you do a great job at it. So that mission is really important. I'm glad you're doing it, because humanity needs it.

Eric Ressler [00:46:40]: Thank you.

Sandy Gould [00:46:40]: We need those activators, which is one of my ideas, about the people who activate us. So my website is sandiegal.com. It's not live yet, but it will be by the time the book goes out. That's one. The book will also be on Amazon. You can find out about me on my LinkedIn, I do a lot of posting and videos on LinkedIn about creating, about superpowers, and about the job market and things like that in your career. And on Spider Sandy, which is my Instagram. And more to come in September, the book will be coming out. And then I'm going to be doing videos in a similar format, where I'm interviewing people that are in the book that I've interviewed, like Abby Wambach and Bobby Brown, and people who just... Takidra from Waymo, people who I've met along the way who really showed me their mission and how it was turning into their superpowers as they were changing the world in some pretty profound ways. So those videos will be out, and then there'll be one-minute videos too, about different aspects of the book, about superpowers and activating your superpowers.

Eric Ressler [00:47:45]: Very cool. Looking forward to it.

Sandy Gould [00:47:45]: Looking forward to doing all of that with the world. That's the goal.

Eric Ressler [00:47:50]: Awesome. Thank you, Sandy. This has been great, really enjoyed the conversation, and looking forward to checking out the book when it's out.

Sandy Gould [00:47:55]: Awesome. You'll be getting it, so don't you worry.

Eric Ressler [00:47:55]: All right, man. Thank you for your time today.

Sandy Gould [00:48:00]: Thank you too. Be well.

Eric Ressler [00:48:05]: Okay, cheers. If you enjoyed today's video, please be sure to hit like and subscribe, or even leave us a comment. It really helps. Thank you. And thank you for all that you do for your cause, and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.