Admired

Mark Thompson: I've not met a single person who did feel completely overvalued, I've had the privilege in the last 10 years of working with some of the most remarkable people, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, and not a single one of them felt that they were fully valued at all points of their career, of all the opportunities they faced. And, if you look around the office, or even look in the mirror, you'll find that there are many opportunities where we feel like we aren't being fully valued, or having the kind of impact that we'd really love to be able to have in our work and personal life. So, I thought, "This is very interesting, there must be some psychological research on this," so I turned to Bonita (who is an organizational psychologist; she helped build companies like Genentech and reinvented Bank of America and Pacific Telesis and Levi Strauss), and from the human resources standpoint we looked at the literature at Stanford and North Western and North Eastern, and we were very surprised to see there was very little research done on how the heck it is that you get valued more in the office or in life. And so we decided to do some original research with university teams, mine at Stanford and hers with North Eastern and the University of California at Berkeley, and we did a national survey, very much like Gallup does. Gallup does the "Most Admired People" and Fortune magazine has always done the "Most Admired Companies," and they both had a methodology for that, but it's really hard to look under the hood and find out what actually drives your value as an individual in the workplace or at home. So, we did a national study, and five years earlier than that we'd already done a study called "Success Built to Last," where we looked at how people defined success, in other words high performers. How did they define success around the world? We looked in 110 countries for that, so we had this huge database of performance, of people who had been achieving at high impact and hugely valued, we talked to billionaires, presidents of nations, spiritual leaders, we literally spent time with Bush and Clinton and Obama, I was just at the inauguration, I spent time with the Dalai Lama, I spent time with people from all walks of life, people who would not be known but who have had impact for a minimum of 20 years in their field or profession, in other words I didn't want the one-hit wonders, I wanted those who had a consistent, built-to-last impact in their world, in their field, whatever that field was, and it was remarkable to see a set of traits that these people had that helped them be more valued frankly, and appreciated for what they did. And so that's why we got on this journey, and we were really surprised to see that no one had really quite asked the question that way before.

Rachel Salaman: You talked there about making an impact in your work and being valued, can you just connect those two things for us, how do they relate?

Mark Thompson: Well, it turns out that one of the ways that you can be the most valued in any community or in a neighborhood or on a team, it's your company or for your customers if you're happy to interact, whoever are your main stakeholders. What we ask people to do is to think about who are your most valuable people in your life and work, make a list, it's a very practical exercise, just think, who are the ones who really drive your success and your value in life? In other words, who do you really want to have impact on and where do you want to make a difference? And that could be a boss, it could be a spouse, it could be a neighbor, it could be a family member, it could be somebody on your team, it could be your direct interaction with customers every day because that's where the revenue comes from, or your boss because that's where your promotions and your future career come from. So think about who your MVPs are, your most valuable people, and think about how you could be the most valuable person for them, and add value and have impact on them. And so one of the surprises we found in our research was that people feel undervalued. We asked people on a scale of seven, "How valued do you feel by the people who are important to you?" and they gave it about a four, and some people as high as a five, not bad but not great. Somebody asked an ironic question and we weren't even going to think about it until the scholars said, "You need to ask this as a baseline," and they said, "So how well do you know what is valued by the most valuable people in your life, how well do you know that, how do you know what has impact on them and what they care about and what they value?" And most people gave it a two or a three, and said, "Now, let me think about it, wait a minute," so you're saying you don't feel valued but we don't know what others value. Well there's the problem, that ends up being the detective work that each of us needs to do when we look at that list of MVPs. The book, "Admired: 21 Ways to Double your Value" actually goes through more than 21 ways to think about how you can do that detective work, learn what it is that is valued by the people who make a difference in your life and work, and start to support those goals and objectives and values and passions of those people.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and we're going to touch on a few of those a bit later, but you just mentioned passion there, what role does passion play in being valued and valuing others?

Mark Thompson: You know I think it's interesting how many of us feel a little guilty about our passions, we feel like it's a trivial pursuit, or it might be a distraction from our work or our life. And one of the things that we found that was a defining trait are people who'd had huge impact in the world, some of the most successful people in the world, was that they never treated their passions as a trivial pursuit, it had to be integrated as part of their life and work, that there's so much competition for attention, there's so much competition for jobs, there's so much distraction out there and noise in a marketplace when you're trying to make yourself heard and make a difference in your office and so forth, that you really need the extra energy that you get from your passions to do a great job. And we found that when you're really being driven by your passions you tend to be more resilient, when you have more setbacks you tend to be more driven and determined because it gives you this extra juice, the extra batteries that drive you ahead when things get difficult or when it takes particular staying power or persistence to get something done, that passion ends up being one of the defining factors that differentiates people who do a good job and those who do a great job. We find people who are passionate in their work put in longer hours, they are paid more but they are worth more, and they have even fewer sick days and they live longer. So, paying attention to your passions and we found that there isn't just one passion that people had in their life, hopefully there's some passion associated with the work that you do each day, so that it can help drive you and help you continue to want to get better at it and contribute in ways that are difficult perhaps when you have setbacks or disappointments or frustrating days, that make you want to still get up in the morning. That's what we found, that people who were highly valued in a workplace environment or at home had some passions at work and some passions in the context of all the places where they wanted to have impact, that it's very much related to your ability to have the persistence and the energy to have impact when you're being driven by one of your passions. And we found that people who are successful tend to have, what I call, a "portfolio of passions" – not just one passion, and they have many and they try to be in a position where at some point during the week or the month that they're able to tickle as many of them as they can, and you get a good psychological and emotional benefit, you really do live by your passions.

Rachel Salaman: I thought it was great that in your book you recognize that some people don't think that they have any passions, and you actually include a list of tips to help you find out or identify what your passions actually are. Can you just share a couple of those tips now?

Mark Thompson: Well, I found that I was quite nerdy about this. I am a person who needs the checklist and a bit more literal guidance, and Bonita is skilled as an organizational behavioral psychologist so she lives this and breathes this, but for a person who has been coaching others, and for one who has been investing and running businesses as I have, it was just helpful to think, "Can you give me some specific tips?" and there are many, but we give seven that we found were very compelling in the book. One of them is the fact that when you're engaged in a passion or when you find someone that is valuable to you, one of your MVPs in engaged in a passion, they tend to lose track of time, we call it the "flow experience." Mikhail Chismoholi, the sociologist, did actual global studies on people losing a sense of time; when you're in the flow you look at your watch and say, "Oh heavens, two hours have passed." And it's important to pay attention to what you lose track of time doing, for yourself and for the people who are valuable to you and even maybe for family members, rather than being annoyed at people getting distracted, think about and look at clearly what is it that distracted them because there's power there, there's value there for them, it's a passion that they're probably engaged in, and is there another way to tap that energy. Like, some member of your team is always getting distracted in a certain distraction, like on those little videos on YouTube, well maybe she or he could be assigned the project of creating those for your department. We found that actually happened in one publishing company; they couldn't get the job descriptions written, but finally when we realized this one person was getting distracted by the YouTube videos, we said, "Well, why don't you do video versions of all these job descriptions and video versions of this work?" and all of a sudden a goal that couldn't get done for three months got done in three days. So, if you can harness some of these passions when you see them, or find a way to re-task that passion so that it's practical and can be used for your work or your life it's very helpful, so flow experience clearly is one of those. Another one is the ability to be resilient from failure, you tend to be much more resilient and willing to get up, dust yourself off and ride the bicycle again metaphorically when it's a passion, when it's something that you legitimately care about. It's very difficult to stay focused on things that you're not passionate about, it ends up being something that is a real challenge and a real test of your passions if you're able to stay on task and if you're able to come back to it when it's difficult. So those are a few and we have a few more in the book that are helpful.

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned earlier that the book presents 21 strategies, although as you mentioned it's actually more than 21 strategies, for doubling your value, and you've divided them neatly in the book into six categories whose names start with the letters in the word "admire." The first is action, starting with A, and here you include a list of tips you call value builders, so if we could just talk about one of those now, don't try to be all things to all people, what do you mean here?

Mark Thompson: This is difficult when we want to please others and add value, I think it's interesting, when we looked at the research in people who have added a lot of value and have a lot of credibility, they tend to have, and all of us have, things that we do best, and it's a short list, it's not everything that has to be perfect and it's a good intention I think for most of us, many of us get caught in wanting to be all things to all people. That's very sweet and it's well-intentioned, but it's very confusing to the people that we're serving and that we're valuing, but the truth of the matter is we can only do a few things really well and with everything else we need help, nothing worthwhile ever gets done alone, we do it in teams and so it takes a little self-confidence and also, ironically, a little bit paradoxically, a little bit of humility to say here's the things I can do great, here's the things I do well and here's the things I need help with, and let's try to get support in the areas that we need help in and let's provide support in the areas that we're great at – add value in those ways. And so one of the things that it's very easy as a family person, we have so many roles that we have to play, think about the few things, think about the three things that we could do really well to add value in the various roles that we have in life, as a husband, as a father, as a boss, as a team mate, as a direct report, and think about each week, moving the needle or bringing forward those two or three things that I can really add value to the people who are the most valuable in our lives. And that's one way to try to make life better and be a happier person and be able to be more connected to serving others.

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Rachel Salaman: Another interesting value builder is "dump the mission statement" and I thought this was quite unusual advice, what was behind that one?

Mark Thompson: The problem with many mission statements is they get put on the wall if you're lucky, but often never paid attention to again, it's very much like the way a lot of people use plans and create a big binder that doesn't get used. And with both plans as well as missions it's important to be making sure that they have an actionable part in all the work that you do, that is actually scheduled and tactical as well as strategic, that it actually is a practical thing. So, rather than thinking about this mission statement as some lofty high faluting goal that you're going to impress others with, think about really what you want to achieve and co-create a plan with the people who are valuable to you and put together an action plan to make it happen. What you really need to do is be very clear about what your story is. One of the powerful chapters we had near the end is talking about getting heard, and rather than reciting some wonderfully abstract and philosophical mission statement, it would be better for you to have a story about why you give a damn about what you're doing, and what a difference it's going to make for the people it impacts. So, we as human beings all have a camp fire on our brains, there's a very primal thing about a narrative and if we can tell a story about the protagonist, you and this journey that you've taken and what you've learned and what's made you excited and what's also been the source of your greatest struggles, and the reasons why you are brought to the work that you do. At Mind Tools for example you're making a difference in people's lives and to me that's a hell of a vision statement and a business purpose to have, if you can give people the narrative reason why you're connected to this greater cause. And whether it's a company or a community or a family that you're connected to, think about a story and pay that forward to the people that you touch, people are looking for the story. Peter Guber, who was a great producer, he was involved with the Color Purple, Rain Man, Soul Surfer, Gorillas in the Mist, he's done some remarkable storytelling movies and he could have done documentaries lecturing people about animal rights and gorillas, he could have lectured people about diversity, he could have lectured people about civil rights, but instead he had narratives that were based on true stories that people could emotionally and personally connect with, that gave a reason and a call to action for why it is that we should think differently or do a better job as a society or as individuals. And so dump the mission statement, think about a narrative, think about a story, why is it that is so important to you and to the people who are valuable to you and create that back story and share it with people, whenever you make your elevator pitch it should be a story.

Rachel Salaman: Also in this section you say that guilt is good, which is another slightly provocative statement, could you explain that one?

Mark Thompson: I guess I knew that intuitively from my mom in the first place, and there is research done at Stanford that actually differentiated between two words that are often confused with each other, guilt and shame. As it turns out, shame is a really bad thing and guilt is a pretty good thing, and this is what I mean by that: "The whole topic here is that we're thinking about ways to add value, that we're going to have impact and make a difference and be worth more and add more value to the people who are valuable to us. So the research was done and they looked at people, and none of us are perfect, and nobody really expects you to be perfect, and in fact people who do a great job of fixing problems and addressing the issues that they've made mistakes on have more credibility than those who haven't made a mistake yet, so we're just waiting for them to make a mistake and then once we see them in action and how they handle it, then we trust them more, and it turns out that's human nature and the people who believe they feel a little guilty because they spilt the red wine on the carpet are those who on the one step will try to clean the carpet and make it better, rather than just be shameful and run off and pretend it didn't happen. So what we found in the studies was that people who express a little guilt about, "Gosh, I wish I could have done that better," usually when you're feeling guilty about that the next behavior that people are expecting is, "Oh, OK, let's make it right, let's fix this or address this," and that's what's expected when you're guilty. Shame, on the other hand, is this inaction or lack of accountability and responsibility for taking action, and at the end of the day that's what people are looking for, we all feel like we're going to need to have, and I often do at least, I don't know about you, do you ever want to join up with this organization called Perfectionist Anonymous? Because I kind of feel like you have to be perfect, and it happens all the time and I certainly see this with Bonita, and a lot of professional women who have expressed to me particularly that they have to be perfect at everything at home and at work and in life and do everything perfectly. And people actually don't expect that, what they do expect however is that when things go wrong, can we address it, have enough guilt to do better, but not the kind of shame that leads you to inaction and lack of accountability and responsibility. So that's where guilt is good.

Rachel Salaman: The second letter of admirers is D, and the corresponding section in the book is called "develop," focused on developing your value. And here you say we should be misunderstood, which some people will be surprised at. What do you mean by that?

Mark Thompson: What we've found is that people who have accomplished a lot, who've had a big impact, who've been valued, if you're pursuing a passion and particularly if you're being somehow entrepreneurial, in other words you're creating a new way of thinking, creating a new type of product or service, or serving a community in a new way, you're being entrepreneurial and creative. If it's breaking new ground you're definitely going to be misunderstood, if it's not been in existence in the past it's not going to be something that's necessarily self-explanatory, and so one of the reasons we were talking earlier about passion being so essential and a sense of purpose is that we need to be in a position where we can survive the inevitable misunderstandings and setbacks, and what's going to keep us going when we don't feel understood because that hurts, I mean Maslow was talking about it in the Hierarchy of Needs, being understood was way up there barely beyond other survival characteristics, other things that you needed like food and shelter, being understood runs really deep in the human psyche and so one of the things that makes entrepreneurs so rare, whether they're in this case social entrepreneurs like a Mother Theresa or Gandhi, or Steve Jobs, they are all in a position for long periods of time of being misunderstood and even hated for their values. And so they were having a big impact, they decided who their most valuable people were and they stayed focused on them, and remember we talked earlier about not having to please everyone and not being all things to all people, that's why I really do invite people to make a list of their MVPs and make a choice, who am I going to be and with whom, who am I going to serve and where am I going to serve because you can't please everyone and the people who know this perhaps the most poignantly and the most painfully are the people who have been most successful, the people who have been really happy, the biggest impact. This is the thing that when we look at it from the outside we say gosh, it's so great to be Jeff Bezos, you're a billionaire, you've been so successful, well it seemed like a crazy idea for most of his career and it almost came crashing to an end many times, and it's always fun to look at 20 year overnight successes, but what about the other 19 years of struggle.

Rachel Salaman: The M of the acronym admire stands for "measure," and this focuses on setting and achieving goals. In your opinion, what is the art of goal setting which is a phrase you use in the book?

Mark Thompson: Yes, well the challenge with goal setting is that we tend to pay our dues to New Year's resolutions that are set by others, or set in a state of wishful thinking, or with too much to drink that lead us to make bad goals, or to make decisions about trying to pursue something that isn't going to last, and that's why most goals can be looked at with an egg timer before they come crashing to a halt in the New Year. A lot of goals are set long before we've done a lot of the things that we've just talked about here, and my suggestion is that the art of goal setting comes after what you've just heard so far in this conversation, that we take a look at what our most valuable people are, how we can have impact on serving them and serving ourselves and our own passions, and then make goals that are supporting the achievement of those objectives, not just any objective, because one of the problems with goals too is that many of the goals are about sacrifice and we unwittingly make a tradeoff between values that might be worth more to us than the goal we're setting. So let's take weight loss for example, "I'm not going to have dinner," well, maybe dinner is the only time during your busy day or week where you finally get to reconnect with the people who are the most valuable to you, so no, it's not a matter of not having dinner, it's a matter of having maybe a different type of dinner, or it's starting to swap out certain types of food so that we can start to reduce the overall impact, and think not in terms of weight loss but in terms of appearance gains: "I'm going to be able to get into a smaller dress size," or a "smaller belt size," and "I'm going to feel healthier and I'm going to look better." Most personal goals end up being punishments, they are punishments and sacrifices, no wonder they come crashing to a halt, they're not even framed in a manner that's appealing: "I'm going to lose this many pounds," well, gosh, that just has so many implications, what's really in it for you, why are you doing that, let's look at those goals and maybe sometimes even find that it's the wrong goal, maybe losing weight isn't the way to find a mate, there should be other things that we should be doing to find a mate, so let's look at what we really value with some integrity based on our passions and a sense of who is important to us and organize it around that. But the goals are often premature to the process which is much harder, of actually getting serious about facing your passions and the most valuable people in your life and thinking about what the end gain is and then how can we get there, and not give away too many other values in the process.

Rachel Salaman: You also interestingly say that people tend to sabotage their goals.

Mark Thompson: Yes, for that reason.

Rachel Salaman: How do they do that?

Mark Thompson: They sabotage. So, for example, the idea would be we're going to be going for that workout at a time when you were going to have a dinner with family, and the value and goal about spending more time with the family is happening at the same time you're starting the exercise program. Well, if they're scheduled at the same time that's purposeful sabotage, and I'm using a simplistic methodology there but what we have to think about is look at all the goals and see how many of them actually compete with each other or they compete with things that you care more about than those goals, and that's where we usually don't have any integrity, we're saying, "OK, these are the 10 things we want to do in 2013," but we don't look at, "OK, so what do they cost you?" You're going to make sacrifices versus the things you are obviously valuing now because look at your check book and look at your schedule, you're doing things that you value, they just may not be as high a value to you or they may not be serving you, they're done by default, so let's actually take that list of goals and compare it to your current list of things that you're actually doing and seeing what it costs to do these things. Maybe we need three goals, not 10, maybe we need to shift the way those goals work because the reason the goals fail is not often enough because the world decided they weren't good ideas, it's because we sabotaged them, because there is no way to do it, there's nothing realistic in terms of the way they compete with existing values and goals that you already have. You're filling your time somehow already, what's it being filled with, now if it might be television watching that doesn't serve you at the end of the day, OK, well there's a particular set of programs I love, maybe I could record those programs and watch them during a workout and the reward for the workout is to see my weekly X or my daily X. I do that with TV programs that I would like to be able to see and content, I don't think I watch any real time television now because it's such a time waster, and I don't surf the internet in that way, so I have my iPad set up on the treadmill so that I can watch my Star Trek reruns, embarrassingly I'm a Trekkie, and it's my little treat for having run another 10k that I did last night.

Rachel Salaman: Moving on now to the R of the acronym admired, which stands for "recruit," you share some tips about networking here in the book, what are some of those?

Mark Thompson: Yes, I think the network needs to fit with people you want to hang with, one of the things that helps goals get done is kind of climb into the ecosystem or the environment of community of people who are doing the things that you want to be doing, so let's say you're setting a goal to take yourself to the next professional level, you want to be hanging out with those people, with the people who are doing what you aspire to do, so taking the time to do that and build those relationships in a way that's authentic around your passions is great. The problem with networking is kind of like the mission statement, well yes I ought to get out there and get to certain meetings, well no let's think really seriously about who the most valuable people are in your business or your profession or your field, who is that, let's go hang with them, let's go spend time in that community and let's think of ways that we can add value to that community so that we're valued by them. So always thinking about giving value before we get value, and that's the other problem with networking, we need to be go givers rather than go-getters. Everybody who has some success in a field is getting hit on all the time by the people who are aspiring for that, but the people who give value and think about, "OK, maybe I could serve on this board of this professional association, I could help out setting up the next event, I can help make some phone calls." It's interesting how professional associations are always looking for extra helpers and before you know it you're on the board, and I'm not exaggerating, do people actually decide they're going to volunteer to serve in that professional community as they're also wanting to learn and meet new people, well heck, now you're giving value at the same time you want value. So that's the best way to network, it's always to think about what value could I give, even if it seems trivial, even if it's just some time doing the less desirable jobs that are necessary in running a professional association, you'd be amazed at how much you get welcomed more than the people who are just there for their own purposes, it's all Machiavellian, they are just there to get and people can smell that pretty fast. So always think about what you can give in terms of value and then you're going to get value, reciprocity is pretty alive and well in our primal brain, people tend to give back what they feel like they receive.

Rachel Salaman: Out of all the points that we've covered today, what are the one or two key tips or lessons you think people should take away?

Mark Thompson: I think the biggest surprise for us in the research and the thing that's been most valuable with the exercise of learning about the process of being more valued and giving more value and getting more value is to be self-aware of who are the most valuable people in your working life, are we serving them, do we know what they value and how can we legitimately, not dishonestly, not by extending us beyond our passions, but in the ways that we are passionate about our work and our life, find common ground and serve them. And just that exercise alone, we are so much as human beings all wrapped up in our own busy dramas and our own intentions that it can be difficult to say okay why don't they value me, and not realizing or being aware of the fact that we haven't really taken this extra time to be a detective and think of ways to give value to the most valuable people. You know when you actually show that you care about the passions and values of others, all of a sudden, not mysteriously, they care about yours. When you show that you give a damn about others they give a damn about you. That is a very simple lesson and it certainly is proved out in the data and it turns out that those are the people who are most admired, the ones who are constantly giving value. It's a hard place to stay, because once you're admired you can become complacent and no longer be valued anymore, so it's a constant exercise of having integrity to what you're passionate about and seeing how that overlaps with the people who are most valuable to you.

Rachel Salaman: Mark Thompson thanks very much for joining us.

Mark Thompson: Thank you, it's a pleasure and you're doing great work and having impact on lives, so thanks again.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Mark's book again is "Admired: 21 Ways to Double your Value" and it's co-written with his wife, Bonita S. Thompson. You can find out more about him and his work at www.markcthompson.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.