Befriending your impostor syndrome with Iceland's president Halla Tómasdóttir AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Befriending your impostor syndrome with Iceland's president Halla Tómasdóttir) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Go to PodExtra AI's podcast page (WorkLife with Adam Grant) to view the AI-processed content of all episodes of this podcast.

WorkLife with Adam Grant episodes list: view full AI transcripts and summaries of this podcast on the blog

Episode: Befriending your impostor syndrome with Iceland's president Halla Tómasdóttir

Author: TED
Duration: 00:33:44

Episode Shownotes

When Halla Tómasdóttir lost her bid for the Icelandic presidency in 2016, she wasn't sure she wanted to run again. But after battles with self-doubt, encouragement from her supporters and an epiphany about leadership, she ran again this year — and this time, she won. Halla joins Adam to discuss

dealing with impostor syndrome, why leadership is worth the effort and how listening and asking questions can build trust with constituents and make you a stronger leader. The two also dig into the story behind Halla's "scarf revolution," Iceland's history of solving problems with creativity and Halla’s approach to leading her campaign — and presidency — with optimism. Available transcripts for ReThinking can be found at go.ted.com/RWAGscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_01
I don't meet many people who don't want to live in a healthy environment, in healthy communities, in a peaceful world, in a world where you can provide for your loved ones, where you can, you know, rely on health care, rely on being able to educate your children if they choose to, etc.

00:00:20 Speaker_02
Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast on the science of what makes us tick with the TED Audio Collective.

00:00:27 Speaker_02
I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. My guest today is Hadle Thomasdóttir, the president of Iceland.

00:00:42 Speaker_02
Earlier in her career, she co-founded Reykjavik University, an investment firm that she led successfully through the financial crisis.

00:00:49 Speaker_02
Then she was the CEO of The B-Team, a nonprofit that brings business and civic leaders together to make business better for people and the planet. Hadle ran for president in 2016 and lost. And this year, she wasn't sure if she wanted to run again.

00:01:04 Speaker_01
Leadership ultimately comes down to asking yourself the question, who am I not to offer myself up to do something?

00:01:12 Speaker_02
Having known Hadle for a decade, I've been consistently impressed with her character and her commitment to public service. I'm excited to dig into those topics with her today.

00:01:25 Speaker_01
Hello, my favorite professor.

00:01:28 Speaker_02
Hello, my favorite president. So glad to have you here, Hadle. Welcome.

00:01:33 Speaker_01
Thank you. It's really my pleasure.

00:01:36 Speaker_02
Well, this has been a long time coming. I want to take you back to the first moment that someone encouraged you to run for the presidency. Tell me the story.

00:01:45 Speaker_01
My first reaction was, who am I to run for president? And I almost think that's the normal reaction. It's far more normal, I think, to have sincere doubts when someone asks something that big.

00:02:01 Speaker_01
And it's also evidence of what I've always dealt with, which is what I now consider a healthy dose of imposter thoughts and self-doubts. I have learned to befriend them throughout life and not let them prevent me from taking on challenges.

00:02:19 Speaker_01
And I think all of us, at least all of us who are trying to do something in this world, know those self-limiting thoughts.

00:02:27 Speaker_02
I want to know what it looks like to be to befriend your imposter syndrome. I get accepting it, but befriending it is a strong statement.

00:02:37 Speaker_01
Yeah, befriending it is a strong statement, but I mean it because you could try to fight it or you can befriend it and think about it almost like this very critical roommate or friend who really asks you all the hard questions that one should always ask of themselves.

00:02:55 Speaker_01
Hubris syndrome, thinking that you know it all or you have all the answers. I think hubris syndrome is far more dangerous in leadership than a healthy dose of self-doubt and imposter thoughts.

00:03:07 Speaker_02
I think you're highlighting something that many people overlook, which is the impulse when you feel like an imposter is to say, I don't know what I'm doing, and it's only a matter of minutes until everyone finds out.

00:03:20 Speaker_02
And what you're suggesting is instead to adopt a growth mindset and say, I don't know what I'm doing yet, and it's only a matter of time until I figure it out.

00:03:29 Speaker_01
When I was younger, if I'm very honest, it was more paralyzing, these kind of self-doubts and thoughts. But experience has taught me that if I wait until I'm confident to do something, I'm unlikely to take big risks or take big leaps.

00:03:46 Speaker_01
And I've learned that the lack of confidence or the self-doubt often resides in my head. That's where the critical roommate lives.

00:03:54 Speaker_01
And if I'm able to just take a moment when in doubt, when facing big challenges, and drop from my head to my heart a little more, and find some of the wisdom that I think we sometimes ignore, like, what do I really care about?

00:04:08 Speaker_01
What do I sincerely think? What truly matters to me more than my fear? Where can I find enough courage to work through my fears about the state of the world or about what I'm about to do? And I think that's in my heart.

00:04:22 Speaker_01
And I know, my dear friend, that you are so good at the rational organizational analysis. And I think that there is so much room for that.

00:04:32 Speaker_01
But I think maybe in school we are trained way more in using our rational capacities than what I consider our emotional gifts.

00:04:41 Speaker_01
Sort of the inner knowing when something is right or wrong, the inner knowing that we care about something, or the inner knowing that we too have a voice and value that is worth something to the world.

00:04:54 Speaker_01
And I believe this to be true about every single one of us.

00:04:58 Speaker_01
Because in a world where we face so many fears, so much anger, so much hate, so much division, so many complex challenges and questions, I actually think we have to really draw on our full mental and emotional capacities to meet this moment.

00:05:15 Speaker_01
I wish we could start helping people a little more, particularly our young people, who I think are generally suffering from poor mental health. to learn how to have that inner compass in addition to all of their mental capacities.

00:05:33 Speaker_02
You ran for the presidency the first time. You didn't win, but you did much better than anyone expected. And I think you smashed your own expectations as well. And now here you are again with people saying, Hadlah, you should run for the presidency.

00:05:48 Speaker_02
And you saying, but who am I to run? And I remember you shifting to, who am I not to run? And I wonder if you could talk to me about that shift.

00:05:59 Speaker_01
I felt so good about how things went in 2016. I didn't become president, but I was in my dream job. Life was good.

00:06:07 Speaker_01
I wasn't really looking to repeat what is inevitably a very big challenge to run for office anywhere or to offer yourself up for leadership in these critical times during harsh social media.

00:06:19 Speaker_01
It's a difficult time in the world and it's difficult to be a public figure. So I had a lot of doubt about wanting to go through that again. And I really needed to think hard about it.

00:06:30 Speaker_01
But what I really feel like happened in 2016 is I became president of my own life. And I want to emphasize this because you may not win the race you offer yourself into or the job that you go after, but if you do it with a clear

00:06:45 Speaker_01
vision for why you do it and how you want to do it, there is every chance that you will come out as a winner because you will grow a lot. This time it wasn't about other people telling me that they thought I should run.

00:06:58 Speaker_01
It really was about me taking the time to sit well in my own skin. I care deeply about Iceland and Icelanders and I think I ended up thinking that I would probably regret not running.

00:07:10 Speaker_01
more than actually going for it again, because I sincerely care about the future that awaits Iceland and the world.

00:07:19 Speaker_01
And if you ask yourself all the time, knowing that the world is not in its best place, if you ask others to do something about that, that's not really good leadership, is it? It was not an easy decision.

00:07:31 Speaker_01
It would have been easier to not do it, to be honest. But it was a decision that just felt like one I couldn't look back and regret.

00:07:41 Speaker_01
And I thought a lot about comfort, Adam, because to be honest, it's not a comfortable decision to be in leadership today. And it just didn't sit right with me to choose comfort over catalyzing the changes that I think are needed.

00:07:56 Speaker_01
But this time we made it on June 1st as the winner of the election, and now I'm about three months into a new role and a new life. And it is hard and it is challenging, but I have no regrets.

00:08:09 Speaker_02
I read a report recently that half of Americans don't want a promotion at work. And I've seen that around the world, young people don't want to lead to the same degree that they used to.

00:08:20 Speaker_02
I think a lot of people look at leadership roles now and say, that is a tremendous burden. I don't want the responsibility. I don't want to sacrifice my privacy. Why would anyone want this job? Why would you want this job?

00:08:33 Speaker_01
I think one of the challenges we need to come to terms with in this world today, if we want good leadership, is to have the honest conversations about the toll and the taxes that leadership puts on human beings that are trying to serve and do good, which I believe most people are trying to do.

00:08:51 Speaker_01
And when it comes to women in leadership, I think those taxes and tolls are higher. What we wear gets far more attention sometimes than what we say. We're more sensitive to attacks on our family and in particular on our children.

00:09:05 Speaker_01
Most leaders I know, they find it very difficult not just to be attacked themselves, but to live in a world where women and children are dying for what seems like meaningless reasons where

00:09:17 Speaker_01
There is inequality at levels that seem unsustainable and where there are consequences of climate and environmental crisis that's robbing people of their homes and security.

00:09:27 Speaker_01
I think there are so many reasons for why it gives you heartache to be in that world. But here's the choice as I see it.

00:09:36 Speaker_01
You either say this is the world we live in and I'm going to self-preserve, which to me is not an option because we have every reason to be able to design and deliver a better world, but only if we choose to be part of that delivery.

00:09:54 Speaker_01
But then I also think we need to rethink leadership as not something that sits in the few and far between presidents and CEOs and people in big positions of power.

00:10:04 Speaker_01
And we need to think about leadership as something that is truly given to each and every one of us. And there is something that each and every one of us can do to help deliver the world we want. And I choose to do it from this post.

00:10:15 Speaker_01
I have a lot of respect for people who don't want to do it from such a visible post. But I think all of us have a reason to ask ourselves, how can I serve?

00:10:27 Speaker_01
So I think we have far more shared dreams than we know, but we have so many shared fears right now that they are holding us back from truly leaning into coming together for the world we both want and need.

00:10:40 Speaker_02
Agreed. I thought you had a fascinating symbol of that recently in Iceland. Tell me about the scarf revolution.

00:10:49 Speaker_01
The day of the first debate, when I was not polling very high, ranging between 4% and 6% in the polls, and I was getting the questions of if I was going to quit. That was the first question from every media outlet. I found myself not very well.

00:11:03 Speaker_01
And I went on TV with a scarf around my neck and wearing a pink jacket. And I apparently was told that I did well in the debates. But everybody had an opinion about the scarf that I was wearing.

00:11:15 Speaker_01
You know, I shouldn't wear a scarf or it was a great scarf. People loved it or hated it. And there were more scarf comments and jacket comments than about what I said, even if polls showed that I had done best in the debate.

00:11:26 Speaker_01
So I ranted a bit on an event two days later, and one thing led to another. Young women started wearing pink jackets and scarves. Then young men started doing it. Then old people started doing it. Then the dogs joined.

00:11:39 Speaker_01
And somehow we created this sense of a a community somewhat accidentally.

00:11:43 Speaker_01
And so the scarf revolution became a bit of a symbol, something that people started putting up in solidarity for a way forward and maybe a solidarity for us all being in this together.

00:11:55 Speaker_01
I can't fully explain what happened, but it took off and it gave me a lot of energy to find all of that symbolic support. And I think symbols can really matter. in the political sphere and leadership.

00:12:10 Speaker_01
Still people visit me now that I'm president and they visit me here at the residence with scars around their neck to sort of show solidarity.

00:12:19 Speaker_02
In 2016 and again in 2024, you did something that was even more revolutionary from my perspective, which is you said, I'm going to run a positive campaign. I'm not going to lead with fear or anger.

00:12:31 Speaker_02
I'm going to ground my candidacy in hope and inspiration. Talk to me about that. And I want to hear how you did it in Iceland. Is that possible in a country like the United States?

00:12:43 Speaker_01
I worry how we build trust in a world that already has low trust when we have nothing that we can collectively agree on as truth.

00:12:53 Speaker_01
There just seems to be all kinds of versions of truth being pushed and echo chambers and people increasingly believe in what they see in their echo chamber and have so few bridges into other echo chambers. So I think we're all developing blind spots.

00:13:10 Speaker_01
I think we're all increasingly finding ourselves in well-designed and very toxic echo chambers that have robbed us slowly of our humanity, of our sanity. So I want to recognize that context.

00:13:28 Speaker_01
But in that context, I find for myself, and I certainly found in both campaigns, that you can't meet fear, hate and violence with more of that. That has disaster written all over it.

00:13:43 Speaker_01
It's scary for all of us in this hard world of ours to talk about things like love, but I just think those are the only energies that can beat out the other energies that seem to have occupied too much of our mind.

00:13:56 Speaker_01
If we are invited into something better, something that is hopeful, inspirational, joyful, makes us feel good.

00:14:06 Speaker_01
If we are invited into something where we feel seen, heard, and valued, I actually think there's a huge appetite for it, but very little supply.

00:14:16 Speaker_01
And I don't have all the answers and I never told a single voter that I knew exactly what to do about all those challenges.

00:14:22 Speaker_01
But I told every voter that would listen that I was willing to have more compassion for everyone in our country, in our world, that I was willing to have more conversations because I think they are needed.

00:14:35 Speaker_01
and that I was willing to collaborate more deeply on coming up with multi-stakeholder solutions to these multiple and complex challenges that we're facing.

00:14:48 Speaker_01
I really think sincerity is in high demand but short supply when it comes to politics everywhere, but I highly recommend it. I really feel that voters, they recognize sincerity.

00:15:02 Speaker_02
I would add to that that I thought you really modeled confident humility. I think we've seen so many narcissists and arrogant people rise into leadership roles. To see you say, my goal is not to be a president with all the answers.

00:15:19 Speaker_02
I want to be a president that asks the right questions was incredibly refreshing. And I'd love to hear what are those right questions? What questions are you asking now?

00:15:30 Speaker_01
Well, the first and most important one, I think, is towards each one of us as individuals.

00:15:36 Speaker_01
It's the question I often ask myself and others, and I asked myself when I was encouraged to run, is who are you going to choose to be at a time like no other for humanity? I think a lot about how do we bridge the gender gaps.

00:15:50 Speaker_01
But I also mean, what does the gender gap mean for boys and men? I increasingly think about that. We can maybe come back to that. How do we bridge the generational gap?

00:16:00 Speaker_01
Because there's a real gap between how young people are seeing and thinking about the world and operating in the world and those who currently sit in power.

00:16:09 Speaker_01
So there's sort of a struggle between old power and new power right now and different value systems. How do we bridge the gaps across the globe?

00:16:17 Speaker_01
Because there's increasingly distrust from the global south, global east, to the global west, and this is incredibly complicated in today's world.

00:16:25 Speaker_01
We have such large challenges to tackle, and I don't think business alone has the answers, or activists alone have the answers, or the third sector.

00:16:34 Speaker_01
I really think we need to find sort of a very new way to do leadership, where we come together across these gaps, build bridges, listen more, learn more, and co-create more with compassion for the things that matter to all of us.

00:16:49 Speaker_02
This listening theme is so interesting to me, Hadle. I think at some level you rise to leadership by being a great talker, but you succeed at leadership by being a great listener. And that paradox is complicated for a lot of people.

00:17:04 Speaker_02
One of my favorite research findings in my career was when colleagues and I discovered that if you had a proactive team around you who was bringing lots of ideas and suggestions to the table, you were actually more effective as an introvert than an extrovert in a leadership role.

00:17:20 Speaker_02
both because you made people feel heard and also because you got better ideas and suggestions by listening. It's easy to give lip service to that and say, as you did, listening is a weakness of mine. I want to work on it.

00:17:33 Speaker_02
I think the hard part is actually putting it into practice. I'd be very curious to hear, given that your goal is to be a better listener, how are you trying to accomplish that? What does that look like day to day for you as president?

00:17:46 Speaker_01
I am trying to hold fewer speeches and host more conversations.

00:17:51 Speaker_01
Presidents are asked to give speeches all the time, and I'm increasingly saying no thanks, but if you want me to come and be in a dialogue with someone from your organization or your event, and then invite the audience into a dialogue, then I'm interested, because I actually find

00:18:08 Speaker_01
that the conversation format is far more engaging when we allow ourselves to authentically rumble with the challenges and opportunities that are in front of us.

00:18:18 Speaker_01
And when we invite questions, it's just much more of a sincere format to me than prepared keynotes and speeches. So this is a very concrete way that I'm starting the conversation trend and prioritizing that over one directional talking at people.

00:18:34 Speaker_01
And I've actually had interesting comments from people because we all have these ideas in our heads what presidents should do. Some people said, oh, should the president be asking questions? Shouldn't the president be bringing the answers?

00:18:45 Speaker_01
And so I'm really very deliberately pushing the boundaries on this. I'm reducing the number of large events that I host at the residence and trying to get most of them down to groups of 25 to 30.

00:18:57 Speaker_01
And we sit in circles where I throw out one question depending on what the audience is and listen to everyone in the circle and allow us to have more of a conversation on a co-creation process.

00:19:11 Speaker_01
And I'm trying to do this very deliberately across generations.

00:19:15 Speaker_01
I try very deliberately to curate as many spaces as possible where we have truly this intergenerational dialogue and almost brainstorm as to how to deal with some of the tensions and challenges that are very real in Iceland as everywhere else.

00:19:32 Speaker_01
And I find that after such meetings, and they don't need to necessarily be that long, even an hour-long meeting in a conversation like that makes everybody leave having learned something, having maybe changed their mind about something, having made a new connection to somebody.

00:19:49 Speaker_01
And I find that it's borderline therapeutic for people to be invited into spaces like that.

00:19:56 Speaker_02
It's almost appalling to me that someone would ask, should a president be asking questions? How else do you learn?

00:20:03 Speaker_01
Exactly. I think questions are far more important than the answers, Adam. And I have far more questions than answers.

00:20:12 Speaker_01
And one of the questions I asked, because you asked me if it's possible to run a campaign or be a leader that focuses on hope and inspiration. And my question back on that one, is it possible to be a leader that doesn't give hope or inspiration?

00:20:28 Speaker_01
Is that leadership? If you are a leader that takes advantage of the fear, the hate, and the division to your benefit, to your short-term gain, is that leadership? I guess my conclusion is, I doubt it.

00:20:43 Speaker_01
It might get you somewhere in the short term, but it certainly isn't helping to catalyze the transition, the leadership, the solidarity, that is needed to dream off and design a world that works better than the world we have right now.

00:21:03 Speaker_02
You're reminding me of Nancy Duarte's analysis of Martin Luther King Jr. 's I Have a Dream speech, where she points out that we think of it as a speech that was all about hope.

00:21:15 Speaker_02
But if you look at the first 11 of the 16 or 17 minutes that he spoke, he was talking about the pain of the present, to acknowledge the reality people were facing, and then say, this is what is, but I also want you to consider what could be.

00:21:31 Speaker_02
And I think that skill of toggling back and forth between the pain of the present and the hope for the future, the acknowledging what is and how the status quo might be unacceptable, but also giving people a clear sense that something better is possible tomorrow, even if today is undesirable.

00:21:50 Speaker_02
That toggling back and forth between what is and what could be seems like a vital skill of leadership.

00:21:55 Speaker_01
The fact of the matter is there is a lot of pain, there is a lot of anger, there is a lot of, there are a lot of people who don't feel well today.

00:22:02 Speaker_01
We've sort of left groups and society, and particularly I think the next generations left without hope and inspiration with systems that don't seem to be serving many people well. And I think that comes down to really the word inequality.

00:22:17 Speaker_01
I think we have had unsustainable levels of inequality within countries and within the world. And the anger that's left people with is understandable.

00:22:27 Speaker_01
I don't want to make little out of that pain or the anger or the poor mental health and well-being we're seeing all over the world. The numbers are very clear here.

00:22:36 Speaker_01
But I know in my own life that I have never really made great progress in anything I've done without going through a bit of a dark alley before. When you're in that dark alley, it's when you figure out what you're made of.

00:22:51 Speaker_01
And it's from there that you leap forward.

00:23:00 Speaker_02
Well, I'm going to leap forward now to a lightning round. What's the worst leadership advice you've ever gotten?

00:23:07 Speaker_01
Act like a man.

00:23:10 Speaker_02
Best advice? Be you. What is something you've rethought lately?

00:23:16 Speaker_01
Boys and men. I have been a longstanding champion for more women and girls in leadership and power and managing money and everything, and I know it matters.

00:23:27 Speaker_01
But I feel like in the gender revolution, we have failed to see the red flags with boys and men. And the consequences of that are hitting our societies in a way where I think we need to really see the next gender frontier.

00:23:41 Speaker_01
as fully inclusive of the full gender spectrum, including boys and men and any other identification people choose. But we cannot just focus on, even if we still need to, empowering women and girls. We have to do that because we have a way to go.

00:23:56 Speaker_01
But boys and men are feeling lonely, isolated, looking for a way to belong and finding it in not the best ways. So we need to invite them into healthy masculinity.

00:24:08 Speaker_02
I was thinking a little bit about Icelandic lessons for the rest of the world. And I think my favorite Icelandic saying is that I'd rather go barefoot than without books.

00:24:19 Speaker_01
I love that one.

00:24:20 Speaker_02
What's yours?

00:24:21 Speaker_01
I think there are many lessons from Iceland. Maybe the most profound one is that we are incredibly creative in Iceland. Even Mother Nature is still creating new land here through a series of eruptions. I mean, so we are just a creative nation.

00:24:36 Speaker_01
We've sort of been way ahead of the rest of the world in creating solutions to challenges. We went through the geothermal energy revolution and even the gender revolution.

00:24:47 Speaker_01
One of our challenges was in order to be a progressive nation, we needed heating for our houses. And we discovered geothermal, which now could solve a lot of the energy crisis around the world.

00:24:58 Speaker_01
And yet very few have done it for so many decades as we have. And we also discovered that the world doesn't work when women are not at work. When women on Iceland went on a strike back in 1975 and paralyzed the country for a day.

00:25:11 Speaker_01
helped all of us understand that we're stronger when we are all at work and everybody in this small country gets to contribute its value.

00:25:20 Speaker_01
We even hosted a peace talk back in 1986 when Reikan and Gorbachev met in Iceland to begin the conversation that ended the Cold War.

00:25:28 Speaker_01
I guess I dare to say that Iceland, maybe together with the Nordics, can be a lighthouse for the creative solutions that we need with two challenging problems, particularly along the lines of sustainability, a fully

00:25:43 Speaker_01
gender inclusive societies where human rights and democracy thrive because we choose to be peaceful societies that stand for a peaceful world and small might have become beautiful.

00:25:54 Speaker_01
Being small is not a disadvantage but a huge advantage because I think the big countries, the big companies, so many of the big are struggling with leading with a moral compass today.

00:26:07 Speaker_01
Even if each of our countries is small, the well-being of people and the environment and of our communities is greater than in many other places, not without problems, but we seem to have figured out how to do capitalism with care and compassion.

00:26:24 Speaker_02
You're making me think of a classic Hal Levitt article. He was a Stanford professor who spent his whole career studying hierarchy.

00:26:31 Speaker_02
And at the very end of his career, he wrote this piece called, Large Organizations Are Unhealthy Environments for Human Beings, and made a case that, to your point, small is beautiful when it comes to workplaces.

00:26:43 Speaker_02
And I think you're suggesting that might be true for countries, too.

00:26:47 Speaker_01
It's interesting because I've been an entrepreneur, I've also worked in corporate America, I've run nonprofits, and I have learned that organizational culture is both an incredibly powerful force that you can either consciously lead with or you will be led with if you don't consciously do it.

00:27:06 Speaker_01
And it becomes so enormously difficult in big organizations and big countries if you need to pivot or change those cultures. And right now, the world is serving us one challenge on top of another.

00:27:20 Speaker_01
So you need quite a lot of resilience, quite a lot of agility. Having said that, I think partnership is maybe the word right now, because I don't think one country acting alone will catalyze the scale and speed of teams we need.

00:27:37 Speaker_01
But I think one country acting alone can be a lighthouse. But if it partners with

00:27:42 Speaker_01
few more small countries that feel small by themselves but can feel stronger and bolder together with others can start to catalyze meaningful and transformational change. And there is a possibility to think of

00:28:00 Speaker_01
ways to go forward, dream of ways to go forward with new metrics like well-being being as important as GDP growth.

00:28:10 Speaker_01
There is an opportunity to think of new business models and economic models that measure more than financial profit for the short term for shareholders alone.

00:28:22 Speaker_01
Sometimes people need to see the alternative in order to get psychological safety to leave what they've always known.

00:28:35 Speaker_02
In the spirit of practicing your listening and question asking skills, what's the question you have for me?

00:28:39 Speaker_01
I would love to ask you, my favorite professor, how do we help people navigate times with so much uncertainty, fear, anger, and hate? Because I'm still looking for answers to that.

00:28:56 Speaker_01
Because my single biggest fear, Adam, is the loss of hope or the hopelessness that I'm starting to sense, in particular from young people, that a better world awaits them. And that in and of itself can paralyze us from catalyzing the world we want.

00:29:13 Speaker_01
So how do we, give me some good advice here, how do we help people navigate this harsh reality and yet help them find hope and resilience in the face of it?

00:29:24 Speaker_02
I think one of the mistakes that I see a lot of leaders make is they're just obsessed with finding and solving problems. And I don't want to suggest that we should ever stop doing that.

00:29:34 Speaker_02
But I am intrigued by what David Cooper Ryder has called appreciative inquiry, which is the idea of walking into a community or a workplace or a country, and in addition to asking what's broken, also asking what's working and how do we build on that.

00:29:52 Speaker_02
And there's a great book that Chip and Dan Heath wrote called Switch, where they recommend a version of this and they call it Find the Bright Spots.

00:30:00 Speaker_02
And they say that the virtue of being in a group that's hundreds or thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of people is there are lots of pockets of excellence.

00:30:10 Speaker_02
There are versions of the future happening in local communities, in small teams that you want to see.

00:30:17 Speaker_02
And so your challenge is to find those and then draw attention to them, study them, learn from them, and then scale and spread what's working for them.

00:30:25 Speaker_02
And so I think what you've outlined for us today is that Iceland is a bright spot in many ways, in dark times, and we ought to look to what's working in Iceland and then learn from that and bring it to the rest of the world.

00:30:39 Speaker_02
But I would say you can do the same within Iceland. And I'd be curious about where those bright spots are.

00:30:45 Speaker_01
Oh, I love that. And I'm such a fan and a friend of David Cooper Ryder, and we've actually done some appreciative inquiries together. Of course you have. And the fact that I ask questions that start with, how might we, is actually from him.

00:30:56 Speaker_01
And one of the quotes he always says, which I think is relevant for what we're talking about, he always says, hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.

00:31:06 Speaker_01
And what he means there, as I interpret it, is it's not enough to give people hope and inspiration, which I do try to do. You also need to give them a seat at the table, an opportunity to be part of building on the strengths, co-creating the new.

00:31:22 Speaker_01
That work can then be, with good storytelling, spread. to come to scale. And I think we have many of those in Iceland.

00:31:29 Speaker_01
I think we have many of those around the world, including within the United States, even if I know the United States definitely feels more divided than it has. We created this world.

00:31:41 Speaker_01
We can just as well create one that works better than we currently seem to be working.

00:31:48 Speaker_02
I love that. I think we need more President Thomas daughters in the world.

00:31:52 Speaker_01
Ah, thank you, Adam. That means the world to me. Well, we also need more Professor Adam Grant, you know, and you should know that in Iceland you're held in great regard.

00:32:01 Speaker_01
So next time you visit me in Iceland, you'll need to come and share some of your inspiration with Icelanders.

00:32:07 Speaker_02
Well, that would be an honor. And I will say it's much easier to write about it than it is to do it. And I admire your role modeling of the leadership we need in the world. Thank you, Hadba.

00:32:18 Speaker_00
Thank you so much, Adam. It's been such a pleasure.

00:32:24 Speaker_02
I'm really struck by Hadle's approach to listening as a leader. There's research by Avi Kluger and colleagues which shows that listening might be the most underrated of all leadership skills.

00:32:35 Speaker_02
And I think Hadle reminds us that listening well is not just talking less. It's asking thoughtful questions and responding in a way that shows people they're being heard.

00:32:45 Speaker_02
that you're not just trying to judge their intellect or their status, but you're actually trying to understand their interests and learn from them.

00:32:53 Speaker_02
And being a great listener is not only one of the best ways for a leader to learn, it's also an effective way to help other people clarify their own thinking. Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is part of the TED Audio Collective.

00:33:10 Speaker_02
And this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic Standard. Our producers are Hannah Kingsley-Ma and Asia Simpson. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our fact-checker is Paul Durbin. Original music by Hansdale Sue and Allison Leighton-Brown.

00:33:24 Speaker_02
Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, Samaya Adams, Roxanne Highlash, Benben Cheng, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney Pennington-Rogers. Alison and our kids got such a kick out of your quip about what I was known for and not known for in Iceland.

00:33:41 Speaker_02
Do you remember it? In Iceland, Adam Grant is known for his books, not his looks.