Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:46
So it’s good that you tipped your hand. At the time.
Gabe Karp: 15:48
It was good. It was good. I tipped my hand. But now that I’m in the story I got, I got to take a detour in this story. What I didn’t realize is that something that happened more than 30 years earlier dramatically impacted how the judge behaved in this, in these chambers back in 1964.
She was not a judge at the time. She was a young African American attorney who had gone down to Mississippi to help civil rights workers who were getting in trouble with local law enforcement because they were all down there registering black people to vote and the local sheriffs, they didn’t take too kindly to that down in Mississippi. And it was a scary time. It was an ugly time in American history, very, very dangerous and scary time for civil rights workers. I didn’t know this, but my dad, my father was one of those lawyers with this judge down in Mississippi working together to help register, you know, votes.
And they were all formed a bond together that you just can only be forged in such extreme circumstances. Now, fast forward 30 years later. I had no idea that she had been with my dad. I kind of heard stories when I was a kid about something about that. It’s the only detail.
But. And she never let on that. She knew my dad, but later on she did. But. So that’s why she kind of helped lean into this case.
Plus, once she saw the log sheet, you know, she was like, this case should settle. And then I said, so basically the other lawyer comes back and they end up offering ten times what their previous offer was. So I sat back and I said, well, I’ll, I’ll of course relay this to my client as I’m required to do, but I’m not sure it’s enough money. And then the judge says to the lawyer, excuse us for a second, and then she gets me alone again and she goes, what the hell do you think you’re doing? And I said, judge, what are you talking about?
Like, they hurt my client. They lied about it. Then they covered it up, and now they think they can get away with it just by throwing a few extra dollars. Know I’m going to expose this injustice for what it is I’m going to prove. I’m going to show the jury who they are, like, I can win this case.
And she just, like, stops. And she’s like, I do not need you to lecture me about injustice, young man. They just offered your client more money than she’s ever dreamed of. Your job is to achieve the best result possible you can for your client. And I’m telling you, you’ve just done it yet.
You’re going to go ahead and gamble all this at trial. And like, at that moment, I had realized how my need to win. You know, originally I took the case. You need to have this very powerful need to win to get through all of these issues. I wouldn’t have found the log sheet if I didn’t have that need to win.
But at some point, my need to win the trial eclipsed the whole goal of why I needed to win in the first place, and that was to get a good result for my client, because that was life-changing money for her. And yeah, I had the log sheet, but you go in front of a jury like anything can happen. You lose control of a lot of the factors. And I was really lucky that the judge was there to save me from myself, because I had fallen in this need to win trap, and she pulled me out of it.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:09
So there’s ego trap. There’s a need to win. Trap? What’s another trap people fall into that you find.
Gabe Karp: 19:18
So there’s certainly what I call the penguin trap. We can talk about that. There’s also the bully trap. And that’s a big one. That’s where.
Let’s talk about that for a second. The Bully Trap is not when you’re dealing with like, a playground bully who’s trying to steal your lunch money. That’s a legitimate bully who’s just a bully. By the way. I can talk about how to deal with those people, but.
But that’s not the point of the bully. The bully trap is where well-intentioned people like good-hearted good-meaning people, well-meaning people, either because of urgency or passion, engage in bullying-like behavior. And it has a very negative impact to the people that they’re dealing with. It shuts down communication. And all of us are susceptible to it.
And there are some things we can do to keep our behavior in check. And we get into detail if you want. I don’t want to.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 20:21
Yeah. There’s an example, I don’t know if you want to share. The one from the book that I remember is you left the room and someone gave you a glance. Ants like you did something wrong, but you didn’t think anything of it. And it turns out that interaction. I don’t know if that’s the bullying trap per se, but that that sticks out as, yeah, you know, doing something inadvertently and that shut down communication.
Gabe Karp: 20:48
Yeah. That wasn’t a bullying trap. But that’s actually that is part of it. Just very quickly I was in a meeting, there were probably six of us, and there was a new guy who was a leader in the company, but he was relatively new, and we were just kind of we were talking about stuff we I was very focused on. Let’s have an efficient meeting.
Like, we all have stuff that we need to get to. There are things happening. And the new guy said something that I just didn’t think it was a good idea. So I was very I was just immediately dismissive of it. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not going to really work.
And then we then we, we moved on and there was a woman in the room who I respect tremendously and it maybe about 30s. After that I kind of caught my eye, caught her and she’s giving me this look of judgment, like disappointed, like shaking her head. And I shot her a look. Like what? Like what do they do?
And she shot a look back, like, you know exactly what you did. And I’m very disappointed. Like. And by the way, that exchange I had with her was 1.5 seconds. But.
And then afterwards, the meeting ended and I went to her and I said, look what? And she told me, she’s like, you shut that guy down. Like, that’s a new guy in the company. He’s very talented. He’s a senior leader here.
And you just guaranteed that any meeting that he’s in with you in the future, he’s not going to say anything. And I was just like, oh, like you’re so right. And then immediately, I like I don’t even know where I was. I just beelined right to wherever that guy was. And I pulled him aside.
I apologized, I said that that was wrong of me, by the way, you know, and I told him there’s actually a good idea. It’s just we it doesn’t mean the details of the conversation don’t matter. But I told him I was wrong. I told him I was very concerned about the impact it would have, and I told him that the next time I do that, you can say to me in front of everybody. And I gave him like a line he could say to me, that was a very difficult, tough line to deliver to somebody.
But I said, look, I’m telling you, say this to me. And it was something like, well, you know, Gabe, I don’t think it’s a good idea to shut down creative ideas. Maybe we should give this a little more of a of a hearing in this case, you know, like, whatever it was. And as soon as I gave him permission to call me out like that, he immediately like his body language changed. And he ended up being like, he was great.
And in the future, that guy had amazing ideas that the company benefited from. And, you know, I mean, and by the way, had she not had she not called me out on that, I don’t think I would have even realized it happened. So it’s important to, you know, that self-awareness is tough when you are laser-focused on a task.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:42
Talk about, you know, because a lot of times I’m sure same for me. I do things inadvertently because I’m in a rush or whatever. And I don’t mean it to come across, but people take it that way. What’s a good way to help with the culture of that? Should we as a leader just tell the team, hey, you have permission to call me out in XYZ because I may not be aware of it?
Or how do we handle it? Because someone did let you know. But we all do things that we don’t mean to come across like that and we do. So how do we proactively, you know, fix that I guess.
Gabe Karp: 24:18
Yeah, there are a number of things you can do. I learned a great tactic. I learned a story from a Navy SEAL. It’s in the book. We don’t have to go into it now, but.
But as you can imagine, Navy SEALs are an elite, you know, elite fighting unit, and they have a very different culture than the rest of the military. After every mission, they have a debrief meeting. They talk about what went well and what didn’t go well. And they carve out time in this meeting for anyone to ask any question they want or say anything they want, get things off their chest, call out red flags. And the idea here is that you aren’t doing your job if you remain silent.
So yeah, they’re the military, but this can and should be incorporated into any organization’s culture. I say in your organization, have a debrief meeting. By the way, everyone has too many meetings on their calendar, so don’t add a new meeting. Just carve out time of an existing meeting for debrief where you tell people in advance like, hey, hey guys, from now on, this is like the debrief section of this meeting. What we are, what our role is here.
We need to call out problems. If there’s something we’re concerned about, we need to raise red flag. If there’s something that is bothering us, we need to get it off our chest. If you do not speak in this section of the meeting, you are not doing your job. And when you have that on a recurring basis and a regular basis, people start to get really comfortable calling out the problems.
And what you do is you free everyone from the social stigma of being associated with the source of conflict. No one has to worry about being viewed as, oh, they’re always causing. They’re always raising red flags. They’re always causing problems. They always have negative stuff to say.
Instead, the social stigma flips, and it attaches to the people who remain silent because they then get viewed as the dead weight that the rest of the team has to drag along while they root out problems and fix them. And when you have that on a regular basis, Three amazing things happen. Number one, bad news surfaces right away. Like you uncover bad stuff without doing that. By the way, in cultures that honor like flawless execution, when people make mistakes, they’re highly motivated to keep them covered up.
So this is a way to eliminate that. The second thing is it you eliminate the social stigma associated with the source of conflict. So not only do you get people calling out problems in this meeting on the outside of just that meeting, the culture is such that people can call out problems left and right and no one takes it personally. There’s no drama because they’re just used to this, this process. It’s like this is our culture.
And then the third thing is it motivates and empowers people to continually seek improvement. What you end up getting is people think, oh, wait, that meeting is today at 3:00. I got to come up with a problem. Like we’re like, where’s something that’s broken that I can fix? And they start taking a very like, like a real examination of all their processes to figure out what’s even slightly broken.
And that’s even better, because now you’re not waiting for stuff to completely break. If they just see a couple cracks in the foundation, they’re like, hey, this isn’t a major problem yet, but here is a problem, and if we don’t address it, then it’s going to get really bad. That increases the speed of business.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:49
Yeah. And so it’s embedding it in the normal everyday meetings. So it’s like that muscle you keep flexing and then it becomes normal. I, I love you know I saw you speak at I was at eccentric. It happened to be in Detroit and you spoke and there’s an exercise we do at every EO forum meeting, which is kind of like clear the air with the other members.
And so that’s kind of embedded into the meetings. Like, do you have any conflicts or issues with anyone in the room? And you’re supposed to go around and look everyone in the eye and see, you know, actually say either you do or you don’t. So it’s not you can’t just be like, oh yeah, nope, I’m fine with everyone, you know. So it is taught me to just practice that, even if it’s maybe with myself, it could be I have an issue with myself of how I acted.
I bring that up too. So no, I love that having it embedded into the normal process. And I’ll open. By the way.
Gabe Karp: 28:46
You can do one better and have a pre-brief meeting. So before embarking on a project, get everybody into a room and say, let’s assume we do this project and we fail. Why would that happen? What are the factors around us right now that would give rise to that failure? And now people are totally free to talk about it because no one’s calling anybody out.
Nothing. It’s totally hypothetical. And it actually increases the level of creativity in the room. Innovation Asian spikes when you’re thinking about the future.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:21
I love that, yeah. And well, I’ll open a loop for people. Gabe. So like what? That is one of my favorite parts of the book with the Navy SEAL part.
And so just check that part out as to do with the ladder so you can if you want to know the full story, you’ll have to go check it out on the book. But that is a great part for sure. Yeah, I love to hear, you know, some of the things that you’ve learned from people as well. When I pulled up, I’m going to, you know, pull up your site here for a second. You have a lot of amazing people who have read your book and said some cool things, and I’m sure these are people that you’ve learned from as well.
You know, Eric Lefkofsky here, any wisdom that you’ve gained from Eric throughout the years?
Gabe Karp: 30:12
Yeah, I think Eric is really good at creating a culture of execution. And by the way, he doesn’t even think in those terms. I remember years ago talking to him about culture, like, what do you do you what do you do to focus on culture? How do you create that? And he said, I don’t I just get he said, I get really I get really smart, talented people together.
And we just get in and you know, we move very, very fast. So the cult, we’re a culture of speed. And if you want to be a culture of speed, that necessarily means you can’t get bogged down with drama or emotion or that sort of thing. You know, performance issues are addressed without people feeling bad. Process.
Issues of process get tackled right away. You know, he’s just the speed with which he operates is speed and candor. The speed and candor with which he operates drive very healthy culture.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 31:12
And then I know you worked very closely with Josh. What’s something that you observe from Josh and in his leadership?
Gabe Karp: 31:24
I mean, Josh is fantastic and he’s become a good friend. He’s been actually very, very supportive of me in a speaking relationship, excuse me. Speaking business as well because he’s, he’s a New York Times best-selling keynote speaker. I remember early on Josh had said, someday someone’s going to come along and put us out of business and it might as well be us. And that was, you know, it’s the comment that speaks for itself.
It’s such a great mindset. It’s such a great mentality. So that’s something that has stuck with me for many years.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:04
You know, one thing is you just kind of go after conflict like healthy conflict and you were in a room. We’ll say it was a hospital system. Okay. And you directly. I’ll let you tell the story for a second, but went after the CEO in a room where I think you were paid.
You know, I don’t know if they’re going to invite you back. I think so, but. But you kind of called out the CEO. Talk. Talk about that?
Gabe Karp: 32:37
Sure. Yes, I was paid. It was. It was what you call a full fee gig in the speech.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:41
We made a big mistake. He called me out.
Gabe Karp: 32:44
By the way, afterwards, he came out to me and. And he said, thank you. That was I loved that. But. Multi-billion dollar hospital system.
I gave a keynote, but after the keynote, there was an invite-only group of just 50 people for just Q&A to have a much more interactive session after having seen my keynote. And at some point, and there was the CEO and some other exec team people there and a lot of doctors, of course, healthcare professionals. And there was a guy, very accomplished-looking guy, late 60s, maybe 70, who raised his hand and said, yeah, I’m a I’m a, I’m a doctor. I have a practice that’s within the I have staff privileges at the hospital and part of the hospital system, but I’m like, I look at this guy, he’s been a doctor leading a practice for 40, 50 years. Right.
So a very accomplished guy. And he said, I, you know, lately we’ve had some metrics mandated to us, and I have found that it is interfering with patient care. I’ll be in with a patient trying to address a problem. And in the back of my mind, I’ve got these metrics that I’ve got to hit, and I need to either cut a conversation short when it shouldn’t be cut short. And it’s actually impacting the healthcare that I can provide.
And his question was how do you address that? And I said, when you say that these. So by the way, they had a giant rectangle and I was standing in the center of it. So he’s over here. And I said, when you say these metrics are being mandated to you, are they being mandated to you by that guy right over there?
And I pointed to the CEO, and the whole room took like a gasp, like, whoa, like he’s going to go there. And it felt very tense. And I was prepared for that. And by the way, you don’t want to do that if you don’t know how you can get everybody to walk out of that room as friends. So I don’t suggest just randomly, you know, pitting people against each other.
But I said and the doctor said he was very his body language changed. He physically leaned back and then he brought it. He got his composure back and he said, yes, that is who I’m that is who is mandated this. I said, okay, well, here’s what I know. I can’t solve the specific metric issue for you, but I know that if he is mandating metrics, there are good reasons why he is doing that.
And you probably are not aware of those reasons because you have an issue with it. And if those metrics are causing you to sacrifice quality of care, he probably doesn’t know the details of that. And I’m guessing that neither of you know this because you have chosen to address this issue. The first time you bring this up is, to me, a perfect stranger to you, in a room full of 50 people. And I’m not faulting you for that.
That does speak to the culture of this organization, but let’s get into this. I can promise you there are good reasons on both sides, and if each of you can understand what those are, then you can find the happy medium. Maybe the metrics can be dialed back in a certain situation. Maybe once you realize the goal of the metric, you can adjust how you react to it and how you accommodate it. What we need to do is not figure out how to solve this one metric thing.
We need to come up with a way in which conflicts are going to get resolved in a healthy, productive, fast way. And after that, that triggered a great group discussion, because there were some other recurring things that were coming up in that particular hospital system. And it was great, you know, and then after lunch, there was like a lunch. So I went to the buffet and then the CEO sat down with me and he said, by the way, thank you. That was awesome.
He said, I, I did not know how they felt about that, and I wish I had because I probably would have saved that guy. Months of angst. And I really am worried about the other stuff that I’m not hearing about.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 36:55
So and that’s, you know, typically it just fosters resentment. No one says anything, and then they end up, who knows, leaving the hospital system or just being angry all the time.
Gabe Karp: 37:07
Yeah, I got a credit Dan Gilbert with this, that he has a book called isms, and one of the isms is we are the they. So oftentimes you hear, you know, people in a hospital system like that saying they, they require that we do this. They require we do that. No, we are the they they’re not requiring we are requiring this of ourselves. And if one person is pushing this, that’s because collectively we aren’t aware.
And that shifts accountability onto the individual, on onto one’s self. It’s people holding themselves accountable.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 37:47
And that, you know, translates to everything. Right? I mean, we’re talking about a doctor and a hospital system. But if you look at any organization, there’s some kind of mandate from the company. And it’s a new rule, it’s a new thing, and they’re not probably communicating.
I’ve been guilty of this for sure. Not communicating with the people like how I felt. Just like, okay, I got to just deal with it and live with it. Right. So I think it applies to any company.
What were some of the things you did to resolve conflicts at E-Prize? I know one of them, like it’s kind of embedded in the meeting itself. What are some other things that you did to make sure that they didn’t? You know, those conflicts or resentment didn’t increase with people?
Gabe Karp: 38:35
I had basically started a legal administration team. There was a team of about ten people, which is very large for a legal department of a company our size. But legal services were one of the deliverables to our clients. And I was hiring some lawyers, but also sometimes, as I was hiring people right out of college, their first job out of college, and I was teaching them enough law where they could talk to lawyers representing our clients on resolving some issues, and I needed them to be comfortable engaging in conflict with these lawyers because lawyers, you know, we talked about at the beginning of this big egos, right. There’s an intimidation factor.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:18
And they’ve probably been flexing this muscle of conflict all the time where most people may not be.
Gabe Karp: 39:25
Yes. And by the way, lawyers typically don’t take it as personally as non-lawyers. And that’s a real thing. So I was trying to get people very comfortable challenging things. And I would say and I would at the meetings I would say, listen, we got to like call stuff out.
We got to challenge things. And they would all nod and say, yes, you’re absolutely right. We do. But meeting after meeting, I wasn’t getting the kind of resistance and the basically challenging that I wanted. So one day someone asked a question and it was a legal question like, hey, we have a by the way, we did promotions like loyalty programs and that sort of thing is all around them.
Someone said, we have a client that wants to do it this way. Is that legal? And I said, actually it’s not. There’s a Supreme Court, United States Supreme Court case that. And then I made up a case with absurd facts like, if I can’t even remember what I said now, but if I said it, you’d be like, that’s not a real clearly, that’s not a real game.
And so I made up the most absurd scenario I could possibly think of. And they’re all just nodding. And I said, does that sound right to you? And someone says, no, I mean, it kind of doesn’t make sense. It sounds a little weird.
And I said, well, then why didn’t you question it? They said, because you said it with such authority that we figured it was right. Oh, by the way, I kind of blew the punchline. They said, that sound right to you? And they I said, that’s not right.
And they say, no. I said, that’s because I made it up. I totally made that up. Why didn’t any of you question it? And they said because you said it with such authority, we thought it was right.
And I said, if something doesn’t make sense, you have to question, I don’t care who says it, especially me. And then once they realized I was capable of just literally lying to them and making stuff up, it became a bit of a game. So they freely challenged me. And by the way, it was a little annoying because at some point I would get challenged and challenged. I was like, guys, just trust me.
Can we move on like it’s right? No, you told us not to. Not to let you get away with it. You have to convince us this is right, which is good. I mean, it does prompt a lot of good conversation.
And they even had fun doing that with each other, challenging each other and, you know, openly, like openly challenging, challenging someone else, like frontal assault. And nobody felt threatened. Nobody felt like their ego was being damaged. Nobody felt like they were being disrespected because it was fun.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 41:58
There was another type, you know, really difficult conversation. Could be firing someone. And can you talk about there was an instance where this happened with you and it’s actually someone that you liked.
Gabe Karp: 42:15
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:17
Not saying it’s any easier with someone you don’t like, but it’s especially hard if someone. Someone you like.
Gabe Karp: 42:22
Yeah. This is someone that I had worked with for a number of years, genuinely liked them. And at one point we did like a reorg and they moved his team under me. And there was a, there was a, a performance gap there, and he had not been given adequate feedback up to this point. So he was not aware of where these performance gaps were.
And I once we did this reorg, I took several weeks to kind of get the lay of land, understand what’s going on. And then I sat him down and we had a conversation saying, you know this, there’s a guy like, you’re operating here and you need to be operating at this level. And his first response was, I don’t believe you. Like, like if what you’re saying is true, somebody would have said that to me already. Like, I, you know, and that was real.
And then I had to say, well, if you don’t believe me, then you got a bigger problem. Because if I am lying to you, you got to get as far away from me as fast as possible, because that would mean I’m evil. That means I’m like, I’m making something up for some sick, perverse reason which you can’t trust me at all. So consider that as a possibility, but also consider the possibility I’m not evil and that, like, I’m just telling you the truth. And ultimately, we couldn’t.
We just. He was in it. He was in a position where he was kind of set up to fail, and it really wasn’t fair that he was in that position in the first place. But he was and it wasn’t. And I did everything I could do to get it into a place where it could work.
The reality was I could not afford the on-time it would take me to get it there. He could have gotten there. And by the way, he did get there. It was just later on I had to let him go. And it was at a time when the economy was in a really bad spot, and it just felt horrible.
Like, I remember not sleeping at all the night before, but I was very respectful to him. And most importantly, I was sort of like brutally honest to him. And ultimately he really appreciated it. And that was many years ago. To this day, we’re very friendly.
He’ll text me, we’ll text each other. Now, by the way, that speaks a lot more to his what that says about him as an individual, because he’s just a phenomenal person and less about, you know, how I handled it. But I think it’s sort of a combination of that. And one thing that really bothers me, and I’ve seen it a lot, is when there is a performance issue that goes unaddressed because the leader is just too afraid to have the uncomfortable conversation and out of some misplaced sense of, well, I want to be respectful of them. So they conflate being respectful with being nice, like telling somebody what they want to hear is not nice, especially if you they are not succeeding.
You know exactly how they are not succeeding. You know exactly what they can do to fix it, and then you deprive them of that opportunity by remaining silent. That is actually a very mean person for one human being to do to another. And I see that a lot. And I, I say, you know what?
Like you owe it to the person to fight through whatever discomfort you have. And one of the ways that you can fight through discomfort is to realize I’m actually doing this person a favor. Take a really simple example. I’m a keynote speaker. If you’re backstage with me, I’m about to walk out on stage and you see I have, like, food and like, spinach in my teeth.
And you don’t tell me like, that’s mean, you know? And yes, if you tell me, I’ll be. I will be embarrassed. Oh, my God, how long have I walking around this? But it’s a lot better to know about that before I walk out in front of 500 people than after.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 46:29
As a company. Gabe, how do you combat that? Do you have, like, a certain cadence of meetings to make sure, again, it’s like built into the process or what do you do like from a company standpoint?
Gabe Karp: 46:41
Yeah. So we talked earlier about those debrief and pre-brief meetings. That’s a great thing that is a great process thing you can do culturally. There’s another thing you can do, and that’s to have a culture of candor and a culture that honors accountability. And like we’re all in businesses, we’ve got external competitive threats, like any, any organization that is weighed down by having to tiptoe on issues because this person is overly sensitive, or that person always cries when you give them feedback, like those companies lose, they just lose.
They spend and waste so much time and energy accommodating what I’ll call adolescent emotional needs, that the companies with cultures of candor just blow right past them. So if you regularly give feedback, it doesn’t have to be in a process. And by the way, the debrief meeting process is great. So go ahead and do that. But just anytime you see anything that someone is doing or there’s a problem, you always have to.
It always has to be respectful. But if you’re like super quick to pull somebody aside and say, and say, hey, look, I just want to share something with you that you may not be aware of. Like, I think you might be being perceived in a way that you don’t want to be perceived. Well, that’s a great opening to whatever it is you have to say after that, because you’re coming from a place of support. But you have to do it regularly.
And when the leaders do that, they model the behavior for others. And then the other piece that I talked about is honoring accountability. I said earlier, like a lot of organizations, honor flawless execution above all else, and mistakes are frowned upon and they’re seen as badges of shame. And when you have a heavy emphasis like that in a culture, then people cover up mistakes. But when you make it known that, like, look, we’re human, we’re all going to make mistakes, that is inevitable.
But the real one, real test of character is how we respond once we recognize we’ve made a mistake. That’s something we need to honor in this organization. And when somebody steps up and says, hey, I screwed this up, this is how I screwed it up. And more importantly, this is what I’m going to do to make it better. And if the organization honors that, that’s going to drive a lot of innovation and that’s going to remove the fear.
No one like people should know, you’re never going to lose your job for making a mistake. You could lose your job for covering up a mistake because that’s actual dishonesty. And I say with clients, when you clients demand flawless execution, they all do, right? When you actually make a mistake and a client brings it to your attention and they’re angry, immediately fall on your sword immediately say, this is our this is our mistake. We’re going to do what it takes to make it right.
And if you do what it takes to make it right, then at the other side of that relationship, you’re going to have such a deeper loyalty with that client than you ever would have had had you flawlessly executed in the first place. That is something that is a cultural attribute that leadership can consciously make happen, and you don’t necessarily need some fancy process to do it. You have to believe it. You have to tell people that that’s what you do, and then you have to celebrate examples that when bad things do happen and people do hold, are held accountable, hold themselves accountable. You show how it works out.
Then people will strive to make good on when they fall short.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 50:14
Gabe, I have one last question, but thanks. Thank you for sharing your journey, your stories, and there was a great story in the book about what you just said. So I encourage people to check it out around Pampers, the really good Pampers example of exactly this. And again, I’m not going to we don’t have time to go into that story. But check it out that that’s one of my favorites too in the book.
Expectations right. Expectations. How people what their expectations are is a big, you know, thing when it comes to these difficult conversations. And that kind of parlays into the title of the book and how you came up with the title of the book itself.
Gabe Karp: 50:55
Yeah. Don’t Get Mad at Penguins. There’s a chapter Don’t Get Mad at Penguins because they can’t fly. And that is really the penguin analogy is just a lesson in acceptance that we should accept people’s limitations and not expect them to do things that they’re not capable of. And this gets into my Ted talk also.
But so much conflict and so much angst and frustration people feel because their expectation is different from the reality. And that gap in there, that is where people suffer, because the reality is oftentimes the other person we’re dealing with is simply just not capable of behaving in the way that we want. And one of the hardest things to do, one of the biggest challenges is to actually recognize that someone is limited, especially when everything else we know about them suggests that they’re not limited. So that’s why I say take a penguin, for example. What do you mean?
A penguin can’t fly? It’s a bird. It’s got wings. It’s got feathers. And birds with wings and feathers can fly.
Except penguins cannot. Like flight is literally beyond their ability. And you could choose to get mad at that. Or you can accept it. And that the same holds true with personal relationships with people.
Sometimes we have friends that are just negative. Sometimes we have people that are late, sometimes we got people with big egos. And I have found.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 52:23
Oh yeah, oh, totally expectation. One of my best friends is late to everything, right. And so that’s just my expectation. So obviously for my rehearsal dinner I told them two to come two hours early, told them that was the actual time. And he actually came right on time, which means he would have been two hours late.
Late. So that’s great. Anyway, so I totally, totally get that. Yeah.
Gabe Karp: 52:45
Right. And I mean, I will. Many, many years ago, I was talking to someone and she was sharing a situation she had with someone else, and she was really angry about this other person. And she was saying, this person always does this, like every single time. He always does this.
And I said, oh yeah, you’re getting mad at a penguin because it can’t fly. And she’s like, what the hell are you talking about? And so I explained to the penguin analogy and I asked her. I said, look, the next time this thing happens, what are the chances that this guy behaves in this way? And she’s like 100%.
I said, all right, then why are you getting mad at it? Like you just said that to me. So maybe a month from now, what happens if you get mad? You’re just choosing to be mad. Like that’s your choice.
But. But that guy is not making a choice. He’s literally not capable of doing what you want. And she’s like, what do you mean he’s not capable? He’s like smart, he’s witty, he’s intelligent.
Anyone who’s smart, witty, intelligent is capable of recognizing what I’m saying. I said, no, that’s not true. It like it is literally not. I mean, and then about six months later, she said, by the way, it’s happened a couple times with this guy, and as soon as he’s doing it, all I see is like this cute little penguin in front of me and I don’t even get mad.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 54:06
Love it Gabe, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thanks for sharing your story, your journey everyone. Check out. You can check out the Ted talk. Go to GabeKarp.com.
You can check out the book Don’t Get Mad at Penguins and we’ll see everyone next time. Gabe, thanks so much.
Gabe Karp: 54:20
Thanks for having me, Jeremy.
