Flourishing at Work
Daniel Coyle returns to reflect on what has changed since we last spoke. He’s moved attention to an examination of what contributes to us getting a fulfilling experience from work – and life.
We talk attention, community and the way that great teams demonstrate ‘group flow’. We also delve into some research by Nick Epley that I’ve covered on the newsletter, that suggests we’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy.
If you like this check out the previous episodes with Daniel:
Dan Coyle can fix your broken culture
TRANSCRIPT
Bruce Daisley: Dan, thank you so much for joining me. I wonder if to kick off, you could just introduce who you are and what you do.
Daniel Coyle: Yeah. Daniel Coyle. I’m a, I’m a writer. I was raised in Alaska. I have four daughters and my life has been kind of writing about the machinery beneath the magic. Like in individuals that look sort of magical, super talented, what’s really going on there? Groups that are super talented, great culture.
What’s, what’s the machinery there? And now I’ve been with this latest book, turning My, my lens to kind of a bigger topic, which is sort of what, uh, what communities, what great communities do, what is the power, what is happening in, in groups that are creating this thriving growth and joy and meaning. Um, which of course brings us to your world, I think a little bit.
Bruce Daisley: It, it really struck me the, I wonder if there was just moments of personal reflection that inspired you to think about these things that sort of transcended just the, the, the thing that we spend 40 hours a week on into sort of the whole of our life. Life. So you talked about your parents passing away.
You talked about at the end of the book, you talked about your, your daughter sort of going to college or moving on beyond that. And I just wonder if, if your own sort of personal stages in life helped you get that perspective and that reflection.
Daniel Coyle: I think that’s a nice point. I think apparently we get older. Bruce, I
Bruce Daisley: Huh?
Daniel Coyle: I’m not, I was having trouble absorbing this, but apparently it’s true and you can’t help. But as you do, uh, kind of take a little bigger lens on things and I think as a group, we’ve all learned, we’ve all seen enough like sad success stories. Like people who were very successful in the conventional, by the conventional metrics. And yet when you meet them or when you spend time with them or you hear about their personal lives, they’re a train wreck. There’s, there’s, there’s an emptiness and a sadness to ’em. So I guess my interest kind of went that way along with everybody else’s, where it’s like, yeah, you know what, when you in the big picture, um, how do we become our best selves?
How do we find some success? How do we have fulfillment at work? Um, that? What’s that made of? Is that just kind of those people got lucky who do it? Or is there something going on there that’s a little bit, a little bit deeper and is there a machinery there that we can kind of understand that is all about kind of flourishing? Um, not just succeeding, right? Not just having the metrics, but actually having this sense of aliveness and growth and possibility that we get to inhabit every day.
Bruce Daisley: The book’s called Flourish Then.
Daniel Coyle: was, yeah. Yeah. Right. Sorry.
Bruce Daisley: The, the book’s called Flourish. So talk us specifically about that. ’cause you’ve sort of articulated it a little bit there. So flourishing is, is where what we’re thriving we’re.
Daniel Coyle: joyful, meaningful, growth shared. And the big insight, I think, uh, of, of my book. I went, I went out there researching places. As I, as I’ve said, I’ve spent a lot of my, my life researching top performers on top of the mountain who had reached the top of the mountain. And this book sent me into the valleys, like places of richness and growth.
And, you know, a little town in Vermont that had produced 11 Olympians, most of whom come back there to live afterwards. Or this little deli, uh, in Michigan that started out as a one room. One room deli, and that was a $90 million community of businesses rooted in the same place. You know, they’re turning down offers from Walt Disney to go to Florida and California.
They, they love where they’re at. They’re joyful, they’re thriving. They’re creating meaning and. When I started out, I thought I’d find places that had, you know, sort of tidy answers. They had figured it out. But what I found was that these places were really good at kind of living into the question, at creating meaningful connection that that connects us.
And so that, that was kind of the, the, the surprise I kept seeing the same pattern over and over again of the framework is they, they’re able to sort of pause and create meaning and open up their attention. And then the second thing they’re able to do is create. for collective leadership. You know, design conditions where people can get into group flow and move toward a horizon together. And it really comes down to the power of community. Like all these places, whether it was at a workplace, whether it was in an actual community, we’re sort of functioning as a community. And so the big insight was you can’t do it alone. Like we kind of have a reflective, a reflexive answer that, oh, you, we flourish as individuals. But in truth, that’s a huge mistake. You know, we evolved to live and thrive in community, and these places functioning in such a way they’re pushing away some of the. Speed and fragmentation of the modern world, and they’re able to kind of in an old mode, an older mode where they’re slowing down, they’re connecting, and they’re able to kind of group flow their way toward these obstacles in ways, through obstacles, toward a horizon, in ways that sort of make them come alive.
And I think we’ve all like one way to think about this. Is to kind of think about times in your life where you’ve felt kind of connected to a vibrant community where you felt like yourself, you know, growing and changing and experiencing joy on the daily. Those kind of moments, um, are what these places are really good at at creating.
So, you know, flourishing is kind of a synonym for great community, right? Flourishing. You can’t do it alone. You, we require others to create the best version of ourselves.
Bruce Daisley: But tell me this, I I, I feel like I’m gonna skip forward to touch here. ’cause the example of the deli really provoked in me something, which is something that we frequently don’t ask, but, uh, it often comes from common experiences. When I see businesses that are doing, especially o well, it’s a reflection of question of business models that, you know, you, you’ve not really said it there, but one thing that comes out in the deli story is that they turned down the chance to take you, me, you mentioned it just.
But they, they turned down the chance to go to Disney or to Disneyland or to, to, to take up lucrative offer. And the business model, which is the pursuit of relentless growth and capitalism and, and profitability, would strongly advise them not to do that. Quite often when I see businesses that are doing well, they’re not owned by VCs, for example.
They’re not owned by, um, private equity. They have got some degree of an ownership structure, which. Structuring things in such a way that they are, they’re slightly removed from the excesses of greed and capitalism. Now, you know, I think most of us would recognize that capitalism is the system that we’ve got, but some of your examples and the reflection on community might suggest that those.
Daniel Coyle: that.
Bruce Daisley: These richness in life. When we, uh, take a step back from the, the, the, the excesses of financial richness, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s a touch of an existential question, but what’s your take on that one?
Daniel Coyle: Yeah, no, it’s true. As, as, as the, the co-founder of Zingerman’s, this deli, um, says unlimited growth is the model of the cancer cell. And, and they’ve created a business where
Bruce Daisley: I.
Daniel Coyle: real value on that. And I think the, the fundamental disconnect, the fundamental error we make over and over again is that we think great businesses are machine. We think a great workplace is like a machine, and there’s an area in which that’s true. There’s an area in which that’s true, but deep down, um, great teams, great workplaces, great experience. They’re, they’re not in fact, machines. Machines are designed to create a predictable, reliable output, right? And they’re owned by an owner of the machine that pushes the button, that makes things happen. But in fact, great workplaces are, they’re alive, right? They’re more like a, a flock of birds moving through a set of obstacles towards some horizon. There’s a sense of connection, there’s a sense of surprise, all the elements of good culture, of belonging, of vulnerability, of having a purpose, and there’s a sense of aliveness that they create.
And so the place is like zinger’s. That are able to do this. And it’s not just Zingerman’s, they’re not a one-off. You know, I’ve worked with a major league baseball team that also creates this sense of continual aliveness. They’re choosing another mode to be, you know, in an age when information is as cheap as tap water, knowledge and strategy is cheap as tap water. Um, these places are realizing that we cannot information our way to success and fulfillment, but we can relationship our way there. can relationship our way there. We can community our way there. And so communities and living things and relationships have a very different rule, set of rules. They’re not about optimizing, maximizing every single thing with the maximum information.
They’re actually built around relationship. And when you’re built around relationship, you’re built around moments. built around meaning. so what they’re doing is designing their spaces in such a way that they’re creating moments. That sounds terribly abstract. So let me give you an example. A major league baseball team a very low budget.
They happen to be the Cleveland guardians that I’ve worked with for the last dozen years, and they realize they cannot, they cannot just simply buy talent like other teams. They have to grow it, they have to grow it. They have a minor league system that where they take young players and bring ’em in, at first they decide, well, we just need to bring in expert coaches to tell our coaches how to coach.
Let’s give them best practices. it sounds good, but it actually doesn’t work. turns out to work is the coaches, flipping it on its head and saying, Hey coaches, we’d like you to get into small groups and discuss a question. And the question we’d like you to discuss is, who was the best coach you ever saw? What did they do? them in detail. these coaches create these small group conversations that are hugely electric. Energized. The coaches have gone from being in a defensive crouch, feeling the expertise pushed on them, being part of a machine, to feeling alive, to feeling, oh, curious, what was the best coach I ever met?
What did they do? How did they connect with me? How did they bring knowledge to those interactions? And from that, we built at The Guardian, something called the Model of Excellence, model of excellent coaching. that. of action where we take, we have the knowledge. We’re gonna act like a machine to wait a minute, no, we’re gonna act like a living set of relationships.
We’re gonna relationship ourselves way forward toward a clear horizon. With guardrails. that’s the move that I see in these places all the time. When they see something, they don’t look outside for answers, but they turn toward each other and they have a conversation that brings people alive, a real conversation. Um, so we can’t information our way there, but we can relationship our way there. And the,
Bruce Daisley: Right.
Daniel Coyle: there is that over the last 12 years, the guardians have won as many games as the New York Yankees and spent $1.5 billion less money because they are. Accessing the human potential that they have.
Bruce Daisley: You, you, you sort of, you talk through these themes, the idea of presence. I, I, I was really taken with, because like, you know, one, one of the interesting things about presence is probably the way that we would in a work context, we’ve talked about presence. Five years ago would’ve been the fact that you’re present in the office five days a week.
And, and you know, the, I think so the juxta position of that where presence is very much about attention is about are you gifting your full attention to people is a really interesting, timely reflection on the moment we’re in right now. And the books for me is all about the themes of attention and connection.
Like, you know, group flow is the, the way that you talk about connection and those two things are how we gift those things. Um, just felt very timely and very relevant to the world of work, especially because the scarcity of attention, the scarcity of presence, um, is probably the, the thing that from.
School educators through to workplaces. We, we, we see the consequence of the lack of it. Um, but we, we don’t necessarily have the, the answers right in front of us. But when you look at the modern world of work, uh, uh, how do you
Daniel Coyle: do
Bruce Daisley: think that we should bring more presence to the way that we operate with each other?
What, what choices should we be making?
Daniel Coyle: Well, I think the first thing, I mean, I think we can all agree that we’re in kind of an a intentional crisis, right? We all feel sped up. And flattened out and the world seems thin and too busy and there’s so much information coming at us and we’ve seen it with kids this, this sense of an attentional crisis.
But what we’re lacking kind of amazingly is what we don’t have a model of attentional health. Right. It’s like we’re in a nutrition crisis. Everyone realizes we’re eating too much sugar, but we don’t have a model for what a good diet looks like. We don’t have a food pyramid, whatever you wanna call that.
And the, the, the interesting moment we’re in right now is that we’re, we’re realizing that and we’re seeing what that pyramid might look like and a good model for attentional health balances. The two types of attention. We don’t have one type of attention. We have two. As you’re saying, we have narrow task attention, which is built to sort of find and get things done and control things.
It’s, it really thrives on a feeling of control and pieces and parts put together in the right way, and that’s what we’re in all the time. But that’s very thin. It’s very unfulfilling. It’s very frenetic. It bounces from one thing to the next, but there’s another type of attention. is sort of like sugars and proteins in a diet, right? The protein part of attention is, as you’re saying, relational attention. Relational connective attention, which is much broader and much quieter, and it’s warmer and it seeks to connect, and so it’s really. our brains are built to flip constantly between these two, those two forms connect and it, from an evolutionary point of view, it’s kind of interesting because you sort of can picture our ancestors.
They’ve gotta find food, they’ve gotta focus on it, grab it, control it. That’s task attention. But they also have to pay attention to the sky and to the, their social group and the world around them. And that’s relational attention. That’s connective attention. So what I see in. Right now, this crisis that we’re in is that we’re all in narrow, narrow task attention all the time and our world is built for it.
And it works very well with capitalism and consumerism. Like to get people to focus on narrow things and to assume that there’s some silver bullet thing that will fix everything that’s very task attention. Um, what great groups do, and I keep encountering the same model, um, the same type of leadership is task attention hunts for answers, relational attention explores mysteries and questions. And so what I see in good groups are exactly what we saw in the guardians. Asking deep questions ends up being the best way to activate that broader form of attention, that presence, what we did in the Guardians at that time was to ask, who’s the best coach you ever saw? Well, there’s no quick answer to that, right? That that ignites a whole new type of way of paying attention. And then we say, get in conversation with each other. Well, that’s a whole new type of attention, right? That’s also broad relational attention. So the key I think, in work is to make, make task attention the servant of relational attention. Make, make the big activate, make the big, make the big lantern of, of big attention of, uh, relational attention.
Turn on. And so we see with these leaders all the time, they’re always the ones who they’re not. Providing the answer. They’re always kind of creating space for this quiet responsiveness. That’s where meaning really happens, is in these quiet moments and there’s, there’s phrases that they use to, to kind of do that.
I see. I see. You know, a lot of good leaders say things like, now it’s up to you. I’m not gonna give you the answer. That phrase, now it’s up to you. Um, another thing they say all the time is they kind of admit they screwed things up. know, that also activates that broader form of attention. The, those leaders aren’t in the stance of always providing the answer and direction and seeking answers.
They’re always kind of on the lookout for what’s missing. And they’re always quick to say, Hey, I think I made a mistake there. That activates a real, a real openness, right? They’re always trying to create that kind of openness. other thing they do all the time at, at, and they literally are allergic to providing answers.
I talked to somebody who worked at Zingerman’s for 25 years and they talked about the leader at Zingerman’s they worked with, and they said he has never at given me an answer in 25 years. There was a strategy meeting they were having and this woman, she’s the head of the bakery at this $90 million community of businesses and, um. And she was saying, I think we need to do this with the baker. I think we need to do this strategy, that strategy. And the leader whose name is Ari, stopped her and said, I don’t care about any of that stuff. What do you want to do? What kind of bakery do you really want to have? Right, and that’s the kind of question they’re asking.
It’s relational, it’s deep, it’s mysterious, and they’re constantly kind of exploring into those questions and that’s what what creates that sense of aliveness. And now that that woman at the bakery is no longer obeying, she actually has to stop. She actually has to create space and think and create this sense of presence where it’s like, that’s a great question.
What kind of bakery do I want to
Bruce Daisley: Yeah,
Daniel Coyle: Right?
Bruce Daisley: it’s, it’s really interesting ’cause the, what you’re describing there is, you know, creating the architecture for people to have autonomy, to have agency, to feel like they’re, they’re getting stuff done. I, I guess, you know, and a really sort of mundane, practical level, one of the barriers to us doing that in.
Knowledge, jobs. It’s just our calendars back to back with these things that superficially feel important or urgent. And so creating a space for presence. You, you used the phrase there, creating space for quiet responsiveness and. To some extent, there’s sort of the architecture of our jobs right now feels like there’s no space it feels like, and, and that’s,
Daniel Coyle: That
Bruce Daisley: um, that sort of construction of urgency and busyness all the time is actually preventing us having that presence, that sense of asking deep questions.
We’re sort of locked in this melee. Of fees of transaction as we’re going through the day. It, it sort of requires a degree of system thinking that I think most organizations feel reluctant to. I, I did some work with one organization a couple of years ago and right up to the level of European leaders, south American leaders.
These people were like regional leaders of this huge firm. None of them felt like they had the. Permission to change this overwhelm of work. It’s just really interesting that you know, the things you articulate there are so evident and powerful and obvious, but people just struggle to actually build work around them.
Daniel Coyle: It’s a structural problem. You, you’re
Bruce Daisley: Hmm.
Daniel Coyle: It is very, and the people who have seen who’ve done it well have done it almost as an act of subterfuge in a way. Right? Like they’ll do something that sort of sounds. A very organized right and sounds, but in fact they’re secretly creating a little, a little bit of space.
One of them ways to do that is, flight checks. You know, if you’re on a project, they’ll have a meeting at the beginning, middle, and end, and it’s like a check-in. But the actual purpose of the check-in is to see how the team is doing and what they’re energized by. So the check-in is like, what excites you about this project? Okay. That, are you still excited by that? Like, are you still getting it? And, and so there’s a, there’s a, there’s kind of an architecture that looks transactional, but in fact in it, you’re creating a space. Another way people do that is through a 30 70 meeting, which is a typical meeting, but you spend the first 30% kind of defining the problem the last 70%, like just loosely exploring the problem. There’s a lot of, ’cause there is a lot of firmness in, in this, there is a lot of structure in creating the conditions for group flow. You need to really clearly define the shared horizon, right? You need to really clear what do we want the outcome to look like? What direction are we going here? Let’s spend a lot of time on that, exploring that, and then the, what are the guardrails?
What do we definitely not want to do on this project? And then it becomes a question of agency. How do we get agency going? But you can, you can sort of do that in, in a little, it, it’s a little sneaky, right? But in a, another way to do that would be in a feedback conversation, typically. I mean, we’re gonna, you know, you’re gonna gimme feedback on my work. be tempting for you to give me all the answers. Uh, it’d be tempting for me, you to give me all the, all your opinions on how I’ve been doing. But what I see good groups doing is you would ask me two questions, is you would ask, what do you wanna do more of, Dan? what do you wanna do more of? Well, that’s a, that, that’s a different kind of question, isn’t it? Another question you’d ask might be, what do you think you should do differently? And that’s it. So you’re doing less, you’re putting it on me, as you should. And it ends up being these coaching moments,
Bruce Daisley: Mm.
Daniel Coyle: every coaching moments, are not about delivering answers. They’re about framing questions that allow people to self-organize. Into them. So I’ve gotta organize myself to answer those questions, right? And I have to think about in a deep way, what really energizes me. What do I think I’m doing well now? Um, what do I wanna do differently? That’s, that’s a deep question actually. So I think it, it, you’re right that this I love you say transactional fizz.
That’s what, that’s actually what it feels like. We we’re bouncing around in this, this carbonation, um, but smart groups see what you and I are seeing. And smart leaders see it too. And so they’re finding ways to kind of smuggle presence and, and, and get these things into, into the, into the water of the organization where you can create these. And because that’s actually the beautiful advantage of thinking relationally. ’cause relationships aren’t machines. They happen in moments. And that moment in conversation where you say, what do you think you should do differently? That’s a moment like that changes the relationship. so. That’s, I guess the, if there isn’t, I, I know the world of work can feel like a dystopia because it kind of is, but I think the, the, the optimistic story and the hope lies in the fact that relationships aren’t machines.
That moments can change things. That, that good questions can change things even when they’re embedded in a, in a, in a structure that seems kind of inhuman at times.
Bruce Daisley: One of the things that
Daniel Coyle: That
Bruce Daisley: I, I,
Daniel Coyle: I,
Bruce Daisley: I’ve been researching something myself and I love the work of Nick Eley, and so when I saw that you’d, uh, you drew on his work. I was, I was really taken, I was really taken with hearing what you, you said, and I guess, you know, when we are. Talking about connection and relationships, quite often, um, we might imagine the experience of these things from the outset.
And so Epley’s work was really helpful for, I think, challenging some of our priors on these things. Do you wanna just talk through Epley’s work and, and what it can teach us about connecting with others and how we might anticipate it before we are actually experiencing it?
Daniel Coyle: Oh, I love that. We’re, we’re, I love that you’re digging into that. I mean, if you think about the, the world of the office, it, it very much resembles the train cars and the buses that Nick Eley does his research on. Right? We’re all kind of together here. We’re all typically on our phones. Well, Nick got obsessed with a, a question, which is sort of why is, why are, why is my ride to work so quiet? Everyone’s not, no one’s talking to each other on this. Everybody’s, he’s kind of immersed in their, in their little world. So he did an experiment by himself. He chatted with the person next to him. She had a red hat on, and he said, Hey, I like your hat. And she responded and they had this lovely conversation.
And then he expanded that experiment. Did, he works at the University of Chicago. He expanded the experiment to sort of say, give people two jobs as they go to work. Two groups. One group was asked to sort of keep to themselves. The other group was asked to chat with their neighbor. Get to know a member of your community.
Just by the end of the ride, get to know ’em. when those people predicted how they would feel, group to keep to yourselves predicted it would be great. They predicted, oh, this will feel really good to prepare for my day. second group predicted, ah, I don’t wanna talk with a random person.
That seems terrible. And then he had measured their happiness afterwards and it flipped. The first group was kind of de-energized, keeping themselves. The second group, it was the highlight of their day. Chatting. It turned out they were terrible at predicting what that would feel like and what he has taken away.
What he’s built a real body of work around is how bad we are at predicting what those interactions make us feel like. We think they’re gonna de-energize us. We think it’s going to be scary, what is revealing is the fact that we are pre-wired for community. We are pre-wired to switch, and I guess we can conceive of it as those two attention systems flipping on and off.
You know, our task attention looks at that and says, Ooh, that’ll be scary. It doesn’t fit. I don’t like it. but then when we actually engage with our relational attention, it ends up being incredibly uplifting. You know, we need other people. So when we step through that uncertainty. When we step through that seeming annoyance, um, we end up getting, uh, any sort of electric fence that keeps us away from other people, right? When we step through that, we end up having these really enriching, connective community experiences. And the other big insight he had is that it’s not about intensity of those experiences, it’s about frequency. So a bunch of small interactions add up in a huge way more than one interaction might. I’m, you know, reminded, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a story that I think of often as kind of the one envelope rule, and it’s a story about the writer Kurt Vonnegut, he was walking to the local drugstore, this is a very epley sort of story. Um, he was walking to the local drugstore and he bought one envelope. it got sold. Next day he came back and he bought one more envelope, and the woman at the behind the counter said, I’ve got a whole box. I’ve got, I can sell you 50. And he said, I don’t want 50, because when I walk here, I get the chance to pat the dogs in the street and I get to make funny faces at the babies in the stroller.
And I give a thumbs up to the fire engine as it goes by. And that’s why I’m here. I’m not here for the, for the envelope. And so in a world where. Friction is always seen as a negative where we sort of see any, anything that gets between us and our goal, our outcome, our instrumentalized, uh, target as being negative.
I think what Epley and Vonnegut are teaching us is like, Hey, one envelope, you just to embrace those little moments, step through the uncertainty, step through the friction, and you end up with a much. It’s relationship. You end up
Bruce Daisley: Mm.
Daniel Coyle: you don’t end up with, you know, life is not about goals.
Life goals are part of life, but in the end it’s about relationships. And Epley and Vonnegut are, are relationship athletes. They’re, they’re, they’re, they’re showing us what that move looks like.
Bruce Daisley: Inconvenience is the price of community, as they say. But one, one, the interesting things about that is that
Daniel Coyle: is.
Bruce Daisley: this, a writer called Derek Thompson, who variously writes for the Atlantic or for, for his own substack, but he, he talked last year about this rising phenomenon and he referenced Dely Nick, please research this rising phenomenon of elective isolation.
That people are spending more time alone, spending a hundred minutes a day, more alone time than there were six years ago. People are people. Are seemingly being told by their brains that actually spending time alone will be more rewarding than the inconvenient price of community I, and, and I think we’re particularly observing that in the context of the workplace.
You know, people not turning up to social things or perceiving that. Colleagues are no longer friends in the way that they might have been before. The, the rates of friendship are lower than they’ve ever been before. How can we incentivize people to get through that? What are the things you speak So compellingly, I think about this, the, the, the.
The, um, the benefit to all of us of getting into group flow of the, the benefit to all of us, of, of making the journey and finding the richness of this connection. But before people embark upon that journey, they often, like in Nick Epley’s research, they don’t perceive the value it’s gonna have for them.
Is there any way organizationally or as leaders, we can help people on that journey, persuading them that there’s gonna be richness here.
Daniel Coyle: Yeah, what a great, what a great question. I think they ultimately, I think, I think makes me think of two things. One is that people sort of need, I think Thompson’s work is especially powerful, but knowledge and, and this conversation we’re having now, it really, really, people need to understand in the same way that they understand physical fitness or nutrition, that there is a model. That there is actually, know, a a, a healthy social fitness is an absolute necessity. I think we’re starting to realize that. I think we’re starting to, that model is beginning, especially with attentional work, with the work of Jonathan Haight. Um, we’re getting a sense that there is actually a model there that matters.
And, and the second thing it makes me think about is, is structure. How we structure our days, how we structure our neighborhoods, how we structure our work. Um, you know, there is at, at the same time as this is happening and, and it is happening, there’s more isolation. There’s this also parallel move, uh, where I see where you look at the attendance festivals. look at the rates of Gen Z doing dinner parties and, and, and friend gatherings and, and, and there is this, you know, you look at something as silly as, as a little silly, but also deep as like attendance at Burning Man. Um, you know, these, these, these, this new appreciation for doing kind. Big community festival things together. That is the, the other piece of that, I think. So when we look at it as a whole, I think it is a, a complex picture where there’s more isolation in some ways, but there’s also a new awareness of how these events can connect and, and live in our lives. but in terms of, you know, what do we do now? I think it’s a hard thing to persuade someone to do. They have to, they have to live it. And so leaders, modeling, modeling this sort of behavior and structuring their environments in ways that that make it. Possible and convenient. And then, you know, I see a lot of workplaces going back to in-person Tuesday to Thursday. Um, I think that’s an encouraging sign.
It’s not, there is some constraint there, there is some structure. You’re kind of creating a channel to give people that connection in that agency. Um, but I think you’re right to say it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a critical problem and, and kind of shedding light on it and also creating structures where people can have that. Um, that kind of interaction ends up being sort of the paths forward. ’cause ultimately, like anything, they’ve gotta make their own choice, right? People have to how good it feels to talk to other people on the train. they also have to realize that there’s, uh, an entire, you know, trillion dollar economy based on keeping people isolated and a little angry and on edge. And I think we’re starting to realize, we’re starting to see the connections. Um. Of what that economy has done to us and starting to kind of heal that and, and I’m, that, that’s, I think, an encouraging step
Bruce Daisley: One of the things that I, I guess, is common through what we’ve been talking about so far is that sometimes we’re not always great at predicting the pleasure that we would get from things that happen. In the spirit of that, I really liked your yellow door metaphor and. Actually the, the personal testimonies of, of how you, um,
Daniel Coyle: uh, how,
Bruce Daisley: how, how you’ve benefited from that.
Could you, could you tell us
Daniel Coyle: Tell us
Bruce Daisley: the yellow door metaphor and, and, and just the richness it’s added to your own life?
Daniel Coyle: Yeah, no, it’s, it is been powerful. It’s an idea I learned from Lisa Miller, who I talked to in the book. She’s a psychologist at Columbia, and the point is we often go through life and to think of our narrow attention system here, we often go through life looking for the green doors that are open and the red doors that are closed.
Clear paths, clear signals. Go here, don’t go there. But life becomes different when you start attuning to yellow doors. And yellow doors are neither green nor red, and they are a mixed signal of a possibility, uh, a pathway, a relationship, a skill you might want to build, or maybe a place you might want to go or a relationship you might want nurture. Um, and so after learning that, I started kind of keeping an eye out for him and I got a call, it was about five years ago. From four years ago when I first started working on this book, um, from a friend, uh, his name was Jeff and he had recently gotten divorced and he said, I want to go indoor climbing. I wanna get a group of guys to go indoor climbing.
And response was, I, I’m afraid of heights. And I think indoor climbing is. It’s, you are wearing that silly shoes, those elf shoes, and it’s painful. So my first response was, that’s clearly a red door. Like, I don’t wanna do that. But then I stopped and I thought, oh, this yellow door idea, so I’ll do it. So I showed up. I wore my harness backwards. I was in a lot of it, it hurts. It was no fun. But it kind of was fun too. And I liked being around these guys. And they were funny. They were funny dudes. And so we ended up hanging out together, going every Wednesday. long story short, those relationships. Have grown into going to concerts together, taking ski trips together, getting the families together, playing music together. Um, they’ve grown to some of my best friends in the world. And as a, as a guy whose kids have gotten older, having friends like that has been incredibly meaningful. Um, and really rich and I. You know, it continues to, um, just really be an important part of life. And it was all because of that yellow door. I mean, if I had walked past that, I wouldn’t have it.
I wouldn’t have any idea what I was missing. so we’re terrible. I think yellow doors is powerful because we’re so bad. ’cause think of our narrow attention, would say positive, negative. Look very at it. But life isn’t quantitative. You, you, you can’t predict. We think it’s all straight lines, but it’s not.
If you take a pencil and draw your life on a piece of paper, it’s a bunch of curves. and in those curves are these yellow doors that are opening new pathways. And so tuning into that ends up being, um, just a, just a way to make life more alive.
Bruce Daisley: Love it. Love it. Um,
Daniel Coyle: And
Bruce Daisley: Dan, obviously, you know, you’ve, you’ve written a couple of sort of huge books before that have had a huge impact on people. Is is there, as you’ve sort of put this together, which is a. Uh, got applications for both work and, and life. Is, is there a project that you think you’re gonna tackle next?
Or how do you think about this? You said this taken you four years. What would you think about doing next?
Daniel Coyle: I don’t know. Each project has a way, you know, I started with individual talent, which led to groups, which has led to kind of flourish and thriving. And so I, I, I need to, each book kind of opens the door to the next mystery in a way. So I, I don’t know what that mystery is. I’m waiting for the yellow door.
So if you see one Bruce,
Bruce Daisley: Yeah. I love it.
Daniel Coyle: put a spotlight on it for me.
Bruce Daisley: Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today and, and for, for putting more content out there. I think that is gonna be
Bruce Daisley: for leaders, for people in organizations as they’re try and wrestle with the themes that they’re dealing with right now. So, uh, strong recommend on the book.
I loved it.
Daniel Coyle: It’s great to see you again, Bruce. Thanks for making the time and thanks for what you do. I think you have a big impact on people and it’s just, just cool to be part of it.
