Welcome to The Beacon. Creating Buy-in’s short newsletter designed to shine a light on the nuances of leadership and give a fresh perspective on how to move forward.
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The Vast and Endless Sea
Recently I came across a conversation between Naval Ravikant and Kapil Gupta. This won’t be the first time these two are brought up, especially Naval. Naval is an angel investor and modern day philosopher in his own right. Kapil is an author and creator of Siddha Performance. In the conversation, Kapil and Naval are talking about hard work and whether it is talent or hard work that is more valuable. The entire conversation is worth a listen and in fact, they touch on something that we’ll return to sometime in the future.
The portion of the conversation that I found so valuable was where Naval says the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry quote:
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
This quote encapsulates so much about what leaders do. It isn’t about micromanaging and telling them what to do, but to inspire them to want to do it themselves. It’s easy to check in on someone and make sure they’re checking the boxes, but if they “yearned for the vast and endless sea” they would have already done the work to gather the wood without your asking. Not only that, but I love the concept of “the vast and endless sea” because it is something that is uncertain and scary. Is that not what we should be encouraging those we coach to be unafraid of? Also, it is our job to paint a picture of what the future could look like for them if they stay the course and develop themselves into someone they can be proud of.
The Truth About Hard Work
It wouldn’t be right to talk about the above concept but then not link to the conversation. I found the entire clip very insightful and we will come back to it again another time. In the conversation, Kapil and Naval navigate society’s perspective on hard work, laziness and motivation. In this portion of the conversation (18:18 – 20:20) they stumble into motivation, leadership and micromanagement. So worth a listen!
"Don't Shoot The Dog"
It may sound silly to learn leadership from a dog trainer but the way Karen Pryor breaks down some of her behavioral science findings in Don’t Shoot the Dog, is certainly applicable to your leadership journey. So much so, that this was in Tim Ferris’ recommended reading list. In it, she goes in depth into operant conditioning, BF Skinner, the reward/punishment stimuli that are presented to us in every walk of life, and how they effect us in our interactions in society. Highly recommend!
