In the third installment in a series of episodes, The Knowledge Project curates essential segments from five guests revolving around one theme: leadership. This episode helps put a unique definition on leadership and examines whether or not good leaders are context-dependent, the differences between a great leader and an average leader, how great leaders should balance feedback, the difference between being right and doing right, a playbook for managing teams, and the importance of radical candor. The guests on this episode are author Jim Collins (Episode 61, 110), author and leadership expert Jennifer Garvey Berger (Episode 43), co-founder of the Admired Leadership Institute Randall Stutman (Episode 96), the President and COO of Athletic Greens Kat Cole (Episode 117), the former CEO of Ford Alan Mulally (Episode 151), and co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group Diana Chapman (Episode 130). -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you scrolling on your phone constantly? How badly do you crave that morning cup of coffee? Are you compulsively gambling, drinking, shopping, or even reading romance novels just to fall asleep? The potential for addiction is everywhere in our society, and on this episode of The Knowledge Project psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke discusses dopamine, addictive behaviors, warning signs and treatment for addiction, and how our brains handle all that pleasure and pain in life. Dr. Lembke is professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic. She appeared in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma to discuss the addictive nature of social media, and she is the author of the 2021 New York Times bestseller Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, which explores how to moderate compulsive overconsumption in a dopamine-overloaded world. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What if you could change the way your company operates, even if you’re not the CEO? Aaron Dignan believes it’s possible, and in this episode he’s offering a wealth of insights into how organizations are run, the perils of stagnant bureaucracy, and all the various hurdles keeping us from doing our best work. As the founder of The Ready - a global organizational transformation and coaching practice - Dignan helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. He’s worked with clients such as American Express, Microsoft, Citibank, Hyatt, Johnson & Johnson, Airbnb, and Sweetgreen. He’s also an active angel investor who helps build partnerships between the startups and end-ups he advises. Dignan is also the author of Brave New Work, co-host of the Brave New Work podcast and founder of Murmur. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Athletic Greens: Comprehensive nutrition and gut health support in one simple scoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Acclaimed executive coach and leadership development specialist Carolyn Coughlin calls on more than a decade of experience to help you become a better listener. She goes in-depth on why the language we use with each other and with ourselves is so important, the three different types of listening, the most common skill she teaches that makes an immediate impact, and how to help your kids become better listeners. Coughlin is a co-founder at Cultivating Leadership, a leadership development consultancy firm that helps leaders and organizations grow and lead in the face of complexity, ambiguity, and change. She also spent nine years with leadership consulting firm Kenning Associates and more than five years with McKinsey & Company. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Athletic Greens: Comprehensive nutrition and gut health support in one simple scoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author and Buddhist practitioner Jack Kornfield sits down for a candid, in-depth interview to help you suppress self-doubt and find inner calm. Calling on decades of experience as one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West, Kornfield offers valuable insights into how to best deal with conflict and stress in your life and how to handle harmful outside influences in healthy, constructive ways. Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974, co-founding the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold over a million copies. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Athletic Greens: Comprehensive nutrition and gut health support in one simple scoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Knowledge Project closes 2022 with a look back at some of the best conversations of the year. Featuring interviews from 10 of the most downloaded and acclaimed episodes of 2022, this collection of conversations offers a variety of insights into evidence-based approaches to happiness, getting things done, small things you can do to make life great, eliminating drama, impulse control, making faster and better decisions, the core human nature that drives us all, sleeping better, slowing down your aging process, and what really matters. Guests on this episode include: Happiness expert Laurie Santos, former Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally, executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, leadership expert Diana Chapman, leading neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Kunal Shah, sleep scientist Matthew Walker, aging expert David Sinclair, and business leader Sarah Jones Simmer. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com Athletic Greens: Comprehensive nutrition and gut health support in one simple scoop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Social psychologist Emily Balcetis has devoted her career to understanding how people’s perceptions of the world fuel their motivations and life goals. In this episode she goes in-depth on that wealth of research, what she’s learned from studying some of the world’s most successful people and how they set goals, and how you can get better results in life if you change the way you see the world and where you place your focus. Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University (NYU), focused on how the motivations, emotions, needs, and goals people hold impact the basic ways people perceive, interpret, and ultimately react to information around them. She is also the author of the book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, which was released in 2020. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/TKP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keith Creel calls on nearly a decade of experience working with the Canadian Pacific Railway to discuss his strategies for leadership and how he’s turned the company around over five years in charge. We discuss all you need to know about the rail industry and how it affects our daily lives, what changes he sees coming in the future for the industry, how he thinks about leadership in times of change, and how Canadian Pacific secured a $27 billion deal to take over its rival, Kansas City Southern. Creel became the President and CEO of Canadian Pacific in 2017, giving him executive control of one of the largest Class I rail systems in North America, with more than 13,000 miles of rail network stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 2021 he helped broker a deal that marked the first major merger in the railroad industry in the U.S. in two decades and created the first freight rail network linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. -- Want even more? Supporting Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter gives you a mental edge in 5 minutes with timeless insights you can use. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/TKP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke. We discuss the differences between founders and professional managers, how he’s scaled with Shopify, the constant fight against bureaucracy, how he thinks about innovation in a large company, and how he manages to keep his head when everyone else is losing theirs. A coder at heart who emigrated from Germany to Canada two decades ago, Lütke co-founded the e-commerce giant Shopify in Ottawa in 2006. The Globe and Mail named Lütke "CEO of the Year" in November 2014, and in May 2021 the company reported that it had more than 1.7 million businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform. As of July 2022, Shopify is among the top 20 largest publicly traded Canadian companies by market capitalization, and the company’s total revenue for 2021 was $4.611 billion. Lütke previously appeared on Episode 41 of The Knowledge Project. -- Want even more? Supporting Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more. Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter gives you a mental edge in 5 minutes with timeless insights you can use. Add it to your inbox. Follow Shane on Twitter. Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Widely regarded as one of the top business leaders of his generation, Alan Mulally joins the show to discuss the formation of his leadership strategy and how you can apply his lessons to your life and business. On this episode Mulally breaks down the principles of how a team can work together toward a larger goal, creating a culture of love by design, the role of the leader, what happens when people opt out of working together, how to use the ideas of working together in your family life, and so much more. Mulally is perhaps best known as the former President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company, which was struggling during the late-2000s recession before Mulally used his teamwork-oriented philosophy to save the company. Under Mulally’s leadership from 2006-14, Ford was the only major car manufacturer to avoid a government bailout, and Mulally was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time. Prior to joining Ford, Mulally spent more than three decades at Boeing, where he eventually served as an Executive Vice President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Support The Knowledge Project's Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, nurture your lifestyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is packed with wisdom from previous guests on the art of making better decisions. We discuss the three types of decision-makers, how to control your emotions when making decisions, why it’s crucial to look at every decision differently, the processes for coming to the right decision, and how to learn from your mistakes when you get it wrong. The guests on this episode are author Ventakesh Rao (Episode 7), psychologist, author and professional poker player Maria Konnikova (Episode 89), Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison (Episode 32), cognitive-behavioral decision science author and professional poker player Annie Duke (Episode 37), and Shopify co-founder Tobi Lutke (Episode 41). Transcript: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast-transcripts/tkp-insights-decision-making/ -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shane's guest on this episode of the show is New York Times bestselling author Neil Pasricha, who returns for his second appearance on The Knowledge Project. We discuss the importance of gratitude and how simple acts can change the way you feel, where confidence comes from, the specific routines and habits you can use to counter anxiety, the recipe for building resilience, and so much more. Pasricha is the author of seven books which collectively have sold over 2 million copies and spent over 200 weeks on bestseller lists, including The Happiness Equation and Two-Minute Mornings. His first TED talk, “The 3 A’s of Awesome,” is ranked as one of the 10 Most Inspiring of all time, and he also hosts a podcast called 3 Books, where he uncovers the 1,000 most formative books in the world. Neil previously appeared on Episode 72 of the The Knowledge Project, one of the show’s most downloaded conversations to date. His new book, Our Book of Awesome, will be released Dec. 6. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices