Daniel Pink
New York Times Bestselling Author
I never thought anything that I did early on was testing my voice, but in some ways it was…A voice is a reflection of who you are, and I do believe that at some level, we're always in the midst of discovering who we are, and that changes over time.
Summary
This week on Leadership Matters, Alan was joined by Daniel Pink, a five-time New York Times bestselling author and a leading advisor in personal behavioral science and psychology. Prior to his career as an author, Dan worked as a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, as well as Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.
Over the course of their conversation, Alan and Daniel discussed Daniel’s upbringing in Ohio, the origins of his love for reading and writing, his time at Northwestern University for his undergraduate education and his time at Yale Law School and the idea of testing one’s voice. Together, they explore the many lessons in leadership that Daniel has learned over his fascinating career.
Mentions & Resources in this Episode
Guest Bio
Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 46 languages, and have sold millions of copies around the world.
Dan was host and co-executive producer of “Crowd Control,” a television series about human behavior on the National Geographic Channel that aired in more than 100 countries. He hosts a popular MasterClass on sales and persuasion. He has appeared frequently on NPR, PBS, ABC, CNN, and other TV and radio networks in the US and abroad.
He has been a contributing editor at Fast Company and Wired. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and other publications. He was also a Japan Society Media fellow in Tokyo, where he studied the country’s massive comic industry.
Before venturing out on his own 20 years ago, Dan worked in several positions in politics and government, including serving from 1995 to 1997 as chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore.
He received a BA from Northwestern University, where he was a Truman Scholar and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and a JD from Yale Law School. He has also received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, the Pratt Institute, the Ringling College of Art and Design, the University of Indianapolis, and Westfield State University.
Pink and his wife live in Washington, DC. They are the parents of two recent college graduates and a college junior.
Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
I am joined today by a prolific author and thought leader behind new ways of thinking about our lives and our motivations. Daniel Pink is a five-time New York Times bestselling author who has become one of the world's leading advisors when it comes to personal behavioral science and psychology. He has written books such as Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself; The Adventure of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need; A Whole New Mind: Why right Brainers Will Rule the Future; Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us; To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others; and his most recent book, The Power of regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, all exploring how we can live fulfilling lives and make the most of our interests, passions and experiences.
Prior to becoming an author, Daniel worked as a chief speechwriter to Vice President Al Gore and as a special assistant to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.
I'm delighted to have Daniel on the show to discuss his background, his incredible career journey, and the many lessons of leadership he has learned along the way.
Dan, welcome to leadership matters. It is such a pleasure to have you on.
Daniel Pink
Alan, thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
Alan Fleischmann
I'm so thrilled. First of all, I'm so thrilled as a friend, I can claim I've not only read all your books, I've also seen your class. I love your MasterClass that you did. So I could probably label myself as not only a friend, but a groupie. How's that?
Well, let's get started with a little bit. I know you grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Tell us a little bit about – was it Bexley, Ohio? Was it Bexley or was it Columbus? Tell us a little bit about your experience, what life was like growing up around the house, what your parents did, any brothers and sisters, anything you'd want us to share about the community that you grew up in?
Daniel Pink
For those of you with an intimate knowledge of Central Ohio municipal boundaries, I lived in both Columbus and in the adjoining town of 14,000 called Bexley. Most of my time in Bexley, actually.
So one brother, younger, one sister, younger, two parents, older, and I guess the formative thing about that experience growing up there, I guess the great advantage of growing up in central Ohio is that is that Ohio in general, Central Ohio in particular, has a great public library system and I benefited significantly from that. If I had grown up in a place without a great public – I spent so much time at the public library, it was like a haven for me. I was able to walk there. I was able to take the bus to the main public library in downtown Columbus. I'm not sure I would have been a writer had I not grown up in a place that had such a vibrant library system. If I had grown up in a place without that, without easy access to libraries all the time, and I mean easy access Alan, I mean I could walk to the library if I wanted to every day after school. I could walk to the library. I walked to the library on Saturdays. I was there basically all summer because the library had air conditioning and my house didn't. And so, if I had grown up in a place that didn't have that library system, I don't know what I – I probably would be an orthodontist or something.
Alan Fleischmann
And did your parents - and I don't know, I haven't seen you at the dentist office. I'm not sure you would have been very good.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, no, no, I would have been a terrible orthodontist.
Alan Fleischmann
I think we are all thrilled that you chose a different path. Did your parents have a house filled with books? What'd your parents do and did they encourage you in the library? Or was that just something you just said, that's my calling.
Daniel Pink
No, they did. No, no, did. My parents were both readers, no question about that. And so that was definitely role modeled then, you know. And I guess at some point, when I was, you know, five or something, they took me, and I said, oh, this place is cool. but this is also, you know, this is our era, Alan, where parents weren't freaked out about letting their kids walk places. And so you could just go off and do your thing. I mean, I just remember basically most of my childhood, especially like child-childhood, say, under 12, was spent either walking to the library or playing touch football in the street with some other kids who lived on the street and with my brother, or walking back to the school, which was only a few blocks away, to play outdoor basketball, you know. And my parents are like, okay, just get back whenever, you know, like, we're having dinner at six, so get back by then, and then that was it.
Alan Fleischmann
You're free. Yeah, sounds idyllic and amazing. What did your parents do?
Daniel Pink
My mother used to be a teacher. She was a public school teacher for a while, and my father was essentially a kind of a scientific librarian.
Alan Fleischmann
So there you go. There's books in both of them.
Daniel Pink
Yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
That's great. And then, did you thrive at school?Did you love school?
Daniel Pink
I didn't like school very much. I was pretty good at it, just because it was so easy, especially at the time that we grew up. Because basically, all you had to do was give the authority figure what he or she, usually she, wanted, neatly and on time, and you'd be fine. I mean, so I don't think I learned a heck of a lot in school. But, I mean, I was good at school. You know, big difference.
There's a big difference between learning and being good at school. There's a big difference between being smart and being good at school. So I definitely had mastered being good at school. I would say that I learned much more between the ages of, call it five and 18, I learned significantly more going to the library and working on my school newspaper than I ever did in anything in school.
Alan Fleischmann
Did you just go to the library and just read anything that you wanted to read? Did you read for things that were complimentary to your school, or you knew what loved?
Daniel Pink
I just went after what I liked. I read a lot about sports. I mean, there was this, there was this one librarian there, Mrs. Wilson, who, you know, when I was probably nine, something like that, 10, somewhere around there, but pretty young, she noticed, it was such a small little place, she noticed that I was taking out a lot of books about sports, and they were really, like probably just crappy books, like ghost written autobiographies of Jim Palmer and Gaylord Perry or whatever, you know what I mean. And she noticed that and she said, “Hey, maybe you might be interested in this.” And she gave me a copy and she pointed me to the section of the library, what I now know to be narrative nonfiction. There were a couple of books by John McPhee.
So John McPhee wrote a book called A Senses of Where You Are, which was about Bill Bradley, which was nominally when Bill Bradley played college basketball at Princeton. This is a book by McPhee about Bill Bradley's experience playing college basketball at Princeton, but it was about more than basketball. There was another book that John McPhee wrote about a tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Gravner called Levels of the Game. So it was about sports, but it was about more than sports. And so, you know, that's what I mean, I read a lot of magazines. I was a big fan. I read a lot of magazines when I was a kid. I was a big fan of Mad Magazine, you know, as one is, so that's what I would do.
There's all kinds of stuff like, I would go and, like, learn how to work the microfilm machine, for those of you old enough to remember microfilm and read, like, back issues of Sports Illustrated in microfilm.
Alan Fleischmann
So sports is a big part of your love though. it sounds like.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, yeah, when I was kid, definitely, even now I'm a sports fan, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
I love you brought up Jim Palmer, he was a Baltimore boy. I always thought that Columbus and Baltimore were similar kind of.
Daniel Pink
A little bit, a little bit. I mean, Columbus a little bit more white collar than Baltimore. And you guys, you guys also have water. You have, like, a bay. We had the Scioto River and the Olentangy River. Not exactly the same thing.
But, you know, Columbus is an interesting place because it's, especially for Ohio, it's very white collar for Ohio in the sense that it is dominated by state government and a large public university, and so it, and some insurance companies now too. So it's kind of an interesting place. The other thing about Columbus, Ohio, I think was useful to me growing up, was that, as you know but your listeners might not, that Columbus, Ohio, especially when I was growing up and I think to some extent to today, was the test market capital of America. Every single product was tested in Columbus because it was the quintessentially middle brow, middle class, middle of American place. Like, we got basically every new sandwich for McDonald's debuted in Columbus as a test. So we saw everything. The first ATM machine in America was in Columbus.
I'm not even joking about the fast food stuff, like they would test that. So it's like, if that, you know, you we didn't have a there wasn't A-B testing in the 1970s and 80s. There weren't sophisticated data analytics. So what you do is you would look for a community, a geography, that was representative of the entire country, and then you would go and you would test your product there. And Columbus, Ohio, So utterly middle, so utterly mid was the place where everything was tested.
Alan Fleischmann
And not Cleveland, Ohio, not Dayton Ohio, not just –
Daniel Pink
Dayton is close. Cleveland's very different. Cleveland is a little too gritty. Cleveland, especially then, it was a little too gritty. Cleveland was a little bit too Democratic, capital D democratic, gritty, little more urban, not quite representative. Dayton is close. Dayton is close, though.
Alan Fleischmann
But it's amazing, by the way, how many cities one can name in the state of Ohio, where you can never do that for any other state. I mean, it's incredible.
Daniel Pink
I mean, it's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. Now we also had, in third grade, we had Ohio History. So that was, that was a required course in third grade, you had Ohio History.
Alan Fleischmann
The Wright Brothers, right?
Daniel Pink
I don't want to show my full Buckeye pride here, but it's a lot more than the Wright brothers. We have more presidents than any other state, including Virginia, which makes some false claims on who's really from Virginia. So Ohio is actually first. So, I mean, come on, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, you know, the Wright brothers. So we definitely have aviation and air travel down. We have the presidency down.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, I love that. I love your pride. Yeah, proud. I love that.
Any mentors along the way that kind of steered you during high school?
Daniel Pink
You know what? That's an interesting question and it's one of my – as I look back as I reflect on my life, I didn't, I've never really – I think I blew it in terms of having mentors. There's really not anybody in my life who I really consider a mentor, and I realize I'm missing something on that. And I think – it's not because people weren't kind to me – I think it's because I was just always sort of in my own head, doing my own thing, and just, you know, kinda doing my own stuff.
Alan Fleischmann
And when did you decide writing was a good skill for me? Obviously, reading was a great skill, you were insatiably interested in reading. That was your curiosity. Was obviously a big part of your youth. When did you realize that you were also a good writer?
Daniel Pink
I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure.
Alan Fleischmann
Was it when you went to Northwestern, did that play a role or no?
Daniel Pink
I guess so, I guess so. In college, I actually learned something, you know, in contrast to elementary school and high school. I got a very, I got a very strong education there. Now that could be less about the institution and more about just my own maturity and ability to understand, like what education is and how to learn more effectively. But I mean, I don't know, you know. I guess words always came to me more naturally than jump shots. Let's put it that way.
Alan Fleischmann
You love sports but you weren't as good an athlete as you were a good wordsmith, how about that.
Daniel Pink
Well, that's definitely the case. So I think that's what it was.
But like all of us, we're all trying to flop around and figure out who we are, what we're about, and, you know, try different things and then settle into something that we think is going to be good. But truth be told, I mean, when I was growing up, I didn't grow up and say, I want to be a writer. I was not one of those kids at all.
Alan Fleischmann
When you said I want to go to Northwestern, that wasn't I want to go to journalism school. That was, I want to go.
Daniel Pink
No, I didn't go to the journalism, I went to undergraduate. I went to Northwestern because it offered a whole range of different things. I could study a little bit of journalism if I wanted to. I ended up not doing that. I could study Liberal Arts, which is something that I desperately wanted to do. But they also had things like radio and TV and film and a whole array of some good science and tech. So it was like sort of a nice smorgasbord of things. Also, my parents are both Chicagoan so it's a familiar place.
Alan Fleischmann
You have family there?
Daniel Pink
Yeah. When I was in college, I would go visit my grandmother, you know, I would take the L and go visit, you know, 20 minutes away and see my grandmother.
Alan Fleischmann
That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. And did you like Northwestern?
Daniel Pink
I loved it. It was great. I had a great time. I have friends, forever friends, from there. In fact, this past weekend, I just saw a friend of mine who the Northwestern housing office happened to put us on the same floor in our freshman dorm, whatever it is, 40 years ago. So I got a good education, I made some really good friends, I learned a lot, and it was a good place to mature, which I desperately needed.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, sounds like you're hard on yourself, but yes, it sounds like it was. That's where you got to know yourself even better. And did you major in linguistics when you were there?
Daniel Pink
Yes.
Alan Fleischmann
So that's pretty cool. What does that mean? Does that mean you were great at languages? Or, you know –
Daniel Pink
Linguistics is the study of language itself. And so it's not the study of individual languages, as much as it is the study of language and all of its – and I just thought it was interesting. I thought it was interesting. I thought it was, I took an intro course and thought, this is so cool, it's so interesting. So you do things like you do things.
So I would have a course in, just give you an idea that it's also breadth, there's some breadth to linguistics that there isn't in some of these other fields. So I once had a course in metaphor,
and they were the only other people in the class who were a few linguistics majors, and then some poets. And then I would have a class in something called transformational grammar, which is a very hardcore introductory linguistics course, and it would be linguistics majors and computer science majors. And then I would have a course in like sociolinguistics, and it would be a few linguistics majors, and there weren't many, and people who were studying anthropology or sociology. And so it's a, I'm biased, I'm talking my own book here, but linguistics to me is the ultimate liberal arts major, because it encompasses the physical sciences, big time. It encompasses, I was a little bit ahead of the because I studied a while ago, but we were just on the edge of some of the revolution in cognitive science and neuroscience. It covers psychology, it covers neuroscience, it covers sociology, it covers anthropology. It's also a very mathematical field, too, in that linguistics is an extremely mathematical social science. It's just, to me, the perfect liberal arts major.
I mean, I loved it. I loved it. And also, what I also loved is that in my year, we had the largest number of linguistics majors ever in the history of Northwestern, we had four of us. And so by the time I got to basically somewhere in the middle of my sophomore year, most of my classes were essentially seminars. Most of my classes had 9, 10, 11 people in them.
Alan Fleischmann
Those are small classes. That's great.
Daniel Pink
But it's good. It's good because you can, first of all, there's nowhere to hide. I think that's important, especially for 20 year old guys, there's nowhere to hide. And also, you ended up, you're not taking multiple choice tests as the easy way for the professor to evaluate people. You're writing and talking and doing all kinds of cool stuff.
Alan Fleischmann
That's very cool. And did you have friends that were in the linguistics classes with you that actually are part of the group of friends you're friends with today? Or are they separate?
Daniel Pink
No. I mean, Ii have one friend from linguistics – there were not many to choose from – I have one linguistics friend who ended up going to get a PhD in cognitive science. But you know, what I like about, again, forgive me for celebrating the virtues of Ohio History and Northwestern University but let me celebrate. I think the great virtue of it is that I look at my circle of friends, just to give you an idea, and what they're doing now. So, like, I got a friend who's a lawyer, okay, that's boring, but beyond that the other friends who I stay in touch with all the time – I got somebody who's a furniture maker, somebody who's a literary agent, somebody who's a state legislator in Maryland, as a matter of fact, somebody who is an opera singer. So a pretty diverse group of people doing really interesting things.
Alan Fleischmann
And did this group ever get together as one?
Daniel Pink
Always, a lot of times, yeah, we have a regular zoom.
Alan Fleischmann
What a cool group. That's a really cool group.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, it's an interesting group. And we've been friends for a very, very, very, very, very long time.
Alan Fleischmann
Who’s the state senator in Maryland?
Daniel Pink
State senator Shelly Hettleman of Baltimore.
Alan Fleischmann
I know Shelly Hettleman of Baltimore very well.
Daniel Pink
Shelly Hettleman has been my friend for 40 years.
Alan Fleischmann
What a great friend to have. She's wonderful. She's very close to Ben Cardin, Senator Cardin.
Daniel Pink
Exactly, that's exactly right. And she just had a birthday, that's very exciting.
Alan Fleischmann
I love this. I love this. This group. This is the group that you formed when you were there.
Well, did Northwestern as an entity help you as you kind of sharpened these interests and kind of define the interest, or is it more like the environment, you just leaned in fully and took your full advantage of it?
Daniel Pink
I mean, it's an interesting question, Alan, it really is. And, you know, as parents, it's something that we think about. And for me, I just think that many, there's so many great colleges and universities in America, but what you get out of it is what you put into it. And I think I did a reasonably good job of taking advantage of a lot of really just extraordinary opportunities. I didn't, you know, I didn't throw away my shot completely during my time there. I think it's really important to try stuff, to do stuff, to do stuff that you might not ordinarily do. And so I think you can do that at any, just about any American college or university, but it's really up to the student, him or herself, to, as you say, to lean into that.
Alan Fleischmann
And do you mean, I mean, I gather you're a big believer in higher education then to, and I believe that colleges universities, more than ever. Actually, I always believed it, but I believe now more than ever, that that's where we're going to really, kind of figure out our future, our civilization is really dependent on how we view these colleges, universities.
Daniel Pink
Yeah. I have what has turned out to be this utterly conventional view that has become a contrary view, which is that I actually think most people should go to college, and I don't necessarily think that every single person needs to go to college, but I think the evidence is pretty clear that you're better off going to college than not going to college. But I mean if you look at, there was some data that I saw today, there was an FT story today showing that basically, essentially 25% of people thought that college was not worth it, period. 25% thought college was worth it even if you had loans. And 50% of college people thought that college was worth it only if you didn't have any loans.
Alan Fleischmann
Wow. That's why, when people talk about freeing you of debt –
Daniel Pink
Yeah, I mean, I think that some of the college debt is ridiculous, but I still think that those colleges, I mean, college, listen, colleges are, you know this because you're working with all these colleges, a lot of colleges are really messed up. On the other hand, America has some really great colleges and universities, and someone, a student with a little bit of curiosity and moxie, can get an enormous amount of knowledge and context and skill building and social capital. And so I really think that most people should go to college.
Alan Fleischmann
Did you go right from Northwestern to law school?
Daniel Pink
No, I worked. I worked a little bit before doing that. But this was the, I'm talking about sort of figuring things out. I mean, I went to law school because I got good grades in college, and also because I go back to that Ohio background where, you know, where I was always told that I needed something to fall back on, that there was always the specter of economic insecurity, and the only way to avoid that ghost from coming and capturing you late at night was to have a profession that you could, quote, unquote “fall back on,” and what could be a better profession than law. And so I always knew that I sort of had to do that. I mean, nobody was telling me explicitly to do that, but I always felt like, oh, this is what I have to do.
You know, the fact that I was interested in politics too, made it a natural thing. The error that I made, and I'll try to advise all of the your millions and millions of young listeners who are sitting by who are walking with their headphones on, listening to the sage advice of Alan Fleischmann is, it's sort of appalling to me that I went to law school having no idea what lawyers actually did. I never talked to a lawyer, I never spent time with a lawyer, I never shadowed a lawyer, I never did anything like that. So –
Alan Fleischmann
You figured that was your backup.
Daniel Pink
Because I figured I've watched TV, I know what lawyers do. Yeah, you know I'm a smart guy. It's like, it's the same reason that perhaps I didn't have mentors, because I had pretty much all figured out myself. I didn't really need anyone to explain things to me.
Alan Fleischmann
You actually did actually work as an attorney briefly, right? You were a special assistant.
Daniel Pink
No, I was a speechwriter for Bob Reich in the Labor Department. I was a speechwriter. I mean, I think my title might have been special assistant, but I was speechwriter.
Alan Fleischmann
Was that right out of law school?
Daniel Pink
No, no. I worked on some campaigns immediately out of law school and then in the campaigns. What happened is that I ended up writing some speeches, just because, you know about campaigns, you lived that life. So, like all kinds of crap is going on, somebody needs something, they turn around, hey, can you write a speech? And the answer to that question always is yes. Can you the answer is yes, even if you don't know how to figure it out, and then that's basically how it was. And so then I was later –
Alan Fleischmann
That's a generational thing, though, I think, where you say yes and you figure it out later. I hope that, I think it's coming back.
Daniel Pink
I hope so. Do you tell your kids that?
Alan Fleischmann
I do. I tell my daughters always raise your hand if they ask you to do something, say yes I can do it, and figure it out.
Daniel Pink
Amen. I have the exact same conversation. So I deeply, deeply believe in that. I say those, literally, those exact same words, Alan, raise your hand. I've said, literally said those exact same words. And then, and as you say before, it's like, they have asked, can you do that? You say yes. And then, even if you can't, you freaking figure it out.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right, that's right. And then, you know, because what gives you the motivation to figure it out because you’ve now put yourself in a corner where the choice is to do it.
Daniel Pink
Exactly, exactly. And the thing is, it's like, none of this stuff is that that hard, you know, and it's, and it's like, I think one of the things that the young people sometimes, I certainly had it, I don't know if you had it when you were younger, is that you start entering a world of, whether it's politics or media or anything like that that you always saw from a remove, and you think that the people who are doing it are these sages. They're incredibly talented. There's this, like, kind of exalted realm and that, and then when you enter it, you're like, no, these are schmoes just like me, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
And they're not as confident as you thought they were.
Daniel Pink
Exactly. I happen to think that is essential advice for young people, both of exactly what you're saying. Raise your hand and say you can do it and figure it out later.
Alan Fleischmann
I would say that is always what I did. Clearly, that's what you always did as well, and it served me well in life, because it doesn't mean you're not going to figure it out, because you have to figure it out. So it's not like we're saying, you know, got it, and then magic happens. You do work hard to figure it out, but it's important to do it.
Daniel Pink
You scramble, yeah there's a moment of terror between saying yes and they're saying okay, and realizing what you've gotten yourself into.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right, it's a little easier now, you can go online, you could look up things.
Daniel Pink
YouTube videos, yeah, exactly, exactly.
Alan Fleischmann
And then you start honing this one thing called common sense and judgment. When you figure out is this something that actually makes sense? And if it does, go with your instincts and say it does, that's great.
So no practicing attorney here.
Daniel Pink
Never once. No, I took the bar exam. I even passed the bar exam, but I never, I literally have not practiced law a day in my life.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. And you went right from the campaign that you worked on to work for Robert Reich?
Daniel Pink
Yeah, I've worked with a bunch of different campaigns, though, and so finally, I got, eventually, I got hired at the Labor Department in the relatively early days, not straight at the beginning, but in the relatively early days. And I did that, and I liked doing that because I liked the issues quite a bit. I liked the economic issues. I liked the workplace issues. I liked Reich himself as a secretary, as a person, and there was a really, really, really good team there when I was there, so that was great.
Alan Fleischmann
There's such an incredible, personal relationship when you work as a speechwriter for somebody, because you're getting into their head, you get to know them, you have to discover their voice. I would say it's harder for a journalist to do the work that we do, because, you know, they always want to keep their own byline. They want to figure out their point of view, editorialize it, but they still want to, more or less. When you're a speechwriter, you really do walk in the head of somebody else and really try to become an extension of them. That must have been a fascinating thing for you as well.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, I think that I didn't want to do it forever, and I actually wanted to write on my own point of view. And that's basically, that ended up being a moment later on in this long and tortured tale where I said I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. That said, I do think that there is,
the one virtue I don't want to be too down on law school in general. I am down on the idea that, this notion that going to law school prepares you for anything. I think not a good enough reason to go to law school.
I think if you want to be a lawyer, and you know what lawyers do, and there's some people who love practicing law and are good at being lawyers. Obviously go to law school, but this idea that it's this kind of Swiss Army knife of skills that you can use anywhere, I think it's actually foolish. I think the opportunity costs are too high.
That said, one thing that I did learn in law school was very that was quite valuable, is the ability to take the other side of an argument. that's a very important skill. And so, you know, if you're doing anything in – even if you're reading an appellate opinion, you're reading the main opinion and you're reading the dissent, and you're talking about who's right or who's wrong, and oftentimes, you're asked to defend a position that you don't necessarily agree with, and understanding that that is a very valuable skill, is being able to make the other side's argument and understanding the other side's argument and not dismissing the other side's argument. That's a very powerful skill.
Alan Fleischmann
I agree.
I think the first time I met you, you were speechwriter for Al Gore.
Daniel Pink
Could be, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
How long did you do that for? And then, was that a great experience? And then that's really when you made the decision, it's time for me to write it in my own name, right?
Daniel Pink
Yeah, so I really enjoyed that. I had a great, again, a great group of people I work with. I mean, that's the other thing about, one of the things you discover about, how do you pick what you do, you know, along with these things about, you know, raise your hand or whatnot, is that
Alan Fleischmann
Surround yourself with great people.
Daniel Pink
Exactly. So much of your enjoyment and ability to accomplish good things at work depends on who you're with, and so being around great people. So I was around a lot of really, really great people on that team. I was very lucky. I mean, you've had political bosses too, and you know that can be a mixed bag. I happen to have a very good principal, a very good boss in the Vice President. It was interesting, it was exhilarating, it was fun at times. But ultimately, what happened was that, and now I'm in my early 30s, I think what happened was that I realized that I certainly knew I wasn't a lawyer and I actually wasn't a political person either.
Alan Fleischmann
You didn’t know that?
Daniel Pink
I thought I was a political person, and once I got into the belly of the beast, I realized that I was less of a political person than I thought. And what I really was, to my surprise, perhaps to my surprise maybe to no one else's surprise, was a writer. Not a speech writer, a writer. And so at the time, throughout my life, I was always quote, unquote, writing on the side.
So you mentioned very graciously this thing that I won for a short story in college. You know, I was like a hardcore social science major. I was a very mathematical kind of social science major, and yet I was writing a short story on the side. When I was working even for Reich and for Gore, I was writing columns and articles on the side and not even getting paid because of the ethics violations, because it was like something that I'd like to do. It was like my golf. And finally, it occurred to me that what I was doing on the side was something that I should do in the center. And so I didn't want to work in politics for the rest of my life, no way. And I didn't want to be a speechwriter, because I realized I had a point of view. I was getting very good exactly at the skill that you had described, Alan, of getting inside someone else's head, seeing their point of view, articulating their thoughts. I think that if you get too good at that, you risk losing your capacity to do that for yourself. And I didn't want that.
And I wanted to do my own thing. I didn't like having a boss, and so I decided to quit and go out on my own. I quit the job. I didn't have another job. I truly haven't had a job since that time I quit.
Alan Fleischmann
And when you wrote that article in Fast Company, and you're writing your book, was it Free Agent Nation, right? That is –
Daniel Pink
I published an article. I published an article in Fast Company, like in, what it was ,that was like, 1998, and then that article led to the book. So I made the decision to leave and, but again, not this kind of foolish decision, because, you know, we had a little kid at the time, my wife kept her job. She kept our health insurance, and, you know, actually, in the early days of that, I did freelance speech writing, I did speeches for like, CEOs, you know, which is like, horrible, but lucrative. Because I couldn't generate enough income just writing my own stuff. And so for the first year, fortunately only for the first year, you know, I did speeches for like, you know, I don't know, like insurance company executives or whatever. You know, and I'm thankful because I had a skill that I could sell out there in the marketplace, but I hated it, but it paid.
Alan Fleischmann
It paid the bills.
Daniel Pink
Yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
And did you, and you did a National Geographic show too, right?
Daniel Pink
That was much later, yeah, yeah.
Alan Fleischmann
Okay, so your book came first, the first book, and that was º
Daniel Pink
I wrote Free Agent Nation, and I did that and then I started, then I basically got on this 20 year gain of writing books.
Alan Fleischmann
And you knew that was that a passion moment but you actually said, okay, I now figured it out. Obviously you did very well with your first book, that helped. So it wasn't like it could have been a disaster, maybe when you want a different path, but you obviously were celebrating,
Daniel Pink
well, the first book didn't do all that well. But what I wanted to do, basically I said, okay, well, this is actually meaningful, like, I like that. This is the right degree of challenge. I feel like I'm making some modest contribution to things. I have dominion over what I do, which is real, actually for me, pretty important and you know, at a certain point it's like, you know, you have to ask yourself, you know, what? Not only what do you love to do or what's your passion or crappy questions like that, but also like, what do you do? And what I do is I write. I try to figure stuff out and then write about it. That's what I do. It's like, I almost can't help myself. And when you, when you, in the course of your life, figuring out that question, what do you do when nobody's watching? I mean, I was writing articles, columns for magazines, and I wasn't getting paid, and I was doing it in the midst of these other demanding jobs. That's a pretty strong signal.
Alan Fleischmann
That you really loved it.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm hesitant. I'm hesitant to use the word love on that, because I've been a writer for a long time now, and I'm not sure I love it, but it's what I do.
Alan Fleischmann
That's interesting. But if you took it away from you –
Daniel Pink
Don’t take it away from me, Alan. Yeah, I'll come after you. No, don't take it away from it. But I imagine, so maybe that is a form of love. That's a great way to raise the question.
Alan Fleischmann
But yeah, the indispensable nature which you live your life is that writing, a big part of it, obviously, your family and friends.
Daniel Pink
It's a big part of it. Yes, more than I probably recognize consciously, more than I had the foresight to discover at a much younger age.
Alan Fleischmann
How do you come up with the topic? What I find so amazing is that not only you're a brilliant writer, you're brilliant. Not every brilliant writer is a great speaker. That's why I really love your MasterClass, because I get to see you talk, but it's also the topics. Like on my bedside table this weekend, I was enjoying, you know, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future. And that's not among your most famous books by any means. You've got many that were much more famous, but it's an amazing book. Like, where do you get a topic like that? What do you discover that's my book, I'm gonna do that story?
Daniel Pink
Writing a book is really hard. It's a giant pain. And so I only pick stuff that I'm deeply, deeply interested in. And my view is that if I'm deeply interested in something, then other people will be deeply interested in it. But there are plenty of things that are interesting in the same way that when you're younger, there's some people who you might want to go on a few dates with, but there are fewer people you want to go steady with and very, very, very few you want to get married to. And it's sort of like that with books. They're, they're, they're very few, I have to be so interested in the topic that it becomes, use the word indispensable. It becomes an indispensable part of like, I gotta figure this out. Or this is so cool, I can't believe nobody else has figured this out yet, I gotta bring it to the world.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. Is there a favorite book in the early years, that kind of –
Daniel Pink
No, I mean, they're all different because, again, not to get metaphysical on you, but I'm also – at some point, a different person wrote each of those books. So the person who wrote the first book, Free Agent Nation, is different from the person who wrote the last book, The Power of Regret. I don't think that the person who wrote The Power of Regret could have written Free Agent Nation. I don't think the person who wrote Free Agent Nation could have written The Power of Regret.
Alan Fleischmann
That's crazy, actually. And you don't, I can't ask you whether you have a favorite along the way.
Daniel Pink
No, you can ask me, and I'm not trying – the answer is, I don't have a favorite. I mean, I say I don't have a favorite. I don't have a favorite. I can see the strengths and weaknesses of all of them.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah. I mean, your book, the book that I was reading over the weekend, though, and I've read before, was a multiple bestseller. I mean, you, that was a great book. I mean, right, the Businessweek –
Daniel Pink
Which one?
Alan Fleischmann
The Whole New Mind.
Dan
Oh, yeah, that did, okay, yeah, that did pretty well.
Alan Fleischmann
And then Drive was another really big one, which I loved, which is amazing, and The Power of Regret, obviously, is the most recent one, right? I imagine you’ve got another one coming up soon.
Daniel Pink
I don't.
Alan Fleischmann
No? Okay, but we'll be waiting for it if you don't.
But you know, you actually have been a writer, obviously, a speechwriter. You've had your own shows. You have a TED talk, you've got the MasterClass. You write about things that motivate people around your stories. I'm curious, is there a medium that you haven't conquered, that you're looking to, and are there examples of folks that you look at as role models? I mean, you're breaking your own path, and you're obviously doing –
Daniel Pink
The medium I haven't conquered is Sirius radio. That is the last frontier for me.
You know, here's the thing, it's like, there are, I just like to do, I like to make stuff, all right? I like to make stuff. I like to create stuff. I like to make stuff so, so, so if you think about it as a maker rather than a writer. I like to make books, okay, because that creates something that's out there in the world. It could be some kind of existential cry for help. Maybe it's proof of my existence. I like to make TV shows, because, once again, it's a team of people coming together to create something that didn't exist before, and you put it out there in the world, and maybe it makes a difference. So I like to make stuff. I like to start with nothing, and then come up with something and put it out into the world. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, we live in a world right now where authenticity matters a lot, because everybody looks at you much more exposed, whether you're a politician or CEO. But even if you're a writer, I would say the hardest thing in the world as a parent, as an employer, as an advisor to CEOs, is to help. It's the most important thing, I wouldn't say it's the hardest thing, is to help people find their own voice. Yeah, kind of like you were testing your voice at a very young age. The kid who went to the library, you know, the kid who kind of figured it out in college, the one who says, okay, you know, to give up a job working for Al Gore who, who was vice president, everyone thought would be the next president. So you left at a moment of high, not a moment of low, to kind of know you have a voice is a really important thing. And then to write in a way nowadays you can't write authentic people like you because you're so authentic. I mean, you actually write where it resonates. Tell me a little bit about that. From your kind of your reflections on leadership and the power of the courage, I would argue, of finding your voice, is that something you also help others with?
Daniel Pink
Yes and no. But, I mean, I think that your insights are more powerful than my experience, and I think that I don't have much to add to what you just said. I never thought anything that I did early on was testing my voice, but in some ways it was, honestly, Alan. I didn't think about that until this conversation. I think in some ways it was a way of testing one's voice. A voice is a reflection of who you are and and I do believe that at some level, we're always in the midst of discovering who we are, and that changes over time. And the voice is just an expression of who you are at that moment.
And if there's any advice that I give, you don't want to say like, you know, I want to be the next Barack Obama, or I want to be the next Nikki Haley. You want to be the first you. That's the most important thing, 100%, in any kind of domain. Because those other things are already taken and so I do think that there, if you look at biographies of artists, at some point early on, the great artists, they do things that are somewhat derivative of what came before them, or comedians, or anybody like that, they sometimes do things that derive from what has gone before them, but, and that's an important part of mastery, but at a certain point you have to break from that and develop your own voice and and I just think that that's one of the things about life that makes it interesting is this discovery, this journey to find out, who am I really? What do I care about? What would I die for? Who matters to me? What matters to me? And those are vitally important questions, and for those of us who are writers, we just have a chance to voice that beyond simply the people in our lives.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that actually, you know, because I think too many people go to business school, or they go to other schools, and they copy the case studies. They copy, okay, I'm going to be Bill Gates, or I'm going to be somebody else. There was no Bill Gates before Bill Gates.
Daniel Pink
Exactly! Yeah, exactly, those things are taken. Now, what you can do is you can learn from those. So the impulse isn't necessarily bad. What did Bill Gates do that I like? What did Bill Gates do that I don't like? But I mean, this is, this is, this is one of the things that you see in, you know, there is an advantage. There is something you can learn from copying others, from deriving what you do from others, but you can't depend on that. That's an interim step in developing your own form of expression, your own art, your own perspective as a business leader, your own leadership style. It's not like you could say, I want to be a leader like Colin Powell, yeah, the late Colin Powell. Well, that's taken. And you probably don't, because his leadership abilities were forged because of a certain personality, a certain background, a certain moment in time. Now you can learn from that, but you don't want to simply copy that.
Alan Fleischmann
That's right, and you don't want to do a copy, and you don't want to miss the opportunity of being as great as these folks are, in many ways, because you're not trying. You're limiting yourself when you say, I want to get somebody started there and say, I want to be your understudy not the start
Daniel Pink
But I do think that the lesson that you have this is, I've just wrote down your phrase here, which is testing your voice. I think that's a really powerful concept that you're identified on. Like I do think that at some point, especially when we're young, we are testing our voice. And I don't mean that only for writers. I mean that for everybody, because testing your voices is somebody who's testing who you are.
But I like the way, I like, I like the idea of even the verb testing, because the only way to discover your voice is to try stuff. You can't discover your voice by saying, I'm going to sit here and think about what my voice is. You know, you got to put stuff out of you got to put stuff out in the world and get the collision back from the world in order to do that, which is a test.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, I love what you said also about the fact that the person who wrote this book is not the same person who wrote that book. You know that the freedom also to create, no boundaries for your curiosity and no boundaries for your voice, again, meaning that your voice can evolve. Your voice can be a very different voice because you're approaching something completely differently.
Tell us about the Pink Report.
Daniel Pink
That's just a newsletter. I've had a newsletter for a long time. It just another way for me to, I guess one of the great things about media today is that you can have a direct contact with readers. You can have a direct contact with viewers even. that's a big, big change from when we started 100 years ago, where you needed that intermediary to bless you, either that gatekeeper to, bless you. When I was in law school writing op-eds for the Hartford Courant, the only way I could get my point of view out there, was to, like, write, you know, again, to write an op-ed for the Hartford Courant of all places. And so, you know, 97 people read it. But now, if I have something that I want to get up my chest, I can go to Substack, press send, and we can reach whatever, you know, 100 and something thousand people right away. So the Pink Report, what I do is I often give a preview of this Washington Post column that I've been doing, and I give recommendations. People love the recommendations. And then I often will include a video with a tool or a tip or something like that.
Alan Fleischmann
And Pinkcast is your video short?
Daniel Pink
Yeah, I started doing that a few years ago just as a whim, and it ended up being, you know, like so much stuff doesn't work, that worked reasonably well, which is, Pinkcast is a very, super, super, super, super short video with a tool or chip on on working smarter and living better.
Alan Fleischmann
I love it. Look. Your advice is extraordinary. Your books are amazing, your Pinkcast. And I love that. I do love the Pink Report.
for the last couple of minutes here, what advice, I love that we're giving advice to young people, you know, kind of have to find their voice or test their voice, and that's so powerful. But, you know, aspiring leaders, people want to not miss the opportunity of life, you know, but actually take full advantage of life. And by the way, not everybody has to be the CEO, not everybody has to be the number one. Not everybody has to be the driver. In fact, you can't do it without – I've always wanted to really focus on all the people that make things happen, because the composer or conductor does extraordinary things, but it takes the symphony to make the music.
What advice would you give to our listeners, whether they are in public life, business life, civil society life, who are seeking out that voice, and what would be the biggest one or two, three things you'd want to know?
Daniel Pink
Well, I would recapitulate some of the things that we said, which is, don't try to sound like the next other person, Try to sound like the first you. And that's one of the things that we've to the extent that anybody ever asked me questions about, like, you know, speeches and speaking. It's just like figuring out something interesting to say and say it your way, and you're going to be fine. Where they run into problems, as if they don't have anything to say, or they have something to say but they want to say, but they want to say it like somebody else. So I think that's one thing.
The other thing that I would say, which drives big time from The Power of Regret book that I wrote where I looked at both the science of underlying regret, and then I also did a big survey around the world where we collected 26,000 regrets from people all over the world to figure out what people regret, a very big category of regrets is our boldness regrets. That when people are at a juncture in their life and they have a choice, they can play it safe, or they can take the chance, and overwhelmingly, when people don't take the chance, they regret it. Now, sometimes people take a chance and go south and then they regret it. But for every one of those, there are, you know, dozens upon dozens who didn't take the chance. And so if I would say one thing is like, try stuff, that you probably slightly over index on risk, and the other thing that we know is that, over time, people regret what they didn't do way more than what they did. So, you know I think that people's risk dials are a little bit off, and they should just notch them up a couple of notches toward a little bit greater risk, toward toward trying stuff, that the way that we learn is by trying stuff, learning from that, try, doing it again, doing it again, doing it again. That in some ways, that sometimes people are overly cerebral. They want to figure things out in order to act, when, in fact, acting is a form of figuring stuff out.
Alan Fleischmann
And they write the idea of testing, retesting, picking yourself, back, yeah,
Daniel Pink
Yeah, yeah. I don't even think you have to pick yourself. It's like, basically approach it with curiosity. Like, you try stuff and it fails, oh, okay, that's interesting. And you learn, you try something else, you try something else, you try something else. It always feels better when stuff works, and it never feels good when stuff flops. But there are ways to look at, I'm sorry I'm getting a little bit out of left field, but I am convinced that life is, in many ways, I'm going to use a sports metaphor here, is a shots on goal enterprise. It's about shots on goal.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. You know, at the end of the day, it's in this case, but looks like you're better for bother. But the idea that missed opportunities have much more regret, much more of a powerful thing, huge than to ever try something and fail, because failure, and your definition is not a failure. Just try, try again, or try a different way of doing it. Be persistent.
Daniel Pink
What gnaws at me, and there's a big age effect. There's a big age effect. What I found in some of the researchers that I did is that people in their 20s had about equal numbers of action regrets and inaction regrets. But as people aged, the inaction regrets took over and so the time you get to, like, your 50s, it's three-to-one inaction regrets over action regrets. What sticks with us over time is what we didn't do. We didn't start that business, we didn't speak up for something that matters, we didn't take that trip that we wanted to do. We didn't ask somebody out on a date. We didn't tell somebody that we love them. We didn't do something that was a little bit more risky and that's what sticks with people. That's what sticks with people over time.
And so you just have to have, like, a, you know, almost to the point where, if you're 50/50, on something, you know, it's like, I'm gonna use my second sports metaphor, tie goes to the runner. Like, if it's 50/50, you do it.
Alan Fleischmann
Go for it. And if it doesn't work out, you're gonna re-figure it out. But don't miss the moment. Don't miss the opportunity.
Look, I see what you've done. You took risk. If it isn't a form of courage, I wonder whether it should be, but it is a form of courage to actually say, I'm going to throw all of it in there. I'm going to make it happen, and they want to follow it.
Daniel Pink
Yeah, but it's also, it's not wild and white again. Let's talk about my leaving my job to go out on my own, – my wife kept her job! She was a salaried employee at the Justice Department. So we had a steady stream. It's not like we're going, oh, you know what, we're both going to quit our jobs and we're going to do whatever we want. No, again, it's like, you just have to dial up the risk tolerance, you just have to dial up the risk tolerance.
It might be easier for me to say this as a straight white man born in America, but I actually think it applies more fully. You know, when I decided to go out on my own, I had a negative net worth because of student loans. I had a negative net worth, all right? And I didn't know that at the time, because I didn't know what a net worth was, but now that I do, I was like, wow, that was kind of interesting.
Alan Fleischmann
Crazy.
Daniel Pink
Not even crazy, but it's like, huh? But I do think that if you just, I'm not saying go crazy, go wild and fully risk it. All I'm saying is that I think that our default setting, I think the default setting on the risk thermostat is set too low for a healthy life, and that what we want to do in general is just notch it up just a bit. And I think people will be happier.
Alan Fleischmann
And have a little self awareness where you do it so you pick the right thing to do it with, like that's the other thing. It's a generational thing too sometimes I think, but know who, know what you're good at, know what you love, and know what you're good at, and then if you're good at something, take that risk. Some people don't think they're good at things or not, and they actually mistakenly ignore the things they're really good at and think that just comes naturally, therefore it can't –
Daniel Pink
I think that's a powerful point. I'll even see you and raise you a little bit on that. I think one of the things that was important to me. I mean, other people's mileage may vary, but what was important to me is knowing what I'm not good at. Knowing what you're not good at is a revelation, because the truth of the matter is, is that the universe of things I'm not one is not good at is far, far, far larger than the universe of things that you are good at. And so there are all kinds of things that I am not good at.
For instance, I'm not good at running. You can run things. I don't, I'm not good at running things. I shouldn't be allowed to run anything. And, you know, and at a certain point I thought, well, you know, to be quote, unquote, successful, you have to be the boss. You have to run things. I'm a terrible boss. I'm terrible at running things. They shouldn't let me anywhere near that.
So, figuring out what you're not good at is powerful. It's really helpful. And the solution to that is to then look for and surround yourself with people who are good at stuff you're not good at. That's really important.
Alan Fleischmann
That's so important, and if you're aware of that, there's something with this grand idea. I want to run for office, I really don't see it. Or they want to run their own they want to be an entrepreneur. They want to start their business, I don't see it. And there are other people, I can feel it. I can see the burning. I can feel it. I can see the light. They should do it. They have no choice. In fact, they don't think there's a choice. And then have enough self awareness to know that there's another category of what I'm not good at, and there's another category, I don't know, and test it. You may hone skills you never knew you had. but they may not be your natural born life experience skills, but they may be skills you can develop as well. But know what you're not good at is a powerful thing.
Daniel Pink
I agree.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, well, this has been amazing.
You've been listening to Leadership Matters. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann, we just spent the last hour with Daniel Pink, great, bests-elling author, former chief speechwriter, thinker, host of incredible things with Pinkcast and Pink Report. I look for his next book always, and I keep reading and rereading the books he's written. He's had an amazing career at giving his best insight and lessons in life, so we can have aha moments, which we do every time. So, Daniel, I'm so glad you've been on the show today. I could have used another hour. We should have you back.
Daniel Pink
It's been a pleasure and significantly cheaper than therapy. So I appreciate it.
Alan Fleischmann
You've been giving therapy to all of us as well. So I appreciate that too, but let's do it again soon. I'd love it. It'll be fun, of course. Thank you.