Raffi Grinberg

Executive Director, Dialog

Author, How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now)

Young people today have two jobs: succeeding at their day job and figuring out what they actually want to do with their lives. The second job is just as important.

Summary

This week on Leadership Matters, Alan was joined by Raffi Grinberg, executive director of Dialog and author of the upcoming book, How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now). Throughout their conversation, Alan and Raffi discuss Raffi’s early life and influences, time at Princeton University, entrepreneurial ventures, time teaching at Boston College and his book, How to Be a Grown Up, which will be released on March 25. They also discussed Raffi’s philosophy around the need for engaged dialogue in order to solve the world’s most difficult challenges.

Mentions & Resources

• How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now)

• The Real Analysis Lifesaver: All the Tools You Need to Understand Proofs

• Constructive Dialogue Institute

• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt

Guest Bio

Raffi Grinberg is a business leader, author, and educator based in Washington, DC. He is an executive at Dialog and the co-founder of The Constructive Dialogue Institute (with Jonathan Haidt), both multimillion-dollar education nonprofits and businesses that bring people together through dynamic conversation. He graduated with honors from Princeton University and previously worked in management at Bain & Company. He is the author of a mathematics textbook published by Princeton University Press, and is the author of How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now). He also created and taught the popular Adulting 101 course at Boston College.

Episode Transcript

Alan Fleischmann

Welcome to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischman. Today, I'm excited to sit down with someone who embodies leadership through education, dialog and empowerment, Raffi Grinberg. Raffi is an entrepreneur, educator and author who's dedicated his career to equipping the next generation with the skills they need to thrive. He's a co-founder of the Constructive Dialog Institute, an organization created to foster understanding and bridge divides through open, honest conversation. He's also the current executive director of Dialog, which brings together CEOs, policy makers, public intellectuals and more for candid conversations about the issues we all are facing. 

Raffi is also the author of the upcoming book How To Be A Grown Up, The 14 Essential Skills You Didn't Know You Needed Until Just Now, and if there's a lot in here to just to dive in on things I really didn't know until just now. It's inspired by the popular Adulting 101 course he taught at Boston College. The book will officially be released on March 25. Today, we'll discuss Raffi’s amazing journey from his early days at Princeton and Bain & Company to his passion for educational ventures like Uplift and DollarsEd, his time with Dialog and his written works. Raffi, welcome to Leadership Matters. It's a pleasure to have you on the show. 

Raffi Grinberg

Likewise, it's fun to be here.

Alan Fleischmann

I'm very excited to talk about your book in particular, but we thought maybe let's get started a little bit with your early life growing up, a little bit about your your home. What was life around the house and your brothers and sisters or your parents? Do tell us a little bit about that? 

Raffi Grinberg

Absolutely. I was born at the age of zero in the Bay Area in California. Both my parents are immigrants. My mother from Chile, my father from France and Israel. And I guess one hallmark of my childhood is that we moved around a lot. So from California, moved to Israel, then to Massachusetts, back to California, back to Massachusetts, and I felt like one of the superpowers I discovered in childhood is the ability to reinvent myself. Every move was painful at the time because I had developed close friendships and was sad to leave them behind. But I also realized that in this new environment, nobody knows who I am. They don't know my personality. It can be anything, and so I basically try on different personalities and see how they suited me every two years. I think I realized around seventh or eighth grade that I could be funny too. Like I made a joke in class the first day and everyone laughed. It's like, I was never the funny kid, but like, this year, I could be the funny kid. What was the longest you stayed in one place? The longest ended up being for high school, so I stayed in the same school for four years. 

Alan Fleischmann

And brothers and sisters, one younger brother, where is he in the world today? 

Raffi Grinberg

He is in Dallas, Texas. 

Alan Fleischmann

What kind of work does he do? 

Raffi Grinberg

He's an AI software engineer at Google. And it's interesting, because we both grew up Jewish, I'd say pretty middle of the road conservative in the American parlance. And we both became more religious as we grew. So my brother much more so, so he's what we'd call a baal teshuva, meaning like “return to the path.” And he became very, very religious. 

Alan Fleischmann

And your parents today, or where do they live today? 

Raffi Grinberg

They split their time between Boston and Maryland, very close to where we live here in DC. So they're able to be with their grandchildren, which is also very fun.

Alan Fleischmann

I love that. So tell us a little bit about the, you know, the family in Eastern Europe, a little bit of those origins as well. I'm sure that has a big part of of your diaspora, your journey and your family's journey, about the family story, and then how that actually created your worldview. You have a very strong sense of purpose. And with all your humor and your warmth, I always get a sense of urgency in your life as well. 

Raffi Grinberg

So on my mother's side of the family, the story goes that her grandfather, my great grandfather, Raphael, for whom I'm named, was the seventh child of all boys, who's the seventh son he was living, I think it was like early 1910s right before the Tsar was overthrown in Russia, and the Tsar had made some decree that if any family seven children, they're all boys, he'll make the seventh one his godson. And it was, I think, part of this program, he wanted to incentivize there to be more boys and fewer girls born, so they found out about this, and Raphael was sent to the palace in Moscow to meet the Tsar. But somewhere along the way, they found out he was Jewish, and it was dangerous time for Jews in Russia, and he had to flee the country. And he had always been told to his family in America, specifically in New York. And so he got on a boat bound for America, worked his way for passage on the ship, but ended up taking him to South America. So he ended up, if I recall, in Argentina, then moved to Chile, which is where my mother's family is now from, and there's still family there. Yes, a lot of my family is still there. A lot of them in California, and then on my dad's side of the family, his parents were both French, and so throughout World War Two, they were in hiding. 

A lot of their extended family became survivors of the concentration camps. My grandparents were both in hiding. My grandfather was hidden in the Huguenot village of Le Chambon, which became famous as a Huguenot village, basically converted the entire town into hiding places for Jewish children. 

Alan Fleischmann

Wow, it's amazing. How did your parents meet? They met Israeli folk dancing at Stanford. I remember in my application to Stanford University, I made some joke. I said, if it wasn't for Stanford, my parents never would have met and I never would have been born. But I also apparently took my first steps on the Stanford campus, because we used to go walking there when I was a toddler. So if it wasn't for Stanford, I never would have learned how to walk. And they rejected me. So they didn't, it wasn't the essay that drew them as it should have, but in terms of the sense of purpose, I guess connecting it back like I felt a little bit of a crisis of meaning when my wife. Charlotte and I first had kids, because so many of our ancestors, it felt like they were dedicated to making better lives, their children, better lives, their grandchildren, the entire purpose of their life, or at least a big part of it, was like, get that one step up. And even my parents were more or less middle class the United States, to give us a big future, be able to afford to send me and my brother to college. And I feel like I've had my life more or less made I had amazing, amazing childhood, amazing opportunities, despite the challenges of living and all that, it was still a great childhood, and I was really set up to thrive. And so now that I have my own children, kind of like, what is the point? We've already gotten them to the, you know, the best possible, like, life they can have, and what I think is the greatest possible country in the world to be living. What else is there to do for them? And so it prompted my wife and I to create a mission statement for our family. 

Alan Fleischmann

And what is the mission statement for your family? 

Raffi Grinberg

I don't remember the exact wording, but essentially, it's to create a better world for everyone around us and have a good life, and to do that through our values, which include compassion and creativity.

Alan Fleischmann

That's awesome. That's awesome. And you met your wife where?

Raffi Grinberg

We met at Princeton. It's actually a crazy story, because my best friend from high school, Daniel went to Princeton a year after me. He took a gap year, and he was in the same pre-orientation program as Charlotte, and so he introduced us first as friends. I asked her out. I fell in love with her basically the first week, but she rejected me. We ended up starting to go out about six or eight months later, and then we eventually got engaged, got married, and then Charlotte introduced Daniel to her best friend from high school, and they ended up getting married. 

Alan Fleischmann

And aren't you next door neighbors, or something like that as well? And you both, you moved to the Maryland area to be near them, if I'm not mistaken.

Raffi Grinberg

Exactly. So we moved to Washington, DC in order to live next door to Daniel and Julie. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's an amazing story. 

Raffi Grinberg

So they're family, they're more exactly, exactly, and they have kids who are very similar to our kids ages. We always had this dream of raising them side by side, and you have it both sides, which is so amazing, because, you know, the dads and the moms are best friends exactly. 

Alan Fleischmann

I love that. I love that. And did you both enjoy Princeton?

Raffi Grinberg

I say I had a mixed experience, I can't argue, I guess, with the outcome, which is, it helped set me up for my career. I met my wife. There I was with my best friend. But on the other hand, I thought that there was a lot of room for improvement, both on the academic life and the social life. So social life was very segregated, because the Eating Club system. Basically, instead of fraternities, Princeton has Eating Clubs where you eat together, and once you're a junior, you're only eating with the same group of people more or less every day. And then on the academic side, I just felt like a lot of the professors there, as you can imagine, are like uber geniuses and they have a hard time communicating their ideas to mere mortals like myself.

Alan Fleischmann

I love that. And then what made you choose Princeton, by the way, considering you were looking at Stanford, all these other places, what made you choose?

Raffi Grinberg

Well, I did get rejected by Stanford. I was very excited about Princeton at the time. It was my first choice, and part of the reason, I think, is it's, you know, an elite university, but also has that small town feel. The college itself, low number of undergraduates, I think at the time, was like less than 5,000 and I was grown up going to more or less small schools, and so I wanted to be part of something smaller like that.

Alan Fleischmann

That's great. And what's your major at Princeton?

Raffi Grinberg

I did math, which was a terrible choice in hindsight.

Alan Fleichmann

Why was it a terrible choice? 

Raffi Grinberg

I was always good at math growing up, and so I thought it kind of made sense to me. It was a no brainer. But what I didn't realize is that when you get to that level, a lot of math becomes more abstract. And so I was used to the kind of math you do in high school, which is more computational. You're essentially learning algorithms. You can repeat. But higher math is very more creative, abstract, something I still like and am into, but it was really, really hard to learn that skill. And in fact, I struggled so much with the very first course I took at Princeton on real analysis, which is like proof based calculus that I spent, like, the next four years, I was just trying to catch up on that deficit. And so when it came time to write my senior thesis, which everyone at Princeton is required to write, I didn't know how to come up with original research and math. And I said, instead, I want to go back to that first course I took and write a textbook that would have served me better than the one that we used, one that would actually explain these concepts to a beginner.

Alan Fleichmann

I love that. So math actually explains life is a creative side of you too. Is there a music side of you as well? 

Raffi Grinberg

I used to play clarinet, and I actually helped start a klezmer band at Princeton. So klezmer is like Eastern European Jewish folk music, and we called it the Princeton University Klezmer Ensemble, or PUKE for short.

Alan Fleischmann

All right, I love that. Obviously there's this wonderful connectivity between good at math, or even a passion for math, and obviously loving the arts as well, which is very close. Then you went to Bain right after, management consulting. And what made you want to do that?

Raffi Grinberg

I will say, in hindsight, it was an ill informed decision, not that it was a bad choice or a bad opportunity, but it felt like the continuation of this path of like try to get into the best university. You know, at the time, Princeton was ranked number one, and then go from there to the number one company. At the time, Bain was ranked number one place to work for, and obviously an elite institution, alongside McKinsey, BCG, and so I felt like I was on this path of just like, do the thing that is hardest to get because that will impress other people, and if it impresses other people, it likely is also good for you in the same way, good education will be good for you because it'll teach you all kinds of things. Working in a good company will prepare you for your career in all kinds of ways. I think in many ways, that is absolutely true. And I think I got a very good business education at Bain. In other ways, it just wasn't the right fit. For me, it never really made sense.

Alan Fleischmann

How are you there three years? And how long did you know you didn't want to be there more than three years after the first year? Any takeaway from that experience so then you're glad that kind of proved you that was a good experience to have had?

Raffi Grinberg

I guess there are two big things that I learned from being at Bain. One of them is that large institutions really struggle. Basically, the larger a company gets, the more bureaucracy it has, the more distance it has between the person at the top, like the CEO, and the end employees who face the end customers. And that creates all kinds of problems. So it's usually the largest organizations in the world that bring in companies like Bain to try to solve their management problems. And it makes sense, but it kind of gave me this worldview that I think also influences, like how I see business and how I see politics. Like large things are hard to run. Small is better. 

The second learning I had was just for myself and my career. I felt like a big part of this Associate Program at Bain, I think it's very similar to other consulting companies, banking companies that recruit these elite college students, they're very focused on smoothing out your weaknesses. They kind of need everybody to be more or less replaceable with each other. So ever needs to be equally good at building financial models and excel, ever needs to be equally good at creating presentations for clients in PowerPoint. And it's less focused on finding what are your unique strengths relative to your peers in developing those and I always had this hunch that I think was later validated, the best way to build a career is to not focus so much on smoothing out the weaknesses and focus more so on identifying, what are my superpowers? What am I better at than my peers? And really doubling down on those things. 

Alan Fleischmann

It's really good advice. Actually, I bet that's one of the things that helped you be a grown up, and then any lessons that you learned from your creation of Uplift, tell us a little bit about that in DollarsEd. 

Raffi Grinberg

So after I decided I want to go into entrepreneurship and I helped start two companies, Uplift was focused on teaching people mental health skills based in cognitive behavioral therapy, and I'd never been to therapy before, so learning CBT was revolutionary for me, basically, being able to reframe your automatic, intuitive, negative thoughts into thoughts that are more realistic. Reading the book Feeling Good by David Burns in particular was a revelation. And I try to teach a sort of shortened version of that in my book as well. And dollar said was focused on teaching people financial literacy. I had this realization my first day of work at Bain, actually that I didn't know anything I needed to know about the real world, including how to fill out these tax forms they were giving us and how to select health insurance that HR was asking us about. And if I had that experience, having come from quote, unquote, a good college, think about everyone else in the world who just is totally unequipped for the real world, but has been in school for such a long time. And so I decided I want to learn all that financial stuff. I spent a decent amount of time being in financial services. I ended up working at Vanguard for a brief while to learn about investing, insurance, those types of things, and then created online courses and curricula that I ended up teaching.

Alan Fleischmann

That's so cool. So were they simultaneous, DollarsEd and Uplift?

Raffi Grinsberg

I was working on both the same time, which, in hindsight, I guess there's a lot of mistakes we’re covering already. It was a bad idea to do things at the same time. 

Alan Fleischmann

I imagine that would have been a handful. There would have been a lot to do as well. How did you find, you know, we I mean, I guess it was also between that and Bain. You had a great exposure to up and coming entrepreneurs and leaders, I imagine there was a interesting case study, or case studies, of the different kinds of leaders and people finding their superpowers, as you said, you know for yourself and when you're advising, was it obvious too, that people had distinct qualities and traits and opportunities and that many of them don't know it? 

Raffi Grinberg

Yeah, I think I picked it up my last couple of years at Bain, when I realized it wasn't where I wanted to stay long term, and I was trying to figure out what the heck to do next. And so I realized there's so many great people who work there come from very different backgrounds. A lot of people joined Bain after business school and before business school. They did all kinds of different things. And so I said, I just want to pick the brains as many people as possible while I'm still here. And so I would do these informal career interviews with, you know, partners, consultants at the firm. I probably did like close to 100 of them over the course of of the year. And definitely realize everyone has their own unique strengths, but also just gave me a sense of what kinds of jobs are out there and which of them I might be drawn to.

Alan Fleischmann

Wow. And then you said, and you went into Open Mind, which is, I guess, now, now called the Constructive Dialogue Institute. Yeah, you co-founded that with an amazing psychologist, Jonathan Haidt. And am I pronouncing his name right? Because I met him now a few times. I was just with him in Dallas Heights. He's amazing. I know from Dialog and what problem were you trying to solve that you both came together, I'm curious and and what made you launch this organization together?

Raffi Grinberg

We were trying to reduce political polarization, and we felt like one of the solutions is to teach people the art of constructive disagreement. So we live in a pluralistic democracy, where not only do we need to get along with each other, but we actually need to benefit from our disagreements, be able to learn from people who think differently. But that requires a skill, how to disagree, and that skill is increasingly not being taught in school. And so we wanted to revitalize that art. So we created online courses drawing on a background in education technology that we would then teach in online format. Universities, I would also go into workshops, increasingly for corporations that hired young people, and a lot of that was born out of Jonathan's research on psychology. Studied moral psychology basically, why are we wired to be so tribal and how can we overcome that? And other lessons from from modern psychology about how to talk more constructively. And the fun part about that is we had a third co-founder, Caroline. Caroline is the one who actually introduced John and I. Caroline ended up marrying my best friend Daniel's brother, Eric, and they live two houses down from us now, and Caroline is still running the Constructive Dialogue Institute. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's amazing, actually, it's amazing block to live. And are you involved still with the Institute? 

Raffi Grinberg

Not anymore, no. But sadly, it's thriving, it seems like. And it seems like in the past few years, especially, the demand for this has exploded. So many universities are realizing they're grappling with with these blow ups, right, of students who haven't been taught these skills, even faculty as well. And it's really needed for someone to come in and create some structure around those types of conversations.

Alan Fleischmann

That's amazing. And then you moved on from there, and that's when I met you, when you joined Dialog. How did that happen? And I know we don't talk a lot about Dialog in public, so it's kind of a private thing, but that's a little bit about drew to Dialog, and this idea of creating, I would say, uncommon tables of conversation. I describe it as not the didactic it's we're not we're all being lectured at around the world, but this is the one place where people contribute and speak to peers who may have major differences with one another, philosophically background, just not from the same and that's why I call uncommon statements. But we look each other in the eyes and we have conversations that, frankly, we wouldn't have elsewhere. I can see by your background why that would appeal to you, and the ability to scale the difficult and the unexpected conversations as well.

Raffi Grinberg

That's a great way to summarize it. So Dialog was started almost 20 years ago by Peter Thiel and Oren Hoffman, and the purpose is to bring together leaders around the world for conversations that are entirely off the record. And so the purpose of these conversations is really for people to learn from one another. So when you, Alan, come, you want to meet other people of your caliber, other CEOs of companies or leaders in other fields, leading policy makers, politicians, academics, whoever they may be, the more diversity of profession the better. But people you respect who also see the world differently, and they have different opinions about politics, religion, how to be a leader, how to do business, everything in between that. And so we have very particular formats we use to curate these conversations, to invite the right people and to make them happen in a way that similar to my past background is very constructive. 

So when people come into these conversations, the purpose is not to try to look smart in front of everyone else, or, you know, persuade the audience, because there is no audience, there is no media, there is no press, it's really just each other. The purpose is to learn new things. And when everyone comes into a conversation with that attitude of curiosity, amazing things can come from it. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's great. And now this has been several years. Did you think you'd be doing this for six years? 

Raffi Grinberg

I had a hunch. This was like my thing. It really appealed to me. And to your question about how I came to it is through utter serendipity. So when I was trying to raise money for one of my previous startups, which, by the way, I ended up being a terrible fundraiser, I was trying to raise money, and I met an investor through a friend, and she invited me to pitch her, actually, at a party that she was hosting. So a little unconventional, okay, like, I'm going to this person's party, and then when the party started, she kind of pulled me aside into different rooms, like, okay, now here are your pitch for a company. It was kind of a weird, it threw me for a loop, and I did a bad job with the pitch. 

I went back to the party and ended up meeting the previous executive director of Dialog, who ended up later on recruiting me to replace her when she had decided to move on. It all worked out. 

But I remember at that party, the host, who was the venture capitalist that I was pitching, she said, no way, my husband was also math major at Princeton. You should talk to him. And immediately, within a few minutes of being this guy, realized, like he's one of those genius math people, right? And that was not me in college. And so he started talking all this math stuff that really intimidated me, and he said, I want to give you a math problem that I used to give to interview people at my firm. And I was trying to kind of dodge it all night, and I finally was leaving the party he ran after me. He's like, wait, I didn't give you that math problem. It's like, oh no. He gives me this problem. I was thinking about it the entire train ride back from New York to Philadelphia, I stayed up to, like, three in the morning trying to solve the problem because I thought it would impress him. And, you know, his wife, the investor. I finally thought I solved it. I emailed them the solution the next day, I was waiting for the response, and he said, yep, that was the right answer. That was it. The whole response, no, like, you're so smart, you're so amazing, and then in the end, she did not invest in the company.

Alan

That's great. Well, let's talk about the book. How long has this book been in the making, How To Be A Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn't Know You Needed Until Just Now. What inspired you? I know the class you taught was the big inspiration, but what made you actually say, I want to put pen to paper a long time in the making.

Raffi

Like you said, I felt like a big part of my career up until that point, was figuring out the things that I'd never been taught, so how to deal with money in the real world, mental health skills, conversation skills, career development, things that I never learned in school. And so when I was at Boston College, I was originally recruited as a career coach to help prepare students for management consulting interviews called case interviews. But they gave me the title of lecture, which made me eligible to teach courses. And I thought this is something I've always wanted to teach other people, so I created an entire curriculum from scratch. Ended up teaching the course for a couple years, and it was the most popular course in my department, the undergraduate business school, but it was open to school students in all the schools. It filled up within minutes of registration each time. 

So I think there was clearly a demand for it, and I tried to synthesize all the things I learned in those domains. And so I actually tracked the outcomes of the students for years afterwards. So I would survey them every year for a few years and basically ask, like, what things from the course do you still remember? Which of them have been useful, which then have not been useful? How useful was what you learned compared to what you learned in other courses in college? And so I have real data showing me that this course transformed people's lives more so than a lot of other things that they learned. And I thought, what a shame that I'm not teaching anymore because my role at Dialog is all consuming. But even if I were, I can only reach so many students a year. With a book, I could reach untold numbers of readers. And so I'd start outlining this book a long time ago.

Alan Flieschmann

Tell us a little bit about the four skills in particular that you walk through in the book, and why those skills? And then kind of walk through each one of them, and the approach you took in distilling how one can improve those skills, or even identify your super skills. 

Raffi Grinberg

Yeah, I give a brief primer on each one. So the financial one, perhaps the most obvious I mentioned my first day of work. I didn't know any of these basic things, like how to pay taxes, which you are required to do by law, and yet they don't teach you in school. That always blew my mind. So I cover how to pay taxes. I also cover how to get the right kind of insurance that you need, and, most importantly, how to invest. There are two truths I think most people are never taught. The first truth is, if you do not save money for retirement, you will likely not have enough money to retire. Social Security isn't enough to support many people. However, second truth, you don't need to save as much money as you think you do because of this magic thing called investing, and that gives people the motivation, the interest, to learn it.

On the mental health skills or topic, I try to teach people the basic truth that comes from cognitive behavioral therapy, but also comes from Buddhism and ancient Stoic philosophers, which is just because you feel something doesn't mean it's true. Our emotions and even our intuitive responses to things are not always accurate, and by developing a more accurate way of thinking worldview, we can find more peace. And so I teach some aspects of CBT, as well as critical thinking, and my favorite which is how to build resilience and face rejection. 

Another topic is on the career development. And so I'd say a big takeaway from it is that young people, especially, basically, have two jobs. Their first job is succeeding during their day job. And I devote an entire chapter to how to acclimate to the workplace. Coming from university, where things are very different, but your second job is figuring out what you want to do with your career. And that's a whole nother job. And this comes in my, you know, interviewing all these people at Bain and how to network in a less obvious way than you've probably been been talking about those relationships and learn about the world. 

And the last topic is onrelationships. So there, part of it is around dating and friendships and evolving with your parents, but also big part of these conversation skills that we talked about and how to approach difficult conversations, including disagreements. 

Alan Fleischmann

I guess there's a little bit of their verticals, but they can be horizontal too, right? Because you build confidence and you build up your skills in certain areas, if you're stronger the relationship side, certainly if you're dealing with mental skills. And then obviously, I can see career skills get benefited by the fact that you're better, stronger than the others as well. 

Raffi Grinberg

These are all completely interrelated, for sure, and I think a big driving theme of the book, and more so the course that I taught more. So I'd say my life, as you mentioned, is purpose, like finding what are your purposes in life right now, they're unique to everybody, and many people have multiple of them. But I had a quarter life crisis. I think a lot of people have a quarter life crisis. It's a little less discussed than the midlife crisis. We basically realize, like I have most of my life ahead of me. What is it that I actually want to do? And given all the opportunities that people have given me over my life, how do I make the most of them and make the most of myself? And this is where a field that I learned about really helped me understand all this. The field is called adult developmental psychology. Have you heard of this? 

Alan Fleischmann

Yes, of course. 

Raffi Grinberg

Oh, great. So this is about a big part of the book, is this transition from what they call the socialized mind to the self-authored mind. Most people are stuck in the socialized mind of kind of understanding the way you're supposed to do things, but you're actually living most of your life according to what you think other people expect of you. Hence in my example, right, my career of going to Bain because I thought it was an impressive thing to do, and so forth. But the transition to the self-authored mind is deciding for yourself what it is you really want out of life according to your own experiences, your own ability to question things, realizing this is what I want to do, and that answer can certainly change over time, but at least for now, this is the direction I want to aim in, and that informs what you want to get out of your mental health, what you want to get out of your finances. What does money mean to you? What you want to get out of your relationships? And so this driving theme of the book. I start with that stuff about developmental psychology. The driving theme ends up being figuring out what it is that you want, and now the book can give you the knowledge of how to get it.

Alan Fleischmann

And the book is really about the things that no one ever taught you, which is kind of bizarre when you think about it, which you said a minute ago about, you know, here you have to pay taxes, but no one tells you how to do taxes. You know, and understand financial literacy or understanding what you’re supposed to do. But yet, you're supposed to carry on a life that actually is successful in those areas. 

Raffi Grinberg

And those four pillars, you know, we're supposed to be successful these four pillars, yeah, no one tells us how to navigate, which is a constant source of consternation for me. It just feels like most of what I learned in school is not useful for my life, and I have a whole separate conversation about school, and I think school is still great in many other ways, but it just feels like what you're being taught are not necessarily the things that are most applicable to being an adult. And yes, when you're in school, you're a kid, but once you graduate, you're an adult. And those things, I think it's the missing piece of the curriculum that I've basically dedicated my career to trying to help people fill in. 

Alan Fleischmann

I mean, the hidden secret we've talked about this on the show here a bunch of times, but it's also in my conversations with with people who hire with CEOs. You know, why it still continues the way it does. We don't know. But the MBA, for example, doesn't teach you to be in business. I mean, doesn't really teach you to be an entrepreneur. It doesn't teach you to be creative. It just teaches you to study other people who've actually been entrepreneurial, necessarily or creative. But so if you're looking for a curating culture of new thinkers, you probably don't go to the MBA program to get there. And then I almost did an MBA. 

Raffi Grinberg

This rings very true for me. After Bain, I was on that path, and I've actually been admitted to Wharton and with a scholarship, and was like playing to do and everything, and I dropped out two weeks before it started. And what you just said was part of the reason.

Alan Fleischmann

Yeah, no, it's amazing. It comes up, literally, when I talk to someone who's looking for someone in a significant role, we have that conversation almost always. I don't want that, the MBA type. I will tell you what I don't want, and they dismiss it because they're looking especially the world we live in today, where there needs a little bit more of that creativity. 

Raffi Grinberg

The other thing that's happening now, which you're living by, is that people aren't switching jobs as quickly as they were. There was this period where you were young and you thought, God should I change my job every year in order for me to have this life path. And now people realizing that they can actually figure out what they need to know and explore themselves by having almost a firm foundation and then kind of, you know, test themselves in that environment and find their purpose and find their strongest skills. 

Alan Fleischmann

Yeah, that definitely rings true. 

Raffi Grinberg

And I hire too. So we've got a team at Dialog of almost 20 full time people, and I hire a lot of young people too who are only a couple years, if that, after college. And both those things definitely resonate. The first one is, I don't really care about their educational credentials. It's more so what have they accomplished, and how do they fit the job description. And the second point about requiring creativity, absolutely, like we look for evidence that people can solve problems, right, and not just be handed solutions, which is very different from, I think, how a lot of people are trained in school. That's probably the biggest issue of all, is, how do you fix it? 

You know, how do you actually, you've identified it as a challenge, but how do you turn that into something that works and can fix it, rather than sitting there and saying, wow, it broke, and staring at it and saying, you know, we have a problem, but not figuring out how to actually make it go away, or actually, more importantly, become a better, better outcome, which I get a lot of that in the book. A little bit. 

Alan Fleischmann

How much of this book came from the Adulting 101 the course you taught at Boston College. 

Raffi Grinberg

Oh, huge amount of it. The book is basically a 14 week course compressed into a 14 chapter book. Certainly improved things, I like to think over the years since I last taught it, but more or less it's what my students were learning. 

Alan Fleischmann

Share a little bit from the book if you can, if there's a favorite thing you'd want to share as a teaser, knowing that we want people to buy the book, so don't tell us everything, but enough. That's the kind of things that that the skills you're actually sharing.

Raffi Grinberg

Yeah, I appreciate that. One of the things I could share is this framework around critical thinking. And I know the term gets through around a lot, but I'll share my definition, which is basically the ability to question the information that's coming at you in order to distill it into your own worldview. So I think of our minds as a Brita filter. We have all this water being poured through the top. Water is all the information you're consuming. A lot of it unconsciously. You're listening to songs, and the lyrics are coming in. You're browsing articles, online, social media, posts. All this information is coming at you all day, and a Brita filter filters it down. So your filter is your ability to question, think, do I agree with this? Do I not agree? If I disagree, why? If I agree, why? And that filtered water goes down into the delicious, you know, clean water that you can drink. That's your world view. 

But when you pour water too fast at the top of Berta filter, it spills over the top, right, and then it spills over the top, goes through the spout. Now you have all this unfiltered water mixed in with the clean water. And I think that's what happens to most people. You're unconsciously assimilating all these ideas, opinions, from other people without even realizing it's happening to you. They become part of your own. But then later on, when you think about I think, oh, why do I believe this? Why do I really think that? And the bigger theme that we were discussing earlier, why am I living my entire life this way? A lot of people are living their lives because they've assimilated certain ways of being from song lyrics or Disney movies when they were young or things like that. And so part of the skill is being able to deconstruct that. But I think part of the skill is being able to apply that filter in the moment, slowing down the rate of information, and actually being able to question everything. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's important part you just brought up, which is a big struggle we've talked about this before, is we're so inundated now, so overwhelmed by data, information, news, conversation, texting. You make a point to take dial down for, you know, to have a Sabbath, for example, for 24 hours a week. It starts on Friday night, ends on Saturday night. I don't care. It's what your Sundays look like. But I do think the people that I know in the world who make that point, you can't I mean, I do a lot of crisis management, so I can't always say Saturday is off limits, but I do find that my I'm a much more, my plane needs to land on Friday. I'll say differently. I can work really hard, crazy hours, but I need to know the plane is landing on Friday. And there's a part of me that just becomes a lot better on a Sunday onward, because I've turned off. How much of that is a skill?

Raffi Grinberg

I mean, it's a lifestyle, it's a decision that you're going to make as a product. But you just said something that triggered that to me. So how much of that is a secret sauce, I guess, in your living and that you would recommend other people, yeah, so say observing the Sabbath is personal lifestyle, religious decision. It's not something I necessarily recommend in the book, but I just, I do think, as you said, it applies to this, this concept of critical thinking, and it just requires the time to slow down. My working theory is that people spend 80% of their time consuming information and 20% thinking about it. And really it should be the opposite. You spend 20% of your time consuming information and 80% of your time thinking about it, and before the age of smartphones, that 80% was built in naturally, right? While you were waiting for things, waiting in line, waiting to fall asleep, waiting on an escalator, whatever it is, all that time has evaporated because of the phone. And now, not only is it time you're no longer spending thinking and processing, it's now time that you're consuming even more information, and so the scale gets even more inverted. 

So the 24 hour, 25 hour Sabbath is obviously a great opportunity for that mental defragmentation. But I think even without that religious practice, people can do it in their lives by spending less time on their phones, better sleep, all these other things that I discuss. I know people who do it, not for religious students, but for tech. The Tech Sabbath to kind of get off. It's hard to do if you're going to carry a smartphone, if you're using it for your Kindle app, if you're using it for news, before you know it, you're going to start using it for your emails or for your text as well. But I know quite a few people who take the phone and put it off now and try very hard and know that there's another way, an analog way, if you will, that.

Alan Fleischmann

You get to you if there's an emergency, in order for you to actually kind of tune off again. It doesn't work in my firm, we're trying to do it as shifts, so that people are on and so that the next weekend they you know, you don't have to be on, but trying to divide and conquer so that people aren't always working all the time over every weekend. But there's just so much brilliance and what that does to our brains. The most creative I am is when I walk in nature, or I'm, you know, reading something that's unrelated, or writing, journaling, all of a sudden I get a breakthrough idea. Or if I'm sitting in a room with other people who are brainstorming, kind of like a Dialog moment, you know, where you're talking, all of a sudden you have epiphanies, because you're not looking down your phone, you're looking in the eyes of other people, or you're looking to the sky. I think of you that way, and you have nailed that. And that's a big, big part of your life, and big part of your your secret sauce. 

Raffi Grinberg

I appreciate that. I think part of intelligence is being able to connect different concepts to each other. And so if you think about what a computer does when it's defragmenting the hard drive, it's taking all these unrelated components and actually connecting them in memory. And that's what you do when you're decompressing, usually when you're falling asleep at night or even dreaming, right? Is all these unrelated things that have come at you through the day. This person said this, I read this, it's starting to connect those pieces together. And I think a lot of what you described as these epiphanies that seemingly come from your subconscious, my theory is they come from this defragmentation of ideas that were seemingly unconnected have now been connected, and they form this more cohesive worldview. And so you're reading something totally unrelated, and think, oh, that helps me solve my dilemma at work. You need to have the time, as you said, to allow for that kind of defragmentation to happen, otherwise those epiphanies just stop. 

Alan Fleischmann

What other recommendations do you have in there as well? And based on the book and based on the observations you have, by teaching the class of the kind of people only mastered that early on, not just what they should learn and what they should do, which is what the book's about, but also what they shouldn't do. Is there a universal shouldn't do?

Raffi Grinberg

I don't talk about this in the book because it's more controversial. I wanted the book to be less like advice and more just practical knowledge. But I will say, speaking in my personal capacity, not as a professor and author, I think 90% of it comes down to the use of smartphones. If you can find a way to control that in your own life, it solves a lot of these other problems that you brought up. And so the way that I think there's a typical framework for addiction, right, is, are you addicted to something? Are you in control of it, or is it in control of you? I like to think, is your phone serving you or are you serving it? And a good litmus test for that is, at the end of the day, do you think I was on my phone too much or not? Anecdotally, the vast majority of people I talked to say I was on it too much, which means it has power over you. And so I do think a phone can be an amazing tool, and obviously I use it as well. It makes me a million times more productive for various tasks with work. So it's an amazing invention. It's amazing tool, but you have to find a way to master it, because it's intrinsically addictive and to gain control over it. 

Alan Fleischmann

And John, who you partnered with in the past, wrote a book about this, right? His book that was all about his new book, The Anxious Generation, yeah, which is stunning as a parent studying as a as someone who's on their phone, I'll get up all the night and just want to see what's going on in the world. And before you know it, it's three in the morning and it's now four, 4:15, in the morning, when you really need to sleep, with this idea of what it does to young people, to kids, it creates this idea of being overwhelmed all the time, which is, and it's amazing how quickly this book has spurred, I'd say basically social movement, the social movement of limiting the use of phones for kids, getting getting them out of schools, delaying the start of social media, all these things. Within less than one year of publishing the book, it's already becoming mainstream, which is amazing, and I'm so glad that's coming. 

Raffi Grinberg

And I think someone can think like, obviously, now it's obvious these things are so bad for children, you could think, well, they're also still bad for adults. The reason they're particularly bad for children is because you develop this addiction early, and it rewires your brain in all kinds of ways that John goes into. But even for grown ups too, we have a hard time controlling our addictions and impulses. Even kids who are addicted to video games like adults can get addicted to them too. And so if you're the kind of person and I am too who thinks like, I don't want my kids to be on smartphones, what percent of that could be helpful to reflect what percent of that applies to you as well? So otherwise, you're going to be kids today, tomorrow's adults, and the brains are wired wrong by the time we become adults, because we're spending all our time on smartphones and all the negative news, and then the disinformation and misinformation is also anxiety producing. And you spend all your time trying to, I'm trying to find the truth and find a human to trust, which is getting harder and harder to do as well, and you're also being subconsciously told what to think about. So if you're the kind of person who checks the news frequently, and I'll admit to doing that as well, in part because it's relevant to my work, then I'm occupying a huge percent of my brain space on things that just just because they're in the news. Now I have to be thinking about them. But it's not the thing that's the most interesting to me.

Raffi Grinberg 

Like, I want to stay on top of it to some extent, but to another extent, there's so many other interesting things in the world that I want to think about. I want to learn more about science and history. And you know, nature, as you said, all these things are fascinating. And yet, if you feel like you have to be on top of what's current, you don't have the time anymore to reflect on what's I guess I'd say enduring, right? 

Alan Fleischmann

Enduring things about the world, like what you can learn from history and science, and were there certain things, I mean, you came for the course, you put it all in the 14 weeks into the book, but as you were writing the book is a different exercise. Were there things that you actually put in the book that were not in the class? 

Raffi Grinberg

I'd say, spent more time in the book on what I call the softer skills, including friendships and dating, spent relatively little time on it in the course, because I figure it's so subjective, which it is, but I do think there are some objective truths and some objective skills that people can learn. And so when it comes to both friendships and dating, I think the biggest message that I'm trying to communicate is around intentionality. A lot of people kind of let themselves drift along socially, and they'll meet people, including potential romantic partners, through kind of whatever circles they're in. And some people get lucky. I like to say I got super lucky. I met Charlotte her first week of college my second year, and we hit it off, and we ended up getting married. But most people are not so fortunate. They have to be more intentional if they want to find a life partner or even a best friend in order to do that. And so it's about thinking for yourself, what qualities am I looking for in a friend or a partner? Where am I likely to meet those kinds of people? And how can I go about designing my life in a way that will enable that to actually happen? I think it's very uncommon for people to prioritize that in their lives when they're in their 20s, especially nowadays, you're prioritizing your career, which, in a lot of ways, makes sense, and you do have to be intentional about that, but I think it's important to be equally intentional about designing your life in a way that will build these relationships you want to have.

Alan Fleischmann

So we're discussing the book, but we're also discussing your career and the importance of dialogue, and the importance of dialogue across differences. Is there a core philosophy, Raffi, that guides your work and a commitment to your mission? And you mentioned your family mission, you found your purpose, your purpose is, clearly, there's a consistency in the way you approach the world, both in your teaching, your writing, your leading. But are there a personal kind of philosophy that you found, that you've been developing, that kind of brings it all together?

Raffi Grinberg 

One motto that I've become attached to is actually the motto of Dialog, the organization that I run. That talent is a part of the community, which is seek truth, and it's leaning into this idea of curiosity. If you really want to discover the truth on it, on an issue, you have to see it from multiple perspectives. It's really hard to do that yourself. Therefore, you have to seek out people who have those perspectives and master the skill of being able to engage in the conversation that will bear the fruit of whatever knowledge they have underneath the surface of their own hesitations, their own shyness, their own uncomfortability talking about difficult things. And so obviously it's a big part of what I teach, what I teach in my course, what I teach in the book and the organization community that I'm running every day. But in my personal life, it's something I'm trying to do just lean into my natural curiosity a lot more.

Alan Fleischmann

And the importance of curiosity in general, right? The so important to nurture that.

Raffi Grinberg

I mean that keeps you young forever You're still young, but it keeps you young forever if you're curious and humble. It creates an enormous humility. Obviously, I think, I think it's a confidence. And I love the people talking about curiosity and nurturing that your point. I do think most people are born with it. Most children are extremely curious, and for whatever reason, it gets beaten out of us as we get older. Back to my consternation with the way schooling works, I think a lot of the way that schools are designed are actually making you less curious, because the way that the formation of a classroom, how you sit with the teacher in the front, but even the rigid curriculum and those kinds of things you're basically being programmed to learn what other people are telling you rather than here's the thing that sparks my interest. I want to go pursue that. And again, with incredible respect to teachers and educators, I think a lot of ways that system has to work that way, and it makes a lot of sense to me, but it has that one drawback of beating out the curiosity that a lot of children have naturally. And I think as a grown up, you can rebuild it within yourself by going back to those roots. 

Alan Fleischmann

And part of this has to bring joy in your life too, right? I mean, in this the sense of laughter and joy and it kind of feeds the humility, but it also feeds the curiosity that it's okay to be goofy, it's okay to ask the dumb question that isn't so dumb after all. Or, you know, the idea to say “I don't know” is something we should thrive and and encourage, rather than people think they know it all. Yeah.

Raffi Grinberg

Yeah, you have to be totally unafraid to look stupid. There's a great scene in a TV show, and it wasn't a great TV show, so I wouldn't recommend it, but it's about, basically, this person who plays video games gets really good at them. They ask her, like, how do you do this? And she says, my strategy is, in the video game, I die a lot in all kinds of stupid ways. I start the game and I, you know, run into the enemy bullets, or I start the game and I fall off a cliff whatever. And every time that I'm dying, I'm learning something about the rules of the game and how it's working. And eventually, after I run around looking stupid for 30 minutes, I now understand how the system works, and I can just win. I think there's actually a life lesson in there, too. If you're not afraid to ask the stupid questions you might seem stupid at first, which isn't so bad, and over time, you start seeing these unseen rules that other people can't quite articulate, building your own understanding of a new topic from first principles, which ultimately gives you superpower when it comes time to use that knowledge.

Alan Fleischmann

I love that what I think is so powerful is my three favorite words in the English language, often, especially people who work with me, is, I don't know. I don't want to be complacent. I want them to go and figure it out and get to a point really quickly that they do know. But I love the idea when someone says I don't know if the word I can't say is no, there's got to be a way.

Raffi Grinberg

I prefer. I like I don't know. I think I prefer, but I could be wrong, and the reason I prefer that is for people to first, at least come in with their hypothesis. This is something I learned, actually, from Bain. It was an amazing framework they have called answer first, which means come in first with your answer, your hypothesis, and then be open to being disproven. I think that this art of seeking truth actually goes faster when, like a scientist, you could first articulate. Here's what I think currently and why, and now I want to see why that might be wrong. And so I much prefer it when you know someone who works for me comes to me, it doesn't just say, I don't know the answer, but I think this is the answer right now, but I could be wrong. Gives me something to react to, and then we can start playing with the idea. And certainly, if the circumstances need an answer quickly, like roll the spot, for example, that's a nice combination of intuitiveness and instinct and humility. Yeah, those who they don't really know, but they think they just could be a good hypothesis that does work, but dialogue is probably more important, constructive dialogue than ever. 

You know, as we're talking about AI, replacing the workforce and replacing what people do, and all of a sudden we're dehumanizing so much of what we consider to be human, first, there's also a pushback, I think, where people are going to want more connectivity with humans and more understanding. I hope that's true, but I think that's a big core of what you believe as well, right? The idea that we're going to need more and more of an open conversations and the area of difficult things honestly, to discover and describe and share among each other in a way that probably we didn't anticipate. 

I summarize that for myself, at least as building communities, which is my other obsession, alongside seeking truth, running the organization, Dialog is building this community. What's interesting about the community is the people in it don't have a ton in common other than the caliber of their stature in their career and their attitude of wanting to be curious and seek truth. And it gave me this insight that I think every community that functions has to be both inclusive and exclusive, exclusive in the sense that everyone has at least one thing in common.

For example, I'm part of a Jewish community. I'm part of the community of my own family. We have the same genes, right? Every community is one thing where everyone has at least this one shared trait in common. It gives you that baseline to build off of that commonality. That's the exclusivity part, but the inclusivity part is other than that baseline commonality, everything else should be as different as possible. The more diversity there is in the way that people think and the backgrounds they come from, the more interesting it is, the more you can benefit from being around those people. That's interesting. I was at a dinner last night where people were talking the power of elders. So much of my life is trying to figure out a way to nurture and mentor young people and help be a parent also, of course, about a 20 year old, an 18 year old. And I'm always thinking about that, that age group that I got young people that work for me in addition. But the conversation last night was really about elders and about people, especially now that people are contributing as leaders in their communities and their workplaces for a lot longer than they anticipated, maybe 30 years ago, and they have a lot of wisdom with them, but the kind of wisdom from good times and wisdom from bad times.

Alan Fleischmann

I'm curious, as you look at the lessons from the book and your lessons in your teaching and your own work, are there things that you would say to someone who's an elder? I wouldn't say they're seniors, but elder that he was saying that makes this book really applicable to them as well. 

Raffi Grinberg

Well, first of all, I can say, I think you've already been successful in that mission. I myself have benefited from an Alaln mentoring session or two or three or 10, so I really appreciate that about you in terms of, I think how to be a good elder advisor in general. I'm just very skeptical. Actually, I don't get when people are saying, like, oh, your book is giving good advice. I think advice doesn't always work because it's needs to fit the person a lot more so. And so I think when a lot of elders tend to give advice, they tend to be saying, this thing worked for me, therefore you should do it too, or this thing didn't work for me, therefore you should avoid it. The more helpful thing is to just let someone else into your thinking of how you made decisions, of why things worked for you. And I think could always, you know, be humble and contribute. 

Like, obviously, a big part of it was luck if you're successful. But beyond the luck, what else contributed to my success, and then the the receiver of that wisdom can reflect for themselves. Does this apply to me or not? You know, one of the reasons that Alan became very successful is because one of his skills is, you know, connecting with people. And then the person can think, am I good at connecting with people? Am I not good at connecting with people? If I am, I can follow Alan's path. I'm not, I can try to pursue a different path. But if you try to give the one size fits all model, get really good at connecting people. That is the most important life skill. It's just not gonna work for everybody. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's brilliant advice. Actually, people need to find their own way. It's very illuminating. I had dinner not long ago with an extraordinaryily well known opera singer who's probably the best in her field. She's a very good friend, and she said to me, Alan, you know, you have a voice, a singing voice. Now my daughter and my wife, you know, Dafna, not one person around you tell me that I have a singing voice, but she did, and she said, you have this in there is a voice that you have never, you know, sought out to to find, and I found the conversation became very illuminating. I'm actually going to take voice coaching now. I want to find anything she inspired me to like, you know, not just paint, but go off and find that voice. 

But there's such a, there's such a there's something in that conversation that is so true of what you want to go after your superpower, and you describe it and hone it, really develop it and make it your own. And don't try to bark up the wrong tree, if you will. But there's also something where you might realize, so the thing that actually you have right in front of you, what's your superpower? And you ignored it, because it didn't just appear itself right in front of you. I often found that I look at people, I go, that is your strength. I spend so much of my time, Raffi where I'm telling people, do you understand that is your strength? What this thing right in front of you that is your best skill, and it is such a powerful one, and you're ignoring it because somehow you don't value it because it's right there, and that you've just always just ignored it because it was just there, versus this other thing that you think you're going to develop through coursework, or you're going to go to school, or you're going to learn it somehow, through other experiences, that isn't really your strength. And I can see it, and I can see with such a powerful like, you know, go after the thing that God gave you that is your greatest gift, and hone it and develop it, and then let it scale upon the world, rather than going after something that really wasn't your strength, and kind of going to be like everybody else, and maybe not in that, I'm curious if that that seems to be a big part of what you're shaking people to find and to do. Am I wrong? 

Raffi Grinberg

Well, first of all, maybe this will be the last episode of Leadership Matters as a talk show before it becomes an opera show, and it'll just be you, solo, because it will discover your superpower. 

Second of all, I think what you said is spot on, and that's one of the benefits of being in your 20s, to all the readers of my book and my former students who are at that life stage, there's a lot that's daunting about your 20s. There's a lot of uncertainty about the future, but the benefit is you have that ability to explore and to really try to find what could be. My various superpowers, people don't just have one. I think they can have many. And you want to go on and be as intentional as you can about setting up these experiments to figure out what it could be like take voice lessons and see if you're an amazing singer, right? Like, try doing this and see if you're good at it. I think you can be quick to discard things, right, to be kind of ruthless about crossing things off the bucket and not deluding yourself that one day you could be the great opera singer if it's clear you're not. But other than being ruthless about knocking things off, you can be very curious and exploratory about finding those things.

Alan Fleischmann

That's actually great. 

You’re an advisor for something called Invisible Technologies. Tell us about that real quick, that intrigues me a lot. What drew you to the company, and what have you learned? This is AI driven as well, right? 

Raffi Grinberg

Yes. So Invisible Technologies was started by a friend of mine, Francis Pedraza, I describe as a visionary founder. Currently, a big part of what Invisible does is training AI models. They actually trained a big part of GPT, which OpenAI's products run on and so in some ways, there's competitor companies like scale AI that you might have heard of. In other ways, they're much more interesting and deeper than that and that they also provide AI enabled services to companies. And so they're trying to disrupt not only scale AI, but they're trying to disrupt Accenture in that entire world of services by marrying AI with humans. And I think they're better than anyone recruiting humans to be in that loop. 

They recruit humans to be part of training AI models, they recruit humans to be part of enabling business services for their clients, but they can find anyone all the way down from the low skilled workers who might be more affordable in developing countries, all the way up to the PhD level thinkers who can answer the most difficult questions that you know an AI cannot. And so what really appealed to me about Invisible made me want to join the company, not only as an advisor, but now board member is around this vision for the future, that it's not just training the AI models, but keeping a human in the loop in those thoughtful ways. 

Alan Fleischmann

Well, I love about your book, but I love about you, and just there's a serenity and a grace, and the way you prod and push. There's an impatience in you, but you wouldn't see it when you first look at you and talk to you, but there is that urgency that I mentioned the beginning of the show. That is your mission and your purpose. But you do it in such a graceful way, because what you're really trying to do is to say, humans speak up and speak out and be human. And with all the great technological advancement that are all our tools, adapt them, use them. But don't forget our greatest gifts is that human part. Figure out your superpower and bring it forward so that we can build community that is you, Raffi, in every way. We need more more of you. 

But this idea that we can bring forth conversation and debate, discourse, disagreement, all the above, but know that at the end of the day, we're trying to build something together, is missing right now. It's missing in our politics. It's missing in our business community. It's missing in our in our breakfast breakfast tables, our dinner tables. And if we could take a lot of what you put in the book and adapt it, whether you're young in your 20s, where you can experiment, or you're somebody who realizes that you can be a great mentor and maybe even transform yourself, even now in your 60s or 70s or 80s, there's a lot of lessons in here, a lot of insight here that hopefully will help us all build communities. I sort of say thank you for the book. It's a gift. 

Raffin Grinberg

Thank you. I appreciate that articulation. I feel like I need you to like, write my elevator pitches right by LinkedIn. Like, you're so good at helping people see for themselves what their strengths are. I think that's maybe one of your superpowers when it comes to the book, like I'd say for me, it's a mission driven thing, like I've seen firsthand how the course has transformed the lives of my former students. I want it to be able to do the same thing for other people, and so selling more copies is very important to me, because it's not about money, it's not about like, building my own brand. It's about getting the knowledge into the hands of more people. And so I always like to ask, you know, the listeners of the podcasts that I'm on, things like that, if they want to join me in that mission of just helping to spread the knowledge. So the book is a great graduation gift, right? It's coming out right before graduation season. If you have a niece or nephew or a child or grandchild who's graduating like this is the book I would have wanted to receive that would set me up for success in my life. And by giving it to someone, you're part of that mission of saying these skills are actually important to learn you want to be more intentional about your adult life. Get the knowledge you need to make that happen and spread it with other people. And how would people want to get involved if they want to get involved in this movement, if you will? Is there a way to do that?

So what I'm doing is I'm actually setting up a Discord server. So Discord is the hip new thing, kind of replaced Slack, which replaced whatever was before it WhatsApp. So a lot of younger people nowadays are using discord. So I'm setting up a Discord server to create a community of readers. As I mentioned, community being one of my obsessions. I want to connect that with authorship, right? Writing is a very feels like a one way, things like, I'm transmitting knowledge, but to the point we were discussing earlier, like it has to be two ways. And so I want to hear from readers. I want readers to interact with each other, really. I want readers to make friends with each other, meet other, like minded people all over the world. And so we're going to build a community of people who are doing that. 

Alan Fleischmann

So Raffi, you should know that my life, purpose and mission, whether it's law, strategies or the things involved in my life, has always been a building community. And when I was president of my college universities, you know, class or actually the school, it was the theme was building communities. And so I'm so thrilled to hear you articulate that it's, you know, it's a very effusive word. People have a very different definition of the word community, but they'll lean in a positive way when you talk about building community, and you can define your community any way you want. So I want to be part of that group that you're talking about. 

And then one very, very last question is, I know we have to wrap up. Why the color green? It's the most magical color, green, of this book. So you can't miss it when you look for how to be a grown up in the bookstore. It's a fabulous color. Or maybe you choose that color. There had to be a real reason there. 

Raffi Grinbers

Well, I have to say part of it was the publisher's ultimate choice, that I am a fan of lime green. It's like a bright lime green. And in fact, I have a sweatshirt, like a lime green sweatshirt, I think was my mom gave to me a long time ago to, like, stand out, right? And I wore this sweatshirt to the birth of our first child. And I say It's my lucky birth sweatshirt, because, you know, thankfully, right, he was born healthy. We had an amazing son, and then I brought it to every subsequent birth. So every time my wife Charlotte is in labor, we have five children now, I put on the birth sweatshirt, the lime green one, and go to the hospital with her. 

Alan Fleischmann

That's a beautiful story. I knew there'd be a real answer, because it's a fabulous color for a book. 

Raffi Grinberg

Oh, I appreciate it.

Alan Fleischmann

It speaks with such clarity. It reads to such clarity. And it just invites you to come in. So I recommend every single solitary person listening to us today to buy How To Be A Grown Up To 14 Essential Skills You Didn't Know You Needed Until Just Now. 

You’re listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann, who spent the last hour with Raffi Grinberg Greenberg and executive director of Dialog. He's an amazing guy, great author, great leader, great mentor and a great convener, and I'm looking forward to having you back on the show soon. 

Raffi Grinberg

Thank you, Alan. This was a pleasure, real pleasure.