358 Robert Sutton: How To Spot Bad Friction And Create Good Friction In Your Workplace

01/30/24 • 44 min

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Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

When’s the last time a customer service phone menu left you... genuinely angry? We build these systems to make things easier, layer systems on top of other systems, but who’s doing the gardening and pruning – the upkeep?

Our guest today calls this phenomenon friction. Robert Sutton has taught at Stanford since 1983, in that time covering everything from psychology to business management. Now he’s out with his 8th book, The Friction Project.

Bob and his co-writer Huggy Rao took on this idea of a maddeningly-frustrating phone menu to nail down where friction comes from – and how to treat it. But also, how can friction in our organizations actually be a force for good?

Previous Episode

357 Gov. Spencer Cox: Lessons On Inclusive Leadership, From The Farm To The Governor’s Mansion

What does it take, day in and day out, to lead a group of people effectively? It’s not easy, that’s for sure. On a very granular level, leading is balancing a thousand decisions, huge and small, every day. So what guides your hand?

Republican Governor of Utah Spencer Cox is an anomaly in a time of waning bipartisanship. His vice chair in the National Governor’s Association is a Democrat – and a close friend at that. He’s also been a bit of an anomaly in how he’s charted his life, too, turning down Harvard and a cushy lawyer job for his family farm in Fairview.

But Governor Cox is an anomaly we can learn from. How do you build a belief system as a leader – and strengthen it, when it seems like the political winds are blowing against you?

Next Episode

359 Dr. Michael Gervais: Why We Betray Ourselves For The Approval Of Others

After 49 days fasting under the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha Guatama was struck by an idea. We suffer because we are attached to things, to people, to desires. When we can’t have it, we feel an emptiness. But what if we never wanted it in the first place?

Guatama taught his philosophy for the next few decades, and centuries after that his followers would give him a new name – the Buddha. Total, complete elimination of your yearnings was called Nirvana.

In our networked world, where we broadcast on social media what we want others to see of us, Nirvana can seem far away. But our guest today says that the yearning to belong shapes our behaviors in ways we’re not often conscious of.

Dr. Michael Gervais is host of the podcast Finding Mastery, where he pulls on his experience as a high-performance psychologist to draw out what makes these top athletes and board room professionals tick.

He’s out with a new book – The First Rule of Mastery, Stop Worrying About What Other People Think Of You.