Dr. Robert Quinn: "How to Live a Purpose-Driven Life" | Talks at Google

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00:00:06,292 --> 00:00:09,690 [APPLAUSE]
ROBERT QUINN: A couple of weeks ago I was in Barcelona.
And we were just finishing a week in training executives
in leadership.
And I was having dinner with a man who
was in charge of the week.
He's an interesting character.
He's a psychiatrist who is deeply wedded to science.
He also has a PhD in theology.
He spends about half of his time with professionals
trying to make them more effective leaders.
He spends the other half of his time in villages and towns
helping very ordinary people make
better sense of their lives.
I was listening to him tell some of his stories,
and I said, Alberto, what is your life purpose?
Without a moment's hesitation, he
said the sanctification of work.
I said, what does that mean?
He said, making work sacred.
What does that mean?
And he paused for a second.
And he said, when you help people make their work sacred,
they come alive in every area of their life.
Whoa.
That was pretty interesting.
00:01:34,020 --> 00:01:38,899 It's a very striking thing to see a man of such commitment
to science and to theology and to service
come to a conclusion like that.
00:01:50,450 --> 00:01:56,890 About 2006, I left the university for three years,
and I went and ran an organization.
At the university, we have a set of [INAUDIBLE] organizations,
which is a new field of study where
we asked what is an individual like at their best?
What is a group like at their best?
What is an organization like at their best?
Not what they're like normally, but in the way out
far side of that normal curve [INAUDIBLE]..
And that creates an entirely different way to see the world.
I left with the commitment that I
was going to build an organization based
on the principles of science that we
knew from this new field.
Those three years were one of the most meaningful periods
of my life.
When I got back, my friend came to see me.
He's a world-class economist.
And he began to question me.
I thought it would go for two or three minutes.
It went on for two hours.
He wanted to know everything.
Then he went away for a few minutes and he came back.
And he said, what you just told me defies economics.
It turns economics upside down.
We have to write a paper.
So I said, OK.
I'm open to that.
We started working on a paper.
The paper's all in Greek.
It's all mathematical.
It's a simulation of an organization.
Now, along the way, he decided to educate me.
And he said, I'm going to explain to you why this
turns economics upside down.
It has to do with the principal-agent problem.
He said at the heart of microeconomics
is the principal-agent problem.
So I turned to him, an employee, and I said,
I'm going to give you $100.
You work for me for 10 hours.
We shake hands.
We have a contract.
As long as I'm there to watch him, he keeps the contract.
The moment I turn my back on him,
he underperforms the contract.
And that's the very heart of microeconomics--
principal-agent problem.
Well, we built the simulation.
We created a normal organization.
And then we introduced something new.
The new variable was higher purpose.
The moment we introduced higher purpose
into the model, the entire organization transformed.
The employee, or the agent, became
a principal, became an owner, became intrinsically motivated.
My friend was really excited.
He said, this is incredible.
We've got to go interview CEOs of high-purpose companies.
Now, to me, it seemed to sort of make sense
that that would happen.
But when we went out and did the interviews,
then I got surprised.
As we interviewed these CEOs, the shocking discovery to me
was that most of them, the majority of them,
when they became CEO, they did not
believe in purpose, people, or culture.
00:05:18,730 --> 00:05:22,974 They had come up through economic, managerial training.
And they didn't believe in those things.
Every one of them got there through some kind
of personal crisis.
00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:34,700 They had to rediscover the world,
and they had to bring purpose into their mental set.
When they did that, and they brought higher purpose
to the people in the organization,
things changed, just like our simulation.
And we learned a great deal from those folks.
00:05:57,090 --> 00:06:00,000 And I wanted to share with you what
science says about that notion of having
a purpose-driven life.
I have a colleague over the public health school who just
published a book last year.
And in it there's a literature review
on the health effects of having a purpose-driven life.
The list is interesting.
This is what it says.
If you have a purpose-driven life,
it adds years to your life.
You live longer.
It reduces the likelihood of a heart attack or stroke.
It cuts the risk of Alzheimer's.
It helps you relax during the day and sleep better at night.
It doubles the chance of staying drug-free or alcohol-free
after treatment.
Increases your good cholesterol.
Gives you better sex.
Gives you more friends.
Gives you more meaning, engagement, life satisfaction,
and happiness.
00:07:08,320 --> 00:07:14,360 Now, when I look at that list of findings,
the only thing that I'm left to conclude is you
and I are designed to be purpose-seeking mechanisms.
00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:31,160 When we're not, when we live in our comfort zone,
we live a life of survival.
We know statistically, 70% of the global workforce
is disengaged at work.
That's an astounding number.
51% of the management workforce is disengaged at work.
That's the management workforce.
00:07:58,490 --> 00:08:01,982 What does that say about our organizations?
You know, when we talk about living
a life of quiet desperation, there
are legions of people out there surviving.
00:08:11,450 --> 00:08:14,909 When you clarify your highest purpose,
you are basically discovering what your contribution
is to this planet.
Given your gifts, your skills, your abilities,
what is your contribution?
What's your life mission?
Why are you on the planet?
When you answer that question, everything changes.
The research says when you give up self-interested goals, where
most of us are most of the time, and you
take on contributive goals, you function differently.
The biology changes.
The thought process changes.
Learning accelerates.
You grow more.
00:08:57,230 --> 00:08:59,870 Whenever we look at high-performing people
over long term, we find this notion of higher purpose.
I was invited with some colleagues to go to Ohio
and study public schoolteachers.
Now, in a business school, you could be shot for that.
Why would I go study public schoolteachers?
Because I had access to the top 1% of the teachers in Ohio.
These are the teachers that walk on water.
Students go in their class in September,
they come out in June way out here.
Now, two to three times as much learning in their classroom,
objectively measured.
Now, you can't work twice as hard as a normal teacher,
because they work hard.
So what are these people doing?
The reason I went to study them is I
knew before I ever went down there that they
weren't schoolteachers.
And I just told you they were schoolteachers.
They work in schools.
If they're not schoolteachers, what are they?
Let me get a response from you.
What would you think about if you think about that puzzle.
What would you know about these people before you ever went?
AUDIENCE: They're purpose-driven.
ROBERT QUINN: They're purpose-driven,
that's for sure.
00:10:25,280 --> 00:10:29,900 These people are transformational leaders.
They would die if you call them that.
They would say, I'm a schoolteacher.
But they are transforming the culture of their classroom.
Their classroom as a positive organization.
They don't work for money.
They have a calling.
Their purpose is not to teach English or math or history.
Their purpose is to create the love of learning.
If I have this little kid in my classroom,
and I create the love of learning in this kid,
I've empowered this kid for life.
If he's a minority, if he's disadvantaged in some way
and his life path's going this way,
but I create that love of learning,
he gets the capacity to change all that, to take himself
beyond what's expected.
00:11:23,720 --> 00:11:26,600 Everything about these people was different.
What I love about that story is they're not CEOs.
They're not kings, prime ministers.
What are they?
People working in the public school.
If I asked you who left the most positive legacy
in your life, name that person, you
might say, oh, that's my mother.
Or, oh, my third-grade teacher, or my coach, or my first boss.
You would name somebody.
If we did an in-depth analysis of your relationship
with that person, we would find out
that that ordinary person in your life who
left this positive legacy had a transformational influence
on you.
It was the most positive influence
you've ever experienced.
00:12:17,330 --> 00:12:20,600 All around us, there are people who live like this.
We don't see them because we wear conventional glasses.
Economics says he's self-interested.
Resources are scarce.
Conflict is inevitable.
Now, all those things are true, most of the time.
That's why the social sciences work.
What the social sciences don't look at
is the end of the curve.
They don't look at excellence.
They look at central tendency.
And whenever we look at people at the end of the curve,
we find a different model.
And one key element is purpose.
Now, how does that happen?
Let me share two stories with you.
Story number one, we're interviewing
one of those schoolteachers.
00:13:13,250 --> 00:13:15,890 She's sharing stuff, and it's a really exciting interview.
I'm writing stuff down.
And then she tells a story.
She says the first year I taught was heaven.
The second year I taught was hell.
I had five boys that second year,
and they were in incorrigible.
And there was one kid in particular, he was impossible.
One day, this kid's in the doorway of the classroom,
and he's kicking and moving his arms and making noises.
And I lost it.
She said, I'm ashamed to say these words.
But I walked towards that kid with the intention
of kicking him.
Thank heavens he got up and ran away.
00:14:03,570 --> 00:14:04,506 I kept walking.
I went to the principal's office.
I said, this is it.
It's him or me.
And the principal took the kid out.
She said, I felt terrible.
So I went to two my colleagues and poured my heart out.
And they said to me, you are not the key to every door.
And as she said those words, she burst
into tears in the interview.
And we waited a long time.
And then she looked up and said, I hated that.
And I said, hated what?
She said those words.
You can't be the key to every door.
She said, so I decided to become the key to every door.
She said, instead of pushing disruptive kids away,
I began to seek them out.
I began to bring them into my world.
I read every book I could find.
I kept notes.
I ran experiments.
I kept notes on the experiments.
And then she kind of pulled herself up and said,
today, I am the key to every door.
When there's a disruptive, troubled kid in the school,
they said, give her to Miss So-and-so.
She seems to know what to do with them.
00:15:18,460 --> 00:15:22,400 That's a profoundly important story.
It's a story of transformative learning.
When I have a higher purpose, I find the energy and the courage
to go outside my comfort zone and to learn in a deep way.
And I break some code.
The code could be about any part of life.
And then I can do things other people can't do.
Now, the second story is a lot closer to home
and I think a very helpful one.
I once had a daughter.
She was single.
She was living in Washington, DC.
And she had reached that point in life where she said--
you know, she wasn't married yet,
and she said the only man left at my age are pigs.
There's not a good man left on the Earth.
And then she found one, and she got really excited.
The relationship grew.
And then one day, our phone rang.
She's talking to her mother.
And I know what's going on.
This guy just dumped her.
She's all upset.
00:16:28,140 --> 00:16:32,500 Her mother-- now, this daughter is the first-born child.
Many first-born children share a common characteristic.
If they're miserable, they want you to be miserable, too.
[LAUGHTER]
And she said, I'm coming home this weekend.
I thought, oh, no.
[LAUGHTER]
Her mother hangs up and says, you're the father.
You go to the airport, pick her up.
So the next day, I go pick her up.
She gets in the car, and she doesn't say hello, how are you.
She says, that no-good, dirty da-da-da.
Five minutes later, she takes a breath.
And I said, are you problem-solving or
purpose-finding?
She didn't even hear me.
So we go through that about four times.
We're finally pulling in the driveway.
She takes another breath.
I say it again.
She says, what are you talking about?
And I said, well, I wrote that thing to your brother
about the difference between purpose-finding and
problem-solving.
I sent you a copy.
And she said, this is the real world.
I said, well, I think it applies to the real world.
By then, we're in the house.
I pull out a sheet of paper out of my file.
And it says "Robert Quinn Life Statement."
So I take it.
I handed it to her.
She rips it out of my hand.
She looks at it.
And then she grows quiet.
And she looks up and says, when you feel bad, you read this?
I said, no.
When I feel bad, I rewrite it.
It's been rewritten hundreds of times.
She said, yeah, I can hardly understand some of this stuff.
I said, yeah, it's written to a customized audience,
one person.
Then the first miracle happened.
She said, do you think I could write one of these?
I said, I'm sure you can.
She went in the bedroom.
For a day-and-a-half, she worked on her life statement.
The miracle was, I did not have to suffer during that day
and a half, right?
She got on the plane.
She flew home to DC.
A couple of days pass.
I get an email.
She says, he called me.
Oh, this will be interesting.
And she says, so I wrote him this letter.
And I'm reading this letter that she's attached.
It's incredibly vulnerable, open, honest.
And I'm thinking, wow, this is impressive.
And then at the bottom it says, "And my roommate
said I can't give this to him."
Now, that's an interesting thing.
Let's freeze all the insensitive males in the room for now.
I just want to hear just in the females.
Why can't we give this letter to this guy?
AUDIENCE: He's crazy.
ROBERT QUINN: Because he's crazy?
Anybody who dumped me would be crazy.
That would be true.
Why else?
AUDIENCE: They think it'll make you look weak.
ROBERT QUINN: Yes!
Of course.
I'm vulnerable, I tell him how I really feel.
You know, dating's a marketplace, right?
It's a transaction.
You don't tell some guy that dumped you here's how you feel.
And then she said, what my roommates
don't understand is that what he thinks doesn't matter.
Whoa, wait a minute.
A few days ago, what he thought caused her life to shatter.
Now she's saying what he thinks doesn't matter.
What is she saying?
She's saying this is who I really am.
Didn't know this a while ago.
Now I know it.
It doesn't matter what other people think.
You see, when you clarify your purpose,
you take back your external locus of control
where you worry about what other people think,
and you take an internal locus.
You don't become insensitive.
You don't become rebellious.
You become centered.
00:20:31,090 --> 00:20:33,280 You become powerful.
Now, here's the interesting thing
in the sequel to that story.
In the next few months, she began to be promoted.
00:20:48,380 --> 00:20:51,025 Her career turned.
Why?
00:20:55,400 --> 00:20:58,370 This was a dating breakup.
Why is her career taking off?
00:21:03,950 --> 00:21:08,870 Because when you find purpose and meaning in what
you're doing in one area of your life,
it grows in every area of life because you are one person.
That company had a woman coming in with the same dresses on,
body looked the same, but it wasn't the same employee.
This was a woman now, full of leadership for the first time.
00:21:33,950 --> 00:21:37,280 She had a higher purpose, and she
was willing to take initiative that normally she
wouldn't be willing to take.
That's leadership.
Companies desperately need it.
Cultures suppress it.
We're afraid to take leadership in organizations.
We're afraid to tell the truth.
00:21:58,470 --> 00:22:03,300 When someone has that meaning and that integrity,
things start to change.
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:08,840 That's different than management.
00:22:13,290 --> 00:22:19,200 My message to you today is that every one of you
is filled with talents and gifts.
You've been shaped by life.
You've had bad experiences and good experiences.
And both the bad experiences and the good experiences
are there to teach you something about you.
And if you look very carefully at those,
you can determine what your purpose is.
I'll close with a puzzle.
00:22:44,990 --> 00:22:47,660 I have a friend who is a world-renowned sports
psychologist.
One day, he challenged me.
He said, here's a story.
Here's a woman who smokes.
So you tell her there's a link between tobacco and cancer.
If you keep smoking, you're going to die.
Absolutely doesn't faze her.
She keeps smoking.
So you buy her a patch.
She wears it for a few weeks.
She's still smoking.
So you send her to a therapy group.
She comes out of the therapy group.
She's still smoking.
He said, now, give me three words
you can say to this woman, and she'll put down her cigarette.
00:23:33,900 --> 00:23:35,230 I had no idea.
This puzzle was too much for me.
Anybody have an answer?
"You are pregnant."
00:23:48,814 --> 00:23:50,230 Now think about that for a second.
00:23:53,540 --> 00:23:57,920 Absolutely knows she can't stop smoking.
Three words, "you are pregnant."
What does she have now?
AUDIENCE: A purpose.
ROBERT QUINN: A purpose that's bigger than she is.
The interesting thing about that story
is it says we are full of resources we don't know about.
They're already in there.
We don't believe it.
But when we suddenly find a contributive purpose,
those resources come to the surface.
We begin to change.
In fact, we instantaneously begin
to change when we embrace a purpose.
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:45,490 I believe every person in this room
can clarify the purpose of their life
and that the moment you do, this will
start happening not just at work, but in every aspect
of your life.
My hope is that every one of you learns
to become the key to every door in whatever aspect of life
you're working.
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:14,090 And with that, I thank you very much.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]