Transcript

The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page

From Ryan Hawk · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 59 min · 9,283 words · 64 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page", an episode of Ryan Hawk published May 8, 2025 (59 min, about 9,283 words). It mentions 7 people, works and ideas, including The Psychology of Leadership, The Learning Leader Show, Harvard, The Psychology of Money, Daniel Zimmit.

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on the profound influence of Sébastien Page's father's exceptional work ethic, which encompassed managing a cattle farm while maintaining a full-time academic career. It highlights the lessons learned about resilience, preparation, and the intrinsic value of hard work, emphasizing the importance of leading by example.

Key takeaways

  • Your passion transforms work into joy—just ask a cattle-farming professor balancing academia and agriculture.
  • Finding flow in your tasks is the secret sauce—why just work when you can thrive?
  • Work engagement is a crisis: over 50% of employees are just clocking in, missing the magic.
  • Noticeable progress fuels motivation; mowing lawns beats cleaning roofs any day in the joy department!
  • Most jobs aren't fun, but aligning skills with passion helps you navigate the drudgery with ease.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: The Psychology of Leadership, The Learning Leader Show
  2. – 15:00: Harvard
  3. – 20:00: Harvard
  4. – 25:00: The Psychology of Money
  5. – 30:00: GE, Daniel Zimmit
  6. – 59:04: The Psychology of Leadership, The Psychology of Money

Notable quotes from "The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page"

  • All right, Sebastian, it's awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. I'm really excited to do this. I love the podcast format, so let's go. Good. Okay, so I read.
    about The Learning Leader Show · at
  • People more engaged and what's our responsibility as leaders to foster engagement in the workplace? It's part of what I talk about in my book. How do we get better at this?
    about The Psychology of Leadership · at
  • Having positive relationship is to being engaged in your work. I'm sure you've heard of the Harvard study on long-term happiness.
    about Harvard · at
  • Practice of it? Yeah, I love it. I actually really enjoyed reading the forward to your book. the former CEO of GE, H Lawrence Culp, he said he was in a meeting with you at one…
    about GE · at
  • Is not about winning at all it's about losing and what you do with the loss. And the my mentor in sports psychologist helped me go through the research. His name is Dr. Daniel Zimmit.
    about Daniel Zimmit · at
  • Yeah there's so much good stuff. The psychology of leadership it's from the same publishers from the psychology of money which you mentioned Morgan Hel.
    about The Psychology of Money · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Daniel Zimmit — Person · Referenced expert (mentor/coach) · 1 mention · first at
    Identified as Sebastian’s sports-psychology mentor; used to introduce lessons about resilience, learning from losses, and stress as performance fuel.
  • Felix Baumgartner — Person · Referenced example · 2 mentions
    Used as a vivid case study of elite performance (Red Bull Stratos jump) and the role of sports psychology in extreme achievement.
    Felix Baumgartner, the Red Bull guy, right, who jumped out of space?

Books & papers

  • The Psychology of Leadership — Book · Primary recommendation · 3 mentions · first at
    Main book discussed by Sebastian, providing insights into leadership psychology.
  • The Psychology of Money — Book · Referenced work · 2 mentions · first at
    Cited as a source of insights into the psychology behind financial decisions and success.

Companies & orgs

  • Harvard — Company · Referenced expert · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in the context of a long-term happiness study conducted by Harvard researchers.
  • GE — Company · Case study · 2 mentions · first at
    Mentioned in the context of leadership and management philosophy by its former CEO, H Lawrence Culp.

Media & podcasts

Full transcript with timestamps

All right, Sebastian, it's awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome, man. I'm really excited to do this. I love the podcast format, so let's go. Good. Okay, so I I read this story you'd written about your dad, and this is where I want to start. You said he had a herculean work ethic that in addition to his day job as a professor, he maintained, this is crazy to me, he maintained a working cattle farm by himself. You got to tell me more about this and what you learned from your dad growing up. I think his secret was to get in a state of flow. I think he just loved working hard at something where his skills matched the challenge and he would lose track of time. But I don't think I've ever met anybody with that work ethic. I mean, think about it, Ryan. You're running a working farm with cattle, which for anybody is a crazy amount of work and hours. You're a full-time tenure professor, and you're

writing. This may be where I got some of my writing addiction, but you're writing textbooks. And he was teaching for 40 years. I actually took two of his classes. If you were to stack the textbooks he wrote which were used throughout the French-speaking part of Canada and Quebec, it would be higher than your dinner table. And so just growing up around that kind of work ethic was sometimes difficult but generally inspiring. And you know the reason why I say sometimes difficult as a teenager weekends you don't want to be on the farm putting up fences and doing manual labor but he would make me do that and follow him around and I was not interested but you know what it took me years but he was teaching me a lesson there about just a val intrinsic value of getting lost in your work.

What did that teach you about work ethic and preparation and resilience and doing things that maybe you don't feel like doing? You know, it was natural to him. It's not like he ever told me, "You got to work hard." He was just leading by example. And I think there's something magical that happens when work doesn't feel like work. Ryan, I don't know if you feel like that when you do a podcast. Right now, we're talking. Is it work? I don't know. It doesn't feel like it. And for him, it was always like that. He would have friends over for dinner, a bunch of academics. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about.

This was before I went to study finance, and they would drink some wine and debate finance models until midnight. It was that work. They they they were just into it. And it's not just about interesting work, per se. It's the intrinsic aspect, the intrinsic satisfaction. He's um in he's just getting into his 80s. If you see him today, um you would see a man with white hair on top of a massive pile of logs, chopping wood, taking the chainsaw, doing work, and just finishing the day happy about having worked hard. This is a retired person, right? This is this is just a work ethic he always had.

I uh the phrase I like that I've heard from multiple people is the work is the win. And it feels to me like I feel that way. It seems like you feel that way and you were brought up feeling that way where the actual work, the daily activities, the things you actually do, like us having this conversation to me is the actual win. It's a it's a pretty re rewarding feeling where you can design your life and your profession and your career where the work feels like the win. And you know what? Unfortunately, it's I think it's fairly rare. If you look at survey data, the percentage of employees that feel disengaged with their work is remarkably high. It's higher than 50%. And so why is that? Why don't people find flow in their work? This idea of your effort being rewarded on a shortterm basis so you get the immediate feedback which helps you get in flow and just the challenge being hard enough but

not too hard so that it becomes impossible or not too easy so that you become bored. And it's almost like a crisis of work and and why um why aren't people more engaged and what's our responsibility as leaders to foster engagement in the workplace? It's part of what I talk about in my book. How how do we get better at this? Because some people are like, "Look, Sebastian, I just need to get a job and I need to provide for my family. Like, am I going to love it?" No. And and that's okay to some people. I I hope I understand why that is for some, but I feel like part of the work you do and part of the work I do quite frankly is helping people find out where like how that vin diagram can come together to what you're really good at to what you love doing to what the world will will pay you for and and and like to live and work within that intersection of those three. How do we get there? How how can we help other

people get there? And uh that's harder if the job is not in you know easily you know motivating right and not all jobs are fun. In the summers growing up as a teenager I had to do general maintenance across a bunch of different buildings in the city and some days were just hell. We had to clean the roof of factories and you could never make any progress but you had to keep going. We had to, you know, sweep parking lots, molons. But there was something interesting thinking back about this. Some jobs I would kind of lose track of time and get into it. Mowing the lawn, for example. And as I was writing the book, I was thinking, what what differentiates this is manual labor, right? what differentiates those that are that I was enjoying and those where I just couldn't wait to get out. And the major difference was how easy it was to notice progress.

Oh, people want to notice progress in what they're doing. So mowing the lawn for me, I would actually get in flow mowing the lawn because I could see on a live basis the progress I was making. And this it helps you pay attention to what you're doing. And this is easily adaptable to the workplace, right? Setting a bunch of small milestone just to keep you going. G almost g we talk about gamifying, right? And and gamifying things where you get these little rewards or these milestones doesn't have to be anything major. It actually increases engagement. There's just tricks to doing that in all kinds of jobs. The research in psychology is really interesting. the father of the theory of flow which we've been talking about. It's really hard to me uh pronounce his name. Uh is Miyitz Miy Dense Miy I probably butchered it but you know I'm I'm trying. I should practice 10 times before I get on the

podcast. But so he invented flows discovered that they hooked people up to uh um you know they would monitor how people feel throughout the day. Whatever they were doing feel good feel bad feel good feel bad. And I came across this research of his that showed that any task essentially can become interesting if you pay enough attention to what you're doing. And it's counterintuitive, but being present in the moment, paying attention to what you're doing actually helps increase engagement as well. So there are these tricks gamifying the work, having small milestones and then the social aspect. You know, you might go to work because you have positive relationships at work and that might keep you motivated.

I uh recently talked with a guy named Stu McLaren and he's like a a big big expert on building communities and and one of the real life examples he shared. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, Sebastian. Was they moved and his daughter went to a new school and as she they were really nervous about how she was going to respond to this new school and so they they take her and drop her off and they're him and his wife are there to pick her up after the first day and and their daughter comes running out with a huge smile on her face. She goes, "Daddy, this is the best school ever."

And he's like, "Oh my god." I'm like, "Wonder what happened? Why is this the best school ever?" It's because she made one good friend. She made one really good friend on that first day of school and that's why the school was the best day ever. And so the social element, the relational element to culture building to leadership to teams, it's funny how it can be based on making and connecting with one person and that can change everything. Can you go deeper into the the relational element, the social aspect of teams and leadership in culture building and how important it is that people connect in that way? It's so important and sometimes underrated because in some corporate environment, Ryan, I work in money management. it, you know, it can be pretty um competitive and pretty harsh and sometimes we forget how important just having positive relationship is to being engaged in your work. I'm sure you've heard of the

Harvard study on long-term happiness. It's a study about positive psychology and it's absolutely fascinating. There's no study like this. It's actually been going on for over 80 years and they've had different generations of researchers out of Harvard run the study. The current leader of this study is Robert Waldinger. He's got a book out. He's he's a he's a fantastic thought leader. And the study was all about just asking people how they're doing but throughout their life cycle. And you would think people that did well, were healthy, climbed the social ladder, you would think that they scored higher in happiness. And you would think that people that um you know went to jail or got got really sick or lost all their money would score lower. And the fascinating insight that came out of this study is that these all these things, money, fame, they they had nothing to do with long-term happiness

scores, self-reported scores. It was all all about the quality of people's relationships in their lives. And I could not agree more with you that just one and in fact sometimes higher quality relationships is better than quantity. You know, if you have a really nice family environment, if you go to work and you have a couple friends, there's studies that show that people that have just that say that they have a friend or two at work are more engaged with the work. Yeah, the the relationships are everything. I want to drill down on one area. you said these set these small milestones and in your book you talk about I'm bouncing around so we're not going in order but you talk about goal setting and I am curious about this idea of setting like for example for example some people set the goal to to climb Mount Everest and that would be that would be a good example of a giant really tough to achieve goal and

there are versions of this within business of revenue targets or growth or whatever it may be. Can can you start high level on your overall philosophy and things you've learned about setting goals and why subitting Everest might not actually be a good goal? Let's start with Everest because it's a good way to talk about goal induced blindness which is well documented in the research in psychology. So Ryan, I'm going to ask you and our audience an uncomfortable question, but it's just a thought experiment. So here's the question.

Imagine that. Um, I challenge you to play Russian roulette and it's a special gun. It has a 100 chambers and it has four bullets. So, you spin the chamber, you press the trigger. My question to you is, and I know you're interviewing me, but I'm going to ask you this question. Would you what would you play this? So, four, you know, four bullets out of a 100 chambers. Would you play this for a million dollars? No. A hundred million, a billion? No. There's probably no amount of money that you that would make you play. The reason why I'm using this analogy is that 4% chance of dying is statistically um what you apply if you want to reach the summit of Everest.

anybody who's the of the of the people that have summited Everest, four out of a hundred died in the exercise of doing so. So that's why psychologists speak of goal induced blindness where you're so obsessed with your goal that you lose the big picture of what your actions mean for everything else than your goal. You just put blinders on. And there's plenty of that in business. There are companies that famously will start breaking the rules to meet their goals of growing revenues. There are people who will just sacrifice their well-being in order to reach some shorter term productivity goals. I can tell you, Ryan, when I started in the business, I I was traveling the world and working giving advice to institutional clients on money management topics and it was absolut an absolutely unhealthy, insane work ethic and I was just run down and I wasn't spending enough time with my family and I had goal induced blindness. So, I had

I had to learn this and um I have a story in the book about how I actually almost died uh from, you know, I was just so run down and got an infection and just, you know, that made me realize it's just not worth it. So, goals are tricky like that. They have negative side effects that we don't talk about enough. By the way, none of what I'm saying is about avoiding goals or avoiding accountability or being less ambitious. In fact, it applies mostly to those who are goal obsessed. And you know, goals are incredibly powerful. It's like medicine, right? But they have side effect. So I, you know, there's a lot there's a lot in there that we could talk about around goals, but I will say a lot of the most important goals you can set as a leader or for yourself are not measurable. They're not like climbing Everest is measurable. Did I reach the summit or not? But I know you talk about this Ryan sometimes like perhaps the

most important goal you'll set is related to process. What's my process? Am I keeping my body and my mind healthy? You can't measure that especially not in the short run but those are the most important goals. And if I apply this to business, when I lead a team, it's really important that we talk about are are we having effective meetings? Is this report important to produce or is it just busy work? Are we fostering a culture where people can disagree on ideas but still have a tremendous amount of mutual respect and trust? All these kinds of goals are not measurable. And if all you care about is quarterly revenues, I don't think that you're going to be an effective leader. Yeah.

What are your personal frameworks for setting goals both like for you and your just general life as a whole as well as you and your professional life? So I think you know positive psychology here is way underrated. Positive psychology is where goals come from. Okay? If you ask millennials, 80% of them want to become rich, 50% of them want to become famous. And we all think of success as bringing us happiness. But Sean Akre of Harvard published a book where he said it's actually the opposite. Happy people tend to attract success, tend to succeed.

And I'm I'm I'm not just playing with words here. And so positive psychology tells you these things what we're just talking about. How relationships are important, how engagement is important, how meaning and long-term accomplishment are important. So you want to set your goals around positive psychology concepts as opposed to money or fame. And by the way, there's nothing wrong with pursuing these things. Absolutely nothing wrong. Ambition, I think, drives us, you know, and and I have plenty of it, and I'm sure you have plenty of it.

But you have to go deeper and think longer term and think about what brings happiness. And one of your goals should be to have positive relationships at work and in your life. Don't sacrifice that. Um, and don't think that just being successful will make you happy because you'll get on the treadmill and you'll keep chasing it. You know, Andre Agassi famously, if you read his memoir, which is outstanding, hated playing tennis. His entire tennis career, he was unhappy and hated tennis. And if you think of money management, you you look at people and they seem very very very successful, right?

Um, I've I've I've seen cultures in our business on Wall Street where people are not. They're just wildly successful, but they're not. Uh, my friend told me he he worked at a place where he put it really well. He said, "Despite all the Ferraris in the parking lot, I've never seen so many miserable rich people." You know, I know all of this sounds trit, but it's it's it's real. And so when you want a framework for goals, you just need to widen your aperture towards all these positive psychology concepts inside organizations as well. It's not just a self-improvement topic. And I'll just I'll I could go on and on about goals because I think they're important. They have side effects. They're incredibly motivating at the same time. But I'll just I'll just add this. It's an anecdote from Morgan Hel's book. He He's awesome. in the psychology of money. He talks about uh it's it's a it's a secondhand story. So I'm giving you I'm

giving you this story thirdand now. Morgan Hold talks about a conversation that happened um that he heard from the founder of Vanguard, John Bogle. Anyways, the context doesn't matter. It's a a famous hedge fund manager who talks to an author and the author has three uh three bestsellers. This this this this is a very successful author. And after the conversation, someone else comes to the author and says, "You do you realize that, you know, you could sell 10 times, a hundred times, a million times, you you'll never have the money that this hedge fund manager has."

And the book author responds, "I have something he will never have. enough. And so there is something there with yes being ambitious, yes going after it, but at the same time thinking about do you know what what does positive psychology tell us our goals should be fundamentally our most important goals. How do you define what's enough? You know, I'm still searching for it. I think we're all searching for it. If I could snap my finger and feel like where I am in my life and everything I have is enough, I don't know what that would mean, right? Um I think the broader principle applies though that it's this this is the this is the trick. This is the this is what this quote means. It's all about building gratitude in your life.

So you have the risk of being on a treadmill where you reach goals and this is well documented in the research in psychology. You reach goals, you you get the fancy car, you're happy for three weeks, it's a nice car, and then after that you realize it's just a car. And then you look for the next goal and the next goal and the next goal and you're never really happy. And this is called called adonic adaptation. We all adapt and and and it's not fulfilling. And I know you've talked about this in some of your work and some of your interviews on your podcast. And this is this is I think is the takeaway is learning to appreciate what you have.

And in in positive psychology, Marty Seligman, who um is the father of positive psychology, if you will, he talks about meaning, engagement, relationships, and so on. He um he explains that if you just spend a few minutes a day on gratitude, you can actually change your mood significantly uh over time. It it can really lift you out of a funk. Just sitting down and thinking, "Okay, what am I happy for today?" I I recently read about this exercise that somebody does. So, I think he's in his like mid-4s now where he's like, "God, man, I I kind of like he meets like a 27y old. He's like, "God, that would be amazing to be 27." And someone said, "Hey, think about being 97 and say, man, it would be amazing to be in my mid-40s again." Well, you are. Okay.

So like be grateful for what you actually are and what you have and get after it from that point point of view as as opposed to like wishing to be at a different age or to be younger or to have more time. It's it it doesn't really do you any good to have that mentality. But one exercise could be to like picture yourself much much older and then thinking about wait a second I am this age. I remember speaking with a dude who's a multi-billionaire and he's a lot older than me and he's like I would give up everything to be you. like he said that to me because I'm a lot younger than him and you know he's in his like 70s and like upper 70s and and I was like wow it was just a moment to pause for a second this guy who feels like he owns the world said I would give up everything to be you and it it could really be an illuminating moment to realize like hey you have so much there in front of you but you should be

grateful for it and I I it seems like that's the that's the work where you go deep on that and you know There are plenty of people your age. I'm going to guess you're a little bit younger than me. You definitely look younger than me. Uh who would give up anything to be in that 75year-old billionaire's position. So they're all they each look at each other. I don't think that's your case, but they each look at each other saying, "I give up I give up anything to be in your position." No, I give up anything to be in your position. rather than sitting down and thinking, "Oh, I've had a nice for the for the older gentlemen. I've had a nice life. I'm really grateful. I have these wonderful children." For the younger, I have my health. I can lift a bunch of weights. I I have my life ahead of me. There's always a reason to be grateful. So, why not? Why not do it? Why not build a practice of it? Yeah, I love it. I

actually really enjoyed reading the forward to your book. the former CEO of GE, H Lawrence Culp, he said he was in a meeting with you at one point and you submitted this growth target that was actually a range instead of a specific target and he like really pressured you on this and pushed you and he said you responded with such poise and calm and had like good belief in the way you were doing things. Can you take me back to that room and that moment when he was challenging you and how you responded and and kind of the key learnings from it? At that point in my career, it might have been the highest stakes meeting I'd ever been in. I was sitting down with the board of director of a Fortune500 trillion asset manager talking about my business, our goals, where we're going. And so I show up with this range and his point his management philosophy and he's he's widely recognized as one of the most

effective leaders. He turned General Electric around. He runs the aerospace division now. Um he just looks at this and he goes it's not precise enough. It's not accountable. So here I am with a story of you need real measurable accountable goals. uh where I was pontificating five minutes ago about the pitfalls of measurable goals. I think it ties it together, Ryan, because you do need those measurable goals. You do need Okay, we choose to go to the moon. Uh you do need those goals to galvanize the organization. You just need to manage the side effects of them and this goal induced blindness that we talked about.

there's a nuance in how you interpret the research on this. But so I got to know him because we followed up on this and he became um you know he gave me a little bit of mentorship there on the spot and I learned and a lot of what I talk about in the book is not and this I learned from sports psychology and I went I went into a deep deep rabbit hole of research in sports psychology and I know you have a background as an athlete so you know it's not sports psychology is not about winning at all it's about losing and what you do with the loss. And the my my mentor in sports psychologist helped me go through the research. His name is Dr. Daniel Zimmit.

First time I met him, he goes into this story of his best match ever at handball. So, not only is he a sports psychologist, he has 40 40 national titles in the sport of handball. the sport you you whack the ball with your hands you know, and he's telling me the story of his best match ever and he's going play by play like years ago. He remembers everything. He's got a tear in his eye. He's playing in a much much much stronger opponent. And then there's a moment where he's on his knees and whacks the ball and makes the point. And then it's a total letdown because he kind of waves the rest of the story and goes, "Oh yeah, I lost the next two points." I go, "What? You lost the match?"

But that is like if you take the sports psychologist mentality to an extreme, his best match ever was one that he lost because for him that day he realized because it was a stronger opponent that he was in the game that he had jumped a level and that he was able to play at a higher level and again learning from your losses. roundabout way to say this was an embarrassing moment for me in a high stakes meeting in front of a board of directors where I got called out by a famous CEO for not having precise enough goals. But looking back on it, it was a really good learning opportunity.

And that's why I think sports psychology is just fascinating. It's all about the resilience and the losses and how you handle them. Yeah. How do you balance out that get getting called out of because like you we've probably all heard of smart goals which talk about being specific and measurable and actionable and I get why those are would be important but also being too married to them could be a problem. So how do you balance that out again both in your personal and professional life? Look I think smart goals are fine. They very useful and you try to make your goals as smart as possible. also measurable, spec specific measurable actionable blah blah blah. This sort of traditional management theory, but we're all we're especially in money management, but in any or in sports, but in any area of life, we're all going to lose. We're all going to make bad decisions. And it's in those moments

that growth happens. So, Roger Federer, I don't know if you caught this, Ryan, he went viral about a year ago when he spoke at a commencement uh event about his career. He's retired now. and he went viral because he told his students at graduating that he had played 1500 matches in his career and that he'd won 80% of those matches and then he looked at the crowd and said, "What percentage of points do you think I won?" This is Roger Federer talking. What What did do do did you come across that anecdote? Yeah. Didn't he only win like 53% of his points? It's 50 54 53 54% of the points. And then he goes, "Whatever game you play in life, sometimes you're going to lose." And so, yeah, goals are important. You want to measure them.

They're motivating. But sometimes you're just not going to meet them and you're going to adjust. And it's what you do when those things happen that really matters. And that's what I learned from sports psychology. I just find the whole field so interesting and so much broader than just sports. And for me in the money management world, there's just so many connections. You know, as an athlete, you know, you don't always control the outcome. You don't control what your opponent is going to do. You don't control the wind, whatever sport you're engaged in. As a money manager, you don't always control the outcome.

And so you might if you have a 54% edge and you can play the game often, you're going to be one of the best money managers in the world. So there just so many connection points that I think really matter and might not just not be appreciated as much as sort of other areas of psychology. Sebastian, if you were you you briefly mentioned this sports psychologist and you wrote wrote about him in your book and thanked him in your acknowledgement section too and it makes a lot of sense as to why. But Dr. Daniel Zimit, this sport psychologist, it's it feels like you you made a big commitment to really understand the psychology. I mean that's in the title of your book. It's about leadership. What are some of the key takeaways and things you've you learned from going deep with the sports psychologist?

Well, sports psychology is just so powerful. Have you have you heard of Felix Bombgardner? The the the Red Bull guy, right, who jumped out of space? Yeah. Yeah. So 2012 he went up in space 24 miles and jumped out. Skydive out from space. First skydiver to jump from space. He had a special suit but he reached 840 miles per hour. You see? Okay. What an incredible feat. Somehow it's kind of gotten lost in time. I'm glad you recall that. It's so amazing. Well, I did read it in your book, too, but yes. Thank you. But he he would the the thing is he was coached by a sports psychologist, Michael Jerves. Yeah.

Who's also a podcaster by the way. So it just shows you that those that play these games at the elite level of athleticism, they I mean every I think the statistic is something like 80% of pro baseball and football teams have a sports psychologist on staff now. And my guess is the 20% that say no, they they're just not telling you, but they do. And so he does that. He's a sports psychologist, Dr. Zimit. So start talking with him. And it wasn't just about learning re from from your losses. And this whole idea that this field of study is almost just about losing, which was fascinating to me. But it was also about stress. And what I've learned to realize, so he coaches athletes, is that athletes have a stressful job. It sounds like the wonderful, you know, you're having fun.

You're an athlete, you're a pro alete. And and he said to me, he said that, you know, it it's it's incredibly stressful when you think about it, right? The stakes are high. If if you you cannot it's impossible not to be stressed when you have to make that buzzer shot at basketball and you know you're at the other end of the court and the the the score is tied. And so the field of sports psychology goes deep into stress and this insight that peak performance does not happen at zero stress. You need a certain level of they don't call it activation or arousal in scientific language. It's a broader definition of stress, but you need you need a certain level of stress to perform at a peak level because you get motivated, you prepare more, you know, you get adrenaline which makes you more aware of your surroundings. It gives you more strength. if it's a strength feat that you're trying to to accomplish. But

so this whole concept because you know I I have a stressful job and I was kind of beating myself up for being stress and every time I get stressed I felt like it was a weakness like why am I stressed and it's just I started stressing about stressing and with athletes and with sports it's the opposite. It's like use this and I know you've talked about this in some of your prior podcasts, but use this to your advantage. It is actually if if channeled right is a boost to your performance. And it turns out there's a ton of research on this and it's quite fascinating. So that was Ryan that was part of it. That was part of what sports psychology I think um has to bring to the world beyond the world of sports is understanding stress. You know, we all hear it's bad. You know, stress is bad and and and it'll kill you. And if you're chronically stressed, it is extremely unhealthy. And if you go beyond a certain level, that's why there

are stress curves. If you go beyond a certain level, then you choke and you don't perform as well. But I think it's a remarkable insight to just learn to stop stressing about stressing and transform it into uh performance boost. You know, do you want your surgeon to be like very very relaxed or a little anxious about doing a good job on that surgery? Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. Yeah. I mean, in a way, too, it tells you that you still have a care. I mean, Jim Collins might call it having like productive paranoia that which would lead you to be overprepared for that keynote speech or the big meeting with your board or the QBR that you're running or the game that you're going to play. I I think ha like balancing and having that healthy level of this is a little bit scary. I'm not 100% sure I can do this, but I feel like I'm prepared. I'm ready. You want to be kind of always living on that edge because

you're right, if you don't feel anything or you're not nervous at all or you don't have some of that anticipatory feeling leading up to the moment or the event, I I just don't know if you're going to perform at any levels of excellence over or over a sustained period of time because you're not feeling it. I think in a way that's when you know you're doing it right is when you have the appropriate amount of levels of stressful situations that push your edges a bit as opposed to either being way outside of the the norm and being stressed to the max all the time or to never being stressed. It seems like the right mix is somewhere in the middle. And the fascinating part of this is the optimal stress level we've established is not zero, right? But it's also different depending on the task. Some tasks if they're straightforward and simple, Yep. can you can take on like you you almost want to maximize your activation, your stress,

if you will. If I ask you go run a 100 yard sprint, you want to be really you want to get your heart pumping, your adrenaline going. And if you're skilled at reframing it, not just feeling completely anxious, but reframing it into energy, you're going to perform at your best at a very high RPM, at a very high stress level. Now, if I ask you to go and uh do archery, then you it's not zero either, but you optimal performance is going to be at a lower stress level, right? So in the workplace there's deep work and there's you know intense short bursts of simple work. You know just to oversimplify let's say uh it's manual work and you you you run a construction company and you need a team to dig a really big ditch. You you can set up a really aggressive goal and get it going.

If if I go to my research and development team, which is deep work and complex activity, they're going to perform best at a lower stress level. They have a diff there's a different stress curve for deep work. I'm not going to go and scream at them, innovate, give me five innovation by tomorrow. It just doesn't work that way. So that's I thought that was fascinating to look at these different curves for different jobs and think about and I don't think anyone's really thought about this. Think about how this might apply to running organizations where people have different types of tasks to complete and how aggressive you want to set the targets depending on the task.

Yeah. You know, we all want to be like Neil Armstrong and have zero stress. You know, the the story of the first moon landing is just amazing because we all know, it's well known that the computer stopped working, the radio went off the the module went off course and they ran out of fuel and they could not abort and Neil Armstrong took command and landed the lunar module. And then the famous part of the story is once one one small step for a man, one giant leap for humanity. What most people don't know is he was uh hooked to a heart rate monitor, right? Like astronauts are. And for most of the mission, his heart rate was 75. That's for a lot of people a resting heartbeat.

It did spike when the the glass second when they landed, but that is someone with very high tolerance to high pressure situation and low neuroticism, if you will. So, where I'm going with this is on the other end of the spectrum, you have people who tend to be anxious and some people it's it's a clinical situation where they have chronic anxiety, right? And it just takes very little for them to redline into the stress zone. So where I'm going with this, Ryan, is handling your stress. You can learn a lot from sports and sports psychology. Optimal stress is not zero for peak performance because anyways you can't. It's impossible to be at zero stress in high pressure situation. It optimal stress depends on the task. And the reason why I mentioned Neil Armstrong and people with chronic anxiety on both end of the spectrum is optimal stress for optimal performance will also depend on the person. You have

a stress curve. I have a stress curve. My brother-in-law all he wants to do is you know Felix Bumgartner like he jumped from 24 miles up in space. My brother-in-law all he wants to do is do extreme sports and so his stress curve looks different than mine. You mentioned Neil Armstrong. I'm curious though, what about Buzz Aldrin, the guy that was up there with him? What was he like? So, it's interesting when you read about both of them because Buzz Aldrin had a uh I think if you study personality psychology, just a higher level of neuroticism.

And they after after all of this happened, they were both famous. They took different paths in life. And um all else being equal, you know, Neil Armstrong didn't want to be famous and he went to teach at a university and Buzz Aldrin took a took another another path and had more um documented so more um you know mental health issues ultimately. Um, so it's it's it's it's it's interesting to see how different people have different personality traits and this is one where neuroticism comes into play. But um, you know, anxiety is a is I just my takeaway is it's it's not all bad. Yeah, we all have to stop stressing about stressing. One of the things you've written about in the book is about um openness. You're right. The best negotiators, salespeople and debaters show high levels of openness and they show this because they can listen carefully to the other side. Uh from a leadership perspective, I think

this is really important. So can you can you talk more about this value of openness and this ability to listen carefully to the other side? So what's interesting with personality psychology is that you can have different levels of the different traits. We talked we just talked about people with high neuroticism, people with low neuroticism and there's good and bad to both sides of that equation. It's the same with openness. Some people have very high openness to experience. They want to try new things, uh, new foods, new new activities, and others just want the routine and they want to go to the same restaurant every week and, you know, eat the same thing. And so they have lower openness to experience. And so when you contrast this and you ask, well, how do how does that relate to things like persuasion, right, to your question and and to to being a good negotiator?

The interesting part about being high in openness is that you become more open also to ideas and being able to listen and ask questions. You know, it's fascinating. There's related research on this that shows that the best way to convince someone is to ask a series of questions. So with openness and negotiation, for example, you're going to be a better negotiator if you have high openness and you're open to the other person's ideas. It's fascinating when you read research on this to realize that the best way to convince someone, to persuade someone, is not to throw all your best arguments at them, is to ask a series of question as a fascinating book by Charles Doohig just came out titled super commmunicator and he has these examples where um you know someone was impossible to convince. It was about medical treatment and all the doctors would try and they brought in an expert in negotiation and

all the expert did was why do you not want to receive this treatment and then asked a series of follow-on question and just by crafting the questions the right way the person actually ended up convincing themselves. So really, if you want to be, it's counterintuitive, but I I've seen it in business through the years. If you want to be good at convincing someone, you really the first the best thing you can do, the first thing you can do is show them that you understand where they're coming from is to listen to them and reflect back to them their views and just start there.

You know, I had I had some really high achievers uh work for me over the years. And I remember one of them who would just try to convince if he had of you would just try to convince you by pounding the table and giving you all the arguments. And I remember I kept telling him like flip it around. Just start by listening to the other person's point of view. So I think if you're naturally an open person, open to experience, open to other ideas, it's going to help you with persuasion, with leadership skills, it's a fascinating personality trait. You know, there are five big personality traits. It's one of the big five. I have a chapter on each of them in the book. I even map people personalities, public personalities to, you know, are they high or low in that specific trait. uh with the openness is like you know I can ask you Ryan like do you like to try new foods you know do you like to travel to new

places and and by the way each of these traits this is not set in stone you can develop you can actually evolve your personality most of the research argues that personality is maybe 30 40% heritable like that you get it sort of through your your parents and through your genes But that mean that leaves a big chunk of it where you can really evolve as a person in terms of your personality traits and also means people change. People change by situation and over time. Yeah. It's like if you want to be a more interesting person, be interested in others. Be interested in topics. Be interested in certainly in people.

That's how you develop and deepen relationships is by by leading with curiosity. And I feel like that is such a big part of what you're talking about when it comes to being open and having openness. People who are good negotiators, good salespeople, good debaters, they're probably really good listeners. Yes. Like I like especially uh my background before doing what I do now, Sebastian, is in sales for a long time. And I know the most important part of the sales process was the discovery phase, right? There's all these different parts of the sales process when they teach you and you read all these books and you get trained, which we got trained all the time. But the discovery phase was everything. That's when you were asking questions to genuinely learn about the person you are working with. You know, you know this from being in the profession of selling that if you can genuinely understand

where they're at, you genuinely understand where they want to go and to see if your solution can help bridge that gap. That's ultimately what sales is all about. So, you're just helping people, but you can't do that effectively. At least, I don't think, if you're not curious, if you're not good at asking questions, if you're not good at trying to understand them and their situation better, because the best salespeople in the world are willing to walk away and say, you know what, based on what I learned, our solution is not right for you. Our solution is not going to solve your problem. Our solution is not going to bridge that gap from where you are to where you want to be. And I think that's what ethically great um the best of the best that's what they do.

And that's really about developing relationships. It's developing trust. It's it's it's it's showing that you actually care and you want to help other people. And that plays a big role in leading leading others as well. And I think that that I I felt that through reading multiple different parts of your book. You know, you've just sold me on that idea. Look, as a leader, it's counterintuitive and it's taken me years to really on board this concept. It's not really about you. It's not about your communication skills. I I felt like my communication skills have helped me in my career and have propelled me. And then I reached a point where I I just realized like being a really effective leader is about listening. Yep. It's not about talking. It's like a leadership superpower. And for me, believe me, that was a transition. And I improved as a leader. I have a sticker for from the COVID era on my screen. Talk less,

listen more. One of the things you did with your team as you were travel the world and you're meeting with these super highlevel leaders which I'm curious about that element too but you'd also challenge people locally to these kind of food eating not contest I guess but just challenge you to say hey I will try anything as long as this is something they actually eat in this place of the world. Can you talk to me more about your level of openness and why you did this when you traveled the world? So, I used that story in the book to illustrate what high openness is. It was a simple bet. I would travel everywhere nonstop meeting with these really important clients, but it's not as glamorous as it sounds and you know, you want to it gets it gets repetitive.

So, at some point, I had this idea every salesperson in every country that I would visit would be issued a challenge. I would give them a challenge. I'm going to try any food and I'm going to at least try it as long as locals eat it. And you know, you can imagine this stuff like all sorts of exotic meats, organ meats, sea creatures, bugs, whatever. I've and you know I had I had this in the book where I would actually list everything I've tried from like raw horse liver to like all sorts of things and I had this whole paragraph and my editor has asked me to cut it down. So what what you're getting is an edited version and it was sort of like ew dude this is too much. But there's one time one time it wasn't in the context of that challenge but one time I chickenened out. Uh we we debated it the whole night. It was after a few beers and I was telling my friends about this openness challenge and my friend went to

a really dusty cupboard and pulled this strange bottle of I don't know, probably tequila with a label I couldn't read with a scorpion in the in the in the bottom. And then he said, "Look, this has been there for like 25 years or something." And uh but he said, "People sometimes eat pieces of it, so do you want to try it?" And we debated for hours. I chickenened out. Everybody else chickenened out. Anyways, so I understand why. Sebastian, I'm curious. This is like a higher level question, but you know, you wrote a book called The Psychology of Leadership, and these are about timeless principles to improve your leadership of individual teams, yourself. super important. If you could think about maybe an idea or something you truly believed wholeheartedly before you started writing and then you leaned into your writing obsession, your wife pushed you a little bit and then now after the project is complete, the book is

written, it's been published. What maybe are one or two things you're like, "Oh my god, yeah, I thought this at the beginning and now that the project is done, I don't think that or maybe I changed my mind and I I think this now." I'm curious what that might be. The main one we talked about, this idea that stress is bad and it's to be minimized in all situations is just wrong. And you learn that from sports psychology and once you really take that on board, it can actually be lifechanging. This was a big deal for me. But there were other things too like a lot of counterintuitive research. For example, uh I talk a lot about relationships and feedback is a big part of how you manage relationships at work and most companies now have a formal feedback process. You survey people, we call it the 360, people all around you and then you get some feedback. Usually it's anonymous. Uh people hate it. People

absolutely hate it. And and when you hear like, "Can I give you some feedback?" This is like one of the worst things. Ryan, can I give you some feedback? Like how the and then you just pop. I like that just it's the last thing you want to hear. Yeah. But the counterintuitive part is it actually feedback is important and you can make feedback much less difficult for the people receiving it and the people giving it if you foster a culture and you just model it yourself where you ask for it. So Dr. David Rock, he's a he's he's into neural leadership. He's the real deal as a scientist. They did these studies and they showed that just if you ask for it, it completely reduces the stress response versus can I give you some feedback.

What you're doing is hey Ryan, we just did this podcast. You know, how did I do? And then if you listen to Adam Grant, he has some ideas too about how do you ask for it? You can ask for it in a forward-looking way. What should I do better next time? Next time we do a podcast. So to me, this flipping that on its head was counterintuitive and I learned that going through the research. There's a lot in there, Ryan, about social comparison. And we all think social comparison is a bad thing, right? And social media puts social comparison directly through your veins. I mean it's like it's like shooting up social comparison but it's actually can again like stress can be a powerful healthy motivator if channeled right. Mhm. Uh so there are lots of counterintuitive findings in there that I think can actually be meaningful in how you think about managing others and also yourself.

Yeah there's so much good stuff. The psychology of leadership it's from the same publishers from the psychology of money which you mentioned Morgan Hel. one of my favorite writers and and guest of this podcast, but the psychology of leadership, timeless principles to improve your leadership of individuals, teams, and yourself. Really well done. I really appreciate you being here, Sebastian. Thanks so much, and I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Thank you, Ryan. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page"?

Ryan Hawk (Host), Sébastien Page (Guest).

What is "The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page" about?

The discussion focuses on the profound influence of Sébastien Page's father's exceptional work ethic, which encompassed managing a cattle farm while maintaining a full-time academic career. It highlights the lessons learned about resilience, preparation, and the intrinsic value of hard work, emphasizing the importance of leading by example.

What is mentioned in this Ryan Hawk episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including The Psychology of Leadership, The Learning Leader Show, Harvard, The Psychology of Money, Daniel Zimmit, GE. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "The Psychology of Leadership with Sébastien Page"?

The episode runs 59 min; the transcript is about 9,283 words in 64 timestamped sections.

More from Ryan Hawk

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.