Gratitude Season

December 19, 2015

I didn’t expect to learn something from a fashion designer, but when I visited the Jardin Majorelle, formerly-private-now-turned-public-garden owned by Yves-Saint-Lauren in Marrakech, Morocco, I saw something that inspired me.

Each year, he would design a new love-themed postcard which he would send to some of the closest people in his life. He did so for 30 years — hand-crafted collages that were often inspired by objects near and dear to his heart. And now, the Jardin features an exhibition of his postcards.

I don’t know what it was, the creativity of the idea, the beauty of each piece, the sense of a lifetime's artwork that his collection radiated, but I walked away from it thinking myself that this is something that I, too, would like to do.

This year in particular, there were many people who have been amazing to me and whom I really appreciate to have met/interacted with. People who coached me, pushed me, helped me, supported me and most importantly, believed in me. For long I thought of how I could possibly express my gratitude. A text? An email? A call?

I then remembered YSL’s cartes de voeux, which I mentioned earlier. So with the help of a wonderful designer, Elle Wildhagen, I ended up with the design of my own postcard. I got 100 of them printed and spent all of last week reviewing the year and writing thank you cards to those who either inspired me or made a massive contribution to my life this year. From my managers who wrote my recommendation letters for business school to my friends who were there when I needed them.

There is a shit ton of science around how the practice of gratitude makes people happier and more appreciative of the things they have in their lives. As a matter of fact, I used to have a “3 highlights of the day” list for a very long time which, over time, really impacted the way I was looking at the world as I was going through the days (more aware, more appreciative, more positive). Writing these cards really helped me remember and cherish all the wonderful moments I got to experience this year.

And for the recipient, the fact that these are stamp-mailed, hand-written cards that are not off-the-rack but personally designed, really makes them special and hopefully shows that the gratitude is really sincere.

The important thing is to really express gratitude with no expectation of return. Two nights ago I was sitting in a cafe when a woman sat next to me. She saw me writing those cards and we ended up talking about it since she has a very similar habit. “Wouldn't you get upset if someone doesn’t get back to you on those?” she asked. I thought for a second and replied: “how would that in any way change the thankfulness I feel for what they have done for me this year? Not at all."

Maybe having your own cards is too much, but if there is one thing I hope you take away from this is to take some time to reflect about who helped you this year and to find a way to express your gratitude – in the form of a text, an email, a call, or whatever else you got in mind.

Where do YOU see me?

December 15, 2015

One of the heaviest and most recurring questions we ask ourselves throughout our lives and careers is probably the question of “where do I see myself _______?” (fill the blank with “next” or “in X years from now”). As a matter of fact, many folks ask that during job interviews.

And while I don’t want to argue over whether it’s a good/bad thing to ask, I certainly want to provide a new/different way to think about this idea of “where do I see myself.”

I was writing "thank you” cards this week and to one friend I wrote “thanks for seeing more in me than I see sometimes see myself.” That person has always been someone who believed in my potential and pushed me with the right questions (why are you doing X?) as well as suggestions (have you considered Y?). And frankly speaking, I loved thanking the person for that because it has always been so extremely valuable to me to hear his thoughts.

So I kept thinking about this situation and I realized that it’s a question we only ask ourselves. Like 99.9% of the time that we ask this question, we ask ourselves and not others. And what happens is that we struggle to find clear answers because we are stuck in our own rivers of thinking. We are in our own “box” and don’t get a chance to have a perspective on it from the outside. Yet if we ask that question to someone else, we have the opportunity to actually get a stimulus, a perspective, an idea that we haven’t considered ourselves as we were exploring every corner of this box we are stuck in.

This is why I think it’s important to reverse this question. Instead of only asking ourselves where we see ourselves, we need to be asking others where they see us. What I have started to do is to ask five of my closest friends – folks who know me very well – to take some time and let me know over the break where they see me. What they see me doing and what they think I’m good at.

I feel I could ask myself that question over and over again, but once I ask someone is close to me and understands me well, I get the opportunity to get a new perspective on the same issue. A stimulus, an input that could be game-changing with regards to my thinking. Of course, the decision is still mine, but a new perspective can help in the decision-making process.

With that, I’d encourage you to start asking others about where they see you as opposed to just wondering yourself what the answer to that question is…

The Notion of Morphing (and how it can explain a lot in life)

November 29, 2015

Never thought I would learn something for life in my art class in high school, but seems that I did (or at least I tell myself that I did). There is this one concept that stuck with me and gained increasing importance throughout my life. It’s the concept of morphing.

Most people are not familiar with this term until I give them very vivid and well-known example. Think of two portrait photos, let’s take two recognizable personalities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Bush.

Put next to each other, these are clearly two different faces. But if you put 50 pictures in between and make marginal changes to each of them, you can slowly morph from Schwarzenegger’s face to Bush’s face with little to no difference between two consecutive pictures. Over the course of these 50 pictures the differences add up and once you look from the end back to the beginning, you can see the differences that you weren’t able to see from one picture to the next.

This phenomenon is called morphing. And surprisingly, it applies to a lot of situations in life.

Here in business school for example, it’s often hard to see if and how much we are changing as we go through this experience. For the most part, we are mentally stuck in one day at a time. As a matter of fact, it’s quite difficult to think or plan beyond the very week that we find ourselves in. Consequently, it’s hard to measure one’s progress as we are often only able to look at the picture in front and behind of us.

Case in point, I had a friend visiting me on campus a few weeks ago and I was able to bring him to one of my lectures in Organizational Behavior. I remember thinking that while it was a good lecture for him to attend, he probably wouldn’t be able to see the “big picture” if he only attended one lecture. One lecture alone – a single picture of those 50 if you want – is often not enough to be able to put things into perspective. That one lecture alone seemed a bit weird (we walked around the classroom with post-it notes and tried to help each other, simulating the effect of networks). But in the context of the entire class, that one lecture would have made sense.

And so it happens that for us to see and understand the change(s) we go through, we need to be able to look beyond the "previous or next picture.” Changes are often only visible by contrasting the beginning and the end (the last and the first picture of that morphing process). Example: I can’t tell how much I changes from week 3 to week 4 to week 5 during my first semester in business school, but I could certainly see a difference if I compared week 12 (the end) with week 1 (the beginning). Even more so, if I increase the time frame and compare the end of the 2-year experience with the beginning.

More specifically in the example of my current business school experience, I see an additional component that goes beyond those 50 pictures. Many of the changes we go through in these two years manifest themselves not only when we are at the end looking back, but also once we are way past it (f.ex. a few years later when a certain situation draws on some of the lessons learned during the two years).

Point being, that there are many situations in life where it’s not very clear what we are actually learning. It’s hard to see it because we are looking at two consecutive pictures that are just slices out of the overall transformation that we are part of. Knowing the concept of morphing can help put this into perspective.

The Art of Being Curious

November 12, 2015

In conversations, it’s very (very!) easy to always be like “ah, ok, nice, mmh, cool, sounds interesting.” You sort of hear what someone is saying, but you are not really listening. Some parts of what is said stick with you, other parts don’t. Occasionally you might hear a keyword that makes you listen more attentively, but overall, you are more worried about appearing interested than actually being interested.

Does that describe a familiar situation to you? Maybe to some extent? Well, reality is that I caught myself in situations like that. I also caught others in such situations.

Over time, I put a lot of thought into what it takes to have real good conversations. Conversations in which one really learns something – independent of how significant or insignificant the other person is or seems to be. What I realized is that in order to go significantly deeper with your conversations than just the typical surface level, it’s all about being genuinely curious about this gorgeous person across from you. What do I mean by “being genuinely curious”...

Being curious is all about peeling back the layers. It’s about not taking the person’s first – and often most rehearsed – answer as the only one. It’s about digging deeper. It’s about probing their inner thoughts gently so that they are able to think more clearly and make sense of situations in ways they never did before. Being curious also means surfacing their decision-making process that is often hidden in the dark.

If someone answers "I'm doing all well," ask what's going well these days! If someone says "I had a great weekend," ask what they enjoyed the most! If someone responds "Oh, that sounds amazing," dare to ask what they like about it.

A quick-recipe on how to dig deeper and "exercise" curiosity is to generally ask about the three areas that touch on what makes us who we are: our emotions (how did it make you feel?), memories ("what is your sweetest memory of ...?") and motivations ("what made you do this?"). Asking questions that touch on these areas allow you to touch on the layers that are much deeper under the surface which only 95%+ of conversations generally scratch on.

Turns out, being curious is the key recipe to avoiding the ultimate death scenario of a conversation: running out of topics. There is no running out of topics if one really starts to care about someone’s stories and actually moves from being interesting to being interested. I used to be afraid of running out of topics, but now I just tell myself to be hardcore-curious about the other person. And it works.

The hardest thing about Business School (so far...)

November 09, 2015

I remember reading Shawn Achor’s book “The Happiness Advantage” in which he talked about this highly paradoxical behavior which he observed among students on campus: "no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there … but on the competition, the workload, the hassles, stresses, complaints."

This comment very much stuck with me ever since and I very much wondered if my experience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business would be any similar. I’m now two months into the experience, and I have to say that there is a lot of truth to Shawn’s observation (the validity of which, needless to say, easily extends into other parts of our lives).

So here I am, eight weeks in, and it’s been an amazing ride so far. But truth be spoken, it’s not always easy. I sometimes catch myself with a not-so-positive mindset and then instantly try to remind myself of the day I got “the (admission) call” or the first night on campus during which I couldn’t sleep because of the excitement I felt.

The thing I have most struggled with so far has been focus (or lack thereof). Academics are going all fine (I very much enjoy the classes so it doesn’t feel like much work) and there isn’t too much peer pressure on the grades (mostly due to the student-initiated norm to not disclose/talk about our grades). But the biggest challenge is focus, exacerbated by the sheer amount of offerings and the necessity to say no.

My days often start at 6.15am, working out, and they often don’t end before midnight, reading cases. And during the day, it’s a never-ending back and forth between meetings, classes, social events, information sessions, assignments, and what have you. And in between all of that, you try to maintain your life-long friendships, call your parents, and manage your inbox (#DROWNING)

For everything that I do, there are 5 things that I had to say no to. For every lunch event, there are a handful of equally interesting invitations I have to decline. For every evening activity, there are a bunch of pictures of other events that show up on Social Media which gently remind me of all the things I missed out on. FOMO overload.

The hard thing so far has been to deal with this feeling and to be ok with it. To go to bed and feel appreciative of the 10 things I did, not be regretful of the 10 other things I really wanted to do but didn’t have time for.

Not knowing what you are trying to get out of this experience can make it feel excruciatingly difficult to enjoy. You keep doing things, but you never really feel that you are getting closer to your goal. You do a lot, but you don’t feel like moving.

In the end, every decision is a matter of prioritization. That’s why it’s so important to have one’s priorities clear. What am I optimizing for? Learning things I didn’t know about? Doing the things that help me figure out my future? Go to events which are unique to this environment and which I couldn’t experience outside? There are many “decision models” that can be applied and it’s not always easy.

So far it’s been fairly manageable, yet the number of decisions that need to be made is increasing and it’s even more important to have my priorities straight. It’s important to be open when coming to such open and stimulating environments, but it’s equally important to have some sense of direction that can help lower the pain of saying no to the many opportunities offered.

As I increase my focus, I realize the importance of moving away from "forced 'No's" to "deliberate 'No's." With increased clarity on the things I want to get out of this experience, it's becoming increasingly easy to make a decision in favor of one thing over another thing.

Humility as a key trait of great Leaders

October 26, 2015

Leadership for me is a highly fascinating and sophisticated topic. There is no such thing as "the one right style", in fact, I think that research on this field is even still debating whether it's something acquired or innate. There are different approaches to it and while I think they all hold some truth, I doubt they are complete enough to be applicable to the multitude of situations that require one or another form of leadership (when does an action qualify as leadership anyway?)...

That said, there are some leadership philosophies that quite resonate with me and which come close to what I, personally, consider good leadership. One of these concepts is called "Level 5 Leadership" and is a guiding theme throughout Jim Collins' book "Good to Great". I haven't read the book yet (it's been on my shelf for far too long), but I did read a case study by HBS on it.

In summary, the author analyzed 1,435 Fortune 500 companies and only found only 11 that achieved and maintained greatness (defined as: garnering stock returns at least three times the market's – for 15 years after a major transition period). What Collins found out was that the leaders of these companies were such Level 5 leaders who, by his definition, blend the paradoxical combination of deep personal humility with intense professional will.

I wasn't much surprised by the latter part of the definition, but deep personal humility? Could humility really be that much of a key differentiator I thought? As I kept on reading, I learned that these type of Level 5 leaders routinely credit others, external factors and good luck for their companies' success. They credit others for their successes and take the blame for the collective mishaps.

I further learned that their willpower and drive (the part that didn't really surprise me) are channeled into the cause of the endeavor. They don't make it about themselves. It doesn't matter how they look to the public or how what they do will reflect on their careers, the money or the power. It's just about their cause and the mission. And they have this utterly stoic desire to do whatever it takes to succeed for the sake of that cause.

As I thought about it, I got reminded of another interesting piece of research that I read in the book "Give and Take" which is very much aligned with this characteristic of humility. The author, Adam Grant, was introducing the concept of "Givers" and "Takers." Givers being people who constantly give their time, effort and resources to help others without any expectation of return whereas Takers do the exact opposite (take other people's time, effort and resources with no intention of returning).

Grant was mentioning three examples that were indicators of givers (who are generally very humble). First factor he identified was the gap in compensation between the CEO and the next highest-paid executive. The gap of Giver-type CEOs was significantly lower than that of Taker-type CEOs.

The second cue was based on how these CEOs spoke. The takers tended to use first-person singular pronouns, like “I” and “me,” as opposed to “us” and “we,” when talking about the company.

The third indicator was that the takers thought it was all about them: I am the most important and central figure in this company. When you looked at their photos in the company’s annual reports, they actually had larger photos. They were even more likely to be pictured alone.

My own experience has shown that the best and most successful managers in my career have been the ones who were the humblest. The ones who really made it about the mission, not their ego. Once again, there are many important traits, but the next time I hear someone say "I did this, I built that," this research on humility can help put things into perspective!

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The Power of Intentionality

October 16, 2015

Intentionality. I'm not even sure if that word exists, but I like it. And I live by it. So let me tell you what it means (i.e. what *I* mean).

I'm now 5 weeks into my business school experience, and so much it's been as much fun as it has been stressful. However, I'm not here to discuss the stressful part. I'm here to tell you about the fun part.

One of the best things so far have been the crazy, omg-I-am-starstruck speakers we have had: Jack Ma (founder and CEO of AliBaba), Magic Johnson (former NBA star and now business), Baseem Youssef (known the "John Stewart of the Middle East"), Stewart Butterfield (founder and CEO of Slack), Alan Mulally (former CEO of Ford Motors and one of the world's must successful CEOs) ... the list goes on and on.

So every time we had one of these talks, I made the biggest effort possible to go and attend. And in each session, I would sit in there with my notebook and task myself with one challenge: "what are the top 5 things I am learning in this talk from this speaker that I can actually apply to my life going forward?"

It's not the first time that I'm in an environment where there is "easy access" to amazing speakers like that. In fact, Google had many well-known authors, politicians or personalities come and give talks. But far too often I would go there, sit in the audience, work on my emails on the side or be distracted by my phone. It was always about "having been there," never about "what am I actually learning"? Admittedly, an issue that I also saw happening in countless work meetings during my time at Google.

Not this time though. Maybe it's the fact that I'm paying so much money for this business school experience, or maybe I've just become a bit more serious about life and the things I'm learning along my journey, but the big difference now is that I'm very intentional.

I go there – without my laptop – sit down, turn on airplane mode, take out my notebook, write down the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and then listen to the talk and try to summarize the things I think can help me in life going forward.

It's the same intentionality that I'm applying to my lectures. I put all technology aside and focus on being fully present. And then, in addition to my presence, I try to be intentional – something that I achieve by asking myself a purposeful question.

Give it a try. Makes life much better.

The invisible hand ... of the internet!

September 22, 2015

As I'm back on campus studying business (I did my undergrad in the same subject), it was unavoidable to come across good old Adam Smith and his term of "the invisible hand." Needless to say, the level of my excitement to study microeconomics was rather modest. BUT! I have always loved this term and this idea that there can be an invisible power coordinating or even rectifying things in the background, invisibly.

Simultaneously, I noticed two incidents in the news in the past two weeks. One, there was this Hungarian camerawoman who was tripping up a father and her son who were refugees and trying to break a control fence. Second, there was the viral story of Ahmed who built a clock and was taken as a terrorist.

If you look at them individually, they are both really sad personal tragedies. The refugees were fleeing from war and the last thing they needed was an ignorant woman to hinder them in their search for a better life. And Ahmed, believe me, it sucks to be put into the terrorist bucket. Even more when you come to school and have such personal achievement to celebrate.

At first sight, these two stories don't have much in common. At a second glance though, they both got reported on and went viral. The went so viral that one of my friends was jokingly posting on Facebook "the only thing Ahmed is blowing up is my newsfeed." The attention for these events was high because it seemed so unjust, even outrageous, what had happened to these individuals.

Fast forward to this week, there has been a crazy twist and turn in each of these stories. As you might have heard, Obama invited Ahmed to the White House, Microsoft sent him tons of gifts and Google invited him as a VIP guest to its annual Science Fair where he hung out with Sergey Brin. And the Syrian father and his son? They are now celebrities in Spain. The father, Usama, a former soccer coach, has been offered a coaching job. And the son, Zaid, was allowed to enter the soccer field together with Cristiano Ronaldo over the weekend.

Absolutely beautiful turnarounds. Yet if you take a step back, there is an interesting observation. Namely that the internet has become something like an "invisible hand" that has the power to not just course-correct injustice, but to excessively redeem wrongdoing that is happening in this world. There are many other examples that come to mind, both successful (a crowdfunding campaign for an old handicapped man who was robbed or the homeless child who was studying under the light of a McDonalds sign) and unsuccessful (attempting to collectively bail out Greece).

It's very interesting to see how the internet has the power to invisibly fix incidents like that. It further raises another question though: how can this be systematized and facilitated? Could we create a platform whose only goal is to report on scenarios of social injustice and then invite the power of the invisible hand of the internet to come and rectify things? Also, could the platform become something bigger than just a tool to help individuals? Something like a social police? If you think of the demonstrations that took place in Brazil or Venezuela, if you think of all the corruption that is taking place in India or Mexico – how could we help collectively surface these incidents, expose them, and use the power of the collective to rectify things? Especially in the next 5 years as the next 5B people are connecting to the internet and are increasingly empowered through their smartphones?

This is a question that has been on my mind for quite some time. But until there is a proper platform, we will rely on individuals to surface these incidents and the media to bring these cases to our attention.

So .. what's your story? ...and 49 other Smarttalk questions to use!

September 03, 2015

A few months ago I was having dinner in San Francisco with the organizers of the TEDx conference that I attended in Iran. We were discussing the event as well as my own talk. One of their comments was an encouragement to think about how I could take the topic of my talk to the next level.

Next level? Well … I thought the next step would be to convert the talk about “Breaking the Habit of Smalltalk” into something that can actually be used in real-life. So I created a Google Spreadsheet, went out on my social outlets and I asked all folks in my network to contribute fun/interesting/quirky questions. Soon enough, I ended up with a list of 150+ different questions that people had submitted.

Simultaneously, I was co-organizing a 260-person trip to Colombia for my fellow classmates at the GSB. As these things normally go, you have a lot of people meeting each other for the first time and just as I described in my talk, you end up with conversations that run on a path of predictable superficiality: "where you from, what did you do, etc. etc.”

So we thought we would spice it up a bit and printed 50 conversation cards – each with a fun and quirky question on it. We then distributed those cards upon arrival to make sure that everyone would have at least three conversation cards. And in our welcome announcement, we encouraged everyone to make use of them.

I’m sure that not everyone got a chance to do so, but I heard that many did and that those conversations ended up being very meaningful and memorable. I myself had the opportunity to use those cards during dinner on one of the evenings. We were four people and we ended up asking each other some of those questions. Looking back, it was pretty incredible how quickly our conversation ended up becoming very deep. From the first time undergoing Brazilian waxing to a history of suffering from eating disorders – everyone was sharing some very personal stories in an environment in which we felt heard and trusted.

Beyond the questions which do nothing more than to facilitate a conversation, the willingness to make oneself vulnerable in front of others is the real ingredient for a conversation to become meaningful. We ended the dinner with a group-hug and a wonderful dinner moment that we won’t forget again that quickly. Find below the list of 50 questions we used on this past trip!

When was the last time you did something for the first time?
What's your passion project these days?
So, what's your story?
Tell me something fun about yourself!
What’s the strangest thing about where you grew up?
How’d you end up in your line of work?
Which of your scars has the most interesting story to tell?
What was the weirdest/craziest thing you experienced abroad/while traveling?
Once you came online, which was the longest time you have been offline since?
Tell me something about yourself that you wouldn't mention on a first date/meet.
Which is you favorite blog/YT channel/Instagram/Twitter/news resource right now?
If you could solve one problem, which would it be?
What did you buy with your first salary ever?
What superpower would you chose if you had absolute free choice?
What job or activity would you do in spite of having all resources in the world?
When was the last time you were really proud of yourself?
What is the craziest thing you have ever done in your life?
What life experience made you grow the most?
Describe the last time someone's actions really surprised you.
What did you want to be when you were a child?
Do you have any nickname(s) and what's the background story?
What was your most embarrassing username/email address
How did your parents values shape your career choices?
What is the most depressed you've ever been?
What's your best opener on Tinder?
Would you pick a different career path if you did life over again?
Do you think you have become any better or worse looking with time?
What's the best date you have ever planned?
What's the coolest gift you ever gave someone?
How do you feel about open relationships?
Do you think you would be hot as the opposite sex?
What is the hardest thing about being you?
What was your last epiphany?
What companies align with your personal values?
What's the hardest thing you've ever gone through?
What experience have you had that made you a more compassionate person?
What is the nicest compliment you have ever received?
What's a moment you are proud of?
Has anything magical ever happened to you?
What was your best first kiss?
What romantic gesture would you be really stoked about?
Which event in history influenced you most?
What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
A crystal ball can tell you the truth about yourself or your future. What would you ask?
When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
What would be a dealbreaker when it comes to dating someone?
What is your guilty pleasure?
What's the most illegal thing you did and are comfortable sharing?

FOMOG – The fear of missing out... of giving!

August 08, 2015

A few weeks before I left Google, something funny happened. My manager who is a Stanford GSB Alum asked me for a conversation. He wanted to share with me the top mistake which he was predicting I would do during the next two years at business school. Not necessarily a charming way to wish me the best on my new chapter I thought, but hey, you shouldn't say no to free advise, right?

So while this article is probably more/most useful for an ongoing MBA, the lesson he shared with me has general validity and applicability to situations beyond business school.

The "fear of missing out of giving"

John came up with this notion called “FOMOG” – the fear of missing out of giving. If you happen to have read Adam Grant’s “Give and Take,” (which I can highly recommend if you haven’t) this topic might sound somewhat familiar to you.

With FOMOG, he was describing the constant desire – if not even urge – to be contributing to others and the community. His argument was that many people who go to business school have this attitude of relentlessly wanting to contribute to class and the community.

While giving is generally a good thing (and here again, the book “Give and Take” makes a very strong point in favor of being a giver) there are different forms of giving and it’s important to keep a healthy balance among those forms. Going “all in” on the most popular category of giving, called the “Rockstar," can actually have negative returns as it diminishes the ability to receive.

In summary, there are three forms of giving and the different measures of impact that they each have.

1) The Rockstar – the very impressive form of giving: organizing a big class trip, a popular event, leading a club, etc.). A lot of people see your impact, get to know your name, benefit from what you do. It’s very "1:n” – you do a lot for many people, but you are not giving on a 1:1 level. This is a popular category as it provides a “stage to shine”

2) The Supporter – the giving opportunities that everyone knows are important but which receive much less credit: mentoring someone for 6 months, volunteering at an event, etc. Here it’s a “1:few” relationship where you are impacting fewer people, but in a more (inter)personal way.

3) The Trustee – the giving you do towards your closest friends and family which is very 1:1 and mostly unknown to others. This could be face to face conversations in which you discuss problems and solutions. However, you wouldn’t be bragging about how much impact you have with your family for example.

As you can see, there is a reversed relationship between “publicity and fame” and how “targeted and personal” your giving is (the Rockstar is high in publicity but not very targeted. The Trustee is the other way around).

By now, I probably talked to 50+ alum and if there was one recurring pattern in the advise they gave me, it was the importance to prioritize the third category, being a Trustee. They all talked about the 1:1 relationships they were able to build and that this sort of giving has been the most meaningful as they are still “receiving” through those relationships today. They were acknowledging the benefits of the Rockstar-type of giving, but they also made clear that the publicity and fame would oftentimes compromise the long-tern return of that type of giving.

My manager’s point was that many people who are natural givers aim for the 1:n-type giving which comes with a lot of publicity and fame (the Rockstar), but one that is not targeted and personal at all. And often times, this sort of giving takes a lot of giving-effort, without creating a venue for receiving on a personal level and a targeted manner. In his words: “the extent to which you dedicate yourself to category one (Rockstar) or two (Supporter), you automatically compromise on category 3 (Trustee). But the truth is that you need to create that room because the Trustee category is the one through which you’d be receiving most."

The longest-lasting value of any sort of experience can often times be found in the relationships that result from that experience. With that in mind, it’s important to find a balance among these three types of giving and to ensure that you give off stage (Trustee) as much as you give on stage (Rockstar & Supporter).

THE POSITUDE

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