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York City gets fresh produce? Or exactly

3:00

what on earth was going on over at

3:03

FTX before the whole thing collapsed? Twice

3:05

a week, we sit down with the

3:07

perfect guest to answer these sort of

3:09

questions and understand what's going on with

3:11

the biggest stories in finance, economics, business,

3:13

and markets. I'm Tracey Alaway. And

3:16

I'm Jill Weisenthal. And we are

3:18

the hosts of Bloomberg's All Thoughts Podcast. Look

3:20

us up wherever you get your podcasts. The

3:22

All Thoughts Podcast from Bloomberg. And

3:29

now Daniel Halleck takes the TED

3:31

stage. When

3:35

I was in graduate school, there

3:37

was a student who I looked up to. His

3:40

name was Peter. Peter was

3:42

the type of person you wanted to be like.

3:45

He was smart, articulate, and

3:48

winsome. One

3:50

day I saw Peter in the library. It

3:52

was his final quarter in our program and

3:54

he was about to graduate. Peter,

3:58

congratulations. You must be

4:00

so excited. His

4:03

response surprised me. I am,

4:06

but I haven't built my network like I should

4:08

have, so I don't have any

4:10

jobs lined up yet. His

4:14

answer terrified me. If

4:16

someone as impressive as Peter didn't

4:19

have a job lined up, then what

4:21

was I to do? As

4:23

the son of two immigrants, education

4:25

was the key to success. I

4:29

could not afford to waste

4:31

this opportunity. I

4:34

found myself feeling anxious and fearful.

4:37

I had to find a way to

4:39

protect my career. The

4:41

stakes were too high for me to finish

4:43

school without having a job lined up. Then

4:47

I remembered the advice I'd been given

4:50

countless times. Go

4:52

network. Build relationships.

4:55

After all, it's all about who you know, not what

4:57

you know. They

4:59

were right. Education wasn't

5:01

the highway of opportunity. It was

5:04

merely an on-ramp. The highway

5:06

of opportunity was social capital, your

5:09

network, the people you know,

5:11

and more importantly, the people who know you.

5:13

I was determined.

5:15

I set off to build a network

5:17

that would guarantee my success. I

5:20

spent as much time as I could building

5:22

relationships with people who could hire me when

5:25

I graduated. The process worked.

5:29

But it didn't feel right. I was

5:31

having the right conversations. I was meeting

5:33

the right people. Internship and

5:36

job opportunities began to open up.

5:39

But networking and building relationships

5:42

began to feel gross. I

5:46

was approaching people as a transactional

5:48

consumer, not as

5:50

a relational investor. My

5:53

driving question was focused on what can I

5:55

get from this person? How can

5:58

they help me? I

6:00

was asking the wrong questions. Networking

6:03

was a necessary evil. It

6:06

felt gross. Then

6:09

one day the tables were turned. I

6:12

saw a childhood acquaintance at a coffee shop. We

6:15

started a conversation. He

6:17

then spent the entire time trying to convince

6:19

me to join the multilevel marketing scheme

6:21

that he was a part of. You

6:26

see, the more people he signed

6:28

up underneath him, the more money he would

6:30

make. But that's not all.

6:33

He'd help me build an empire as well. In

6:35

fact, I could make so much money I would

6:38

never need to work again. I

6:40

could give to my parents for all that they had given to me. And

6:43

all by simply helping people change their spending

6:45

habits and just begin to buy products from

6:48

us. Products that they

6:50

were already gonna buy on their own

6:52

anyways. It

6:55

was at that moment that I began to

6:57

realize if networking ever

6:59

feels gross, you're doing it

7:01

wrong. It

7:05

turns out that social scientists

7:07

had studied what I've experienced. In

7:10

2014, researchers from the University

7:12

of Toronto, Harvard and

7:15

Northeastern teamed up to investigate

7:17

the impact of building social

7:19

capital on people's sense

7:21

of morality. What they

7:24

discovered across their work was that when

7:26

people built relationships for selfish pursuits, it

7:30

left them feeling psychologically dirty and

7:33

even morally stained. Decades

7:36

of research confirms the common

7:38

advice about networking. Building

7:41

social capital leads to a host of positive

7:43

outcomes. Job performance, salary

7:46

levels, employability, and

7:48

so much more. If

7:50

you want to build your career or

7:53

your business, then networking

7:56

is a good strategy. But

7:58

here's the dilemma. When

8:00

people built relationships for selfish

8:03

gain, it left them

8:05

feeling dirty. And when they

8:07

felt dirty, they are even less

8:09

likely to engage with those people

8:11

and to build those relationships, even

8:15

though that might be exactly what they needed

8:17

for their success in their careers. There's

8:21

a reason that I felt gross when

8:24

I was approaching people as a

8:26

transactional consumer instead of as

8:28

a relational investor. How

8:31

do you do relationships in a way

8:33

that you don't feel like you need to

8:35

rinse off after every coffee meeting? I

8:38

began to ask a different question. Instead

8:41

of, what can I get from this person, I

8:44

began to ask, what can I give to

8:46

this person? Everything

8:48

changed. I discovered

8:51

generous relational investors who introduced me to

8:53

a different paradigm, a new way of

8:55

doing relationships. Jeff,

8:57

a business leader in Seattle, was one of them. If

9:00

you ever sit with him for coffee,

9:03

you quickly realize his goal is to

9:05

understand how he can serve you, not

9:07

how you can serve him. This

9:10

new mindset moved me from being

9:12

a greedy transactional consumer to

9:15

being a generous relational investor.

9:19

Relational investors leave people better than they found them. The

9:22

goal isn't giving to gain or

9:25

even about paying it forward so that positive

9:27

things circle back around for you one day.

9:32

Relational investors give out of the overflow of who

9:34

they are and what they've already been given. They

9:38

bring generosity beyond reciprocity.

9:42

They ask a different question. Instead

9:44

of, what can I get from this person, they

9:47

ask, what can I give to

9:49

this person? It

9:51

represents a mindset shift from

9:54

fixating on pathology to

9:56

focusing on potential. One

10:00

default is pathology.

10:03

Pathology is all about the barriers, the

10:06

obstacles, the brokenness, the

10:08

things that are going wrong. My

10:11

PhD is in industrial and

10:13

organizational psychology. For

10:15

decades, psychology and

10:18

many other human-centered disciplines

10:21

have focused on pathology. What's

10:23

broken? How do we fix it? Over

10:27

the last 30 years, there's been a revolution

10:29

that's pushed against pathology though and begun

10:32

to look for potential. What's

10:34

working? What's going well? How

10:37

do we make things even better? It's

10:41

a shift from scarcity to abundance, and

10:44

it starts with the assumption that there

10:46

is possibility and there is potential to

10:49

be realized. Both

10:52

are important. We have

10:54

to pay attention to barriers and limitations,

10:56

but we also need to recognize possibility

10:59

and potential. But

11:02

our baseline is

11:05

self-preservation. Protect

11:08

my career. Position myself

11:10

for success. When

11:12

I became free from the fear of

11:15

finding a job, I was

11:17

able to move from protecting my pathology to

11:20

looking for potential. As

11:23

the old saying goes, it's even

11:25

better to give than it is to receive.

11:30

And you don't have to be wealthy to

11:33

be a relational investor. I

11:35

was a poor student. I

11:37

discovered that generous relational investors give their

11:39

time, their treasure, and

11:42

their talent. Generosity

11:45

looks different in different seasons of life. It

11:48

could be as simple as the gift

11:50

of your undivided attention the

11:52

next time you're meeting with somebody. Or

11:55

maybe it's a heartfelt thank you note, letting

11:58

someone know you've appreciated how the they

12:00

have invested in you. Perhaps

12:03

it's a timely introduction. You've

12:06

built a relationship with somebody, and

12:08

you know somebody else would be mutually beneficial for them

12:10

to meet. So you make that connection. Generosity

12:14

could even look like helping a coworker

12:16

who's behind on a deadline, taking

12:19

a little extra time to help them get

12:21

caught up. It

12:23

could even be as simple as the

12:25

offer to review someone's resume for them. The

12:29

possibilities for generosity are only

12:31

limited by your imagination. Because

12:35

people aren't a process. People

12:38

are the purpose. And business

12:40

is all about people. It's

12:42

not about extracting value or

12:45

leveraging relationships. It's about

12:47

building meaningful, generous, and

12:49

mutually beneficial relationships, looking

12:52

for ways to serve other people, even

12:54

if they are the ones who are helping you. You

12:58

might not get anything back right away, or

13:01

even at all. But there's

13:04

still value in the relationship.

13:07

Because every person has

13:09

inherited dignity, value, and worth,

13:12

regardless of the outcome. Years

13:17

after my conversation with Peter in the

13:19

library, I found myself working in

13:21

a university, helping lead a

13:24

graduate business program. I

13:26

was meeting with a prospective student to learn

13:28

about his goals. He

13:31

was a great candidate. I really wanted

13:33

him in our program. But

13:36

over the course of the conversation, I began

13:38

to realize what he was looking

13:40

for wasn't quite what I had to

13:42

offer. Reluctantly,

13:45

I pointed him in a different direction. A

13:49

year later, I had another similar conversation with

13:51

a young woman who was also exploring our

13:54

program. She was

13:56

incredible. Her goals aligned with our

13:58

training, and she became one of our best friends. best

14:00

students. But

14:02

it wasn't until after she started when I discovered

14:05

she had found out about our program

14:08

from the young man I'd met over

14:10

a year before. He had

14:12

told her if she met with me, I

14:14

put her interests first. And

14:17

that if she wasn't the right fit, I'd

14:20

point her in the right direction. Focusing

14:24

on the interests of other people

14:26

can absolutely pay off for

14:28

the long term. But

14:31

that's not the point. There

14:34

is nothing more rewarding than giving

14:36

to other people. My

14:40

parents, they impressed the value of education

14:43

on me. But they also

14:45

demonstrated the value of generosity. They

14:49

have been avid suburban gardeners

14:52

for over 40 years. They

14:54

started composting in Seattle before

14:57

composting was the thing to do. Every

15:00

year I have watched them till the

15:02

ground, fertilize, prepare and

15:04

plant seeds, water them and

15:06

care for their garden with

15:08

great intent. They

15:11

do such an excellent job that every

15:13

year they harvest so much

15:16

produce, there's absolutely no

15:18

way they can possibly consume it all

15:20

themselves. They

15:22

have so much that it will

15:24

go to spoil, it will go to

15:26

waste. So

15:28

what do they do? Instead

15:30

of letting it go to spoil, they

15:33

spoil their friends. They

15:35

take all the excess, they put it

15:37

in bags and baskets, and they generously

15:40

share it with all of their friends

15:42

and neighbors. Most

15:44

years, they even take their extra

15:46

seeds to help friends start

15:49

their own gardens for the following

15:51

year. Looking

15:54

back, I realized my parents didn't

15:56

garden just for themselves. Don't

15:59

get me wrong. in

20:00

the net. That's

20:03

it for today. TED Business is

20:05

part of the TED Audio Collective. This

20:08

episode was produced by Hannah Kingsley Ma,

20:10

edited by Alejandra Salazar, and

20:13

fact-checked by Julia Dickerson.

20:15

Special thanks to Maria Logis,

20:18

Farrah DeGrange, Daniela Balorrizo,

20:20

and Roxanne Heilash. I'm

20:23

Madupa Agonola, thanks for listening. you