Learn New Ways to Learn (and Teach)
with Thought-Leader Sanyin Siang
“Curation is putting two pieces in dialogue with each other. And there’s a dynamism to that.” — Sanyin Siang
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa is joined bySanyin Siang, one of today’s most influential voices on human-centered leadership. Drawing on her work as Executive Director of the Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics at Duke University, Sanyin shares how we can build trust, foster meaningful mentorship, and develop the relational skills we’re rarely taught.
Sanyin works at the intersection of theory and practice. She designs leadership labs for undergraduate and graduate students at Duke and helps organizations build high-performing cultures in moments of uncertainty. Her insights are shaped by patterns she sees across business, engineering, sports, public service, and space exploration—and by her deep belief that leadership starts with how we treat people.
This conversation explores what it really means to learn from others, why curation and connection are core leadership skills, and how mentorship works best when it’s grounded in curiosity rather than checklists.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
How to build mentorship relationships without forcing them
Why curation, deciding who and what belongs together, is a critical leadership skill in an algorithm-driven world
How to be a powerful apprentice, even when no formal mentor is present
How to effectively read a bio so you know what questions to ask
Whether you’re a student, a manager, or a senior leader, this episode offers practical ways to build stronger relationships, take agency over your learning, and lead with greater intention.
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Sanyin Siang: How do you create a sense of agency for your own learning? We can learn from books and from AI, but if you can also know how to learn from people and the context, you can be a master at anything.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today. This season on How We Future, we've been exploring lessons and skills we should have been taught from a young age. Sanyin Siang's work sits at the intersection of leadership, mentorship, and executive coaching. As the executive director of Duke University's Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center, Sanyin spends her days working with students, executives, athletes, and public leaders.
Recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the world's top executive coaches, Sanyin brings a unique combination of practitioner sensibility and academic grounding to very different people at very different stages of life, all grappling with the same question, "How do I lead well?" In this episode, we talk about what helps people grow regardless of their circumstances, from learning how to curate relationships and ideas to treating mentorship as a living relational practice rather than a checklist. We explore why connection, curiosity, and context matter more than ever, and how creating the right conditions for others is a crucial leadership skill.
You might think of this as your own personal coaching session with Sanyin, and if something clicks, leave us a comment or rating to let us know what stayed with you. Let's get into it. Sanyin, thank you so much for joining How We Future. I've been wanting to have this conversation for so long.
Sanyin Siang: Oh, Lisa, thank you so much for having me.
Lisa Kay Solomon: This season, Sanyin, we are really focused on the skills we wish we learned, as you and I are both passionate about supporting leaders in a world that they were not prepared to handle and approaching leaders with great empathy, that they are not masters and cannot be masters at things they've never practiced. Here they are thrust again and again in worlds they're not prepared for. You and I, again, have the benefit of working with multi-generational leaders. We work with students that are leaders to come. We work with seasoned executives.
I'm just so excited to dive into some of your latest work, in particular around mentorship and building relationships and trust. This has been a theme throughout your career, but specifically, I know you just launched a brand new LinkedIn course on mentorship. What a great topic for us to dive into.
Sanyin Siang: Thank you, Lisa. I think maybe we get a little distracted in the world of technology that we forget that it's human first, that human beings can defy odds, human beings can imagine. Look at, as we're talking, Artemis 2 just landed this weekend, and they've gone further than any human beings have gone before. Human beings came up with that. Then the technology is built by human beings.
Lisa Kay Solomon: What I love about that example is that, of course, going to space is not new. It's been around for decades, thanks to JFK's moonshot. Even that was an original, bold vision of what we could do if we worked together. That, of course, took hundreds of thousands of people across different disciplines, and yet the continued opportunity to build on imagination, new narratives in new ways, from something that's been around a long time, it just never ceases to amaze. Then the other thing, maybe, Sanyin, getting into, I know your expertise, really strikes me about these four individuals and the leadership that they modeled, which I also think is so critical in this moment.
Again, I don't know if this is something you've been following closely, but just from the bit that I followed, their sense of care for each other, curiosity, willingness to toggle between the science of what they were doing and the big aspirations, that imaginative pull. I don't know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it.
Sanyin Siang: Yes. Starting off, I've been looking forward to the Artemis launch since two years ago when I became friends with Captain Victor Glover, who's the pilot for Artemis 2. If you were ever to meet Victor, you would sense someone who's not only a extraordinary, brilliant engineer, former Navy pilot, but also someone who's an extraordinary human being. Let's take this moment where this present was someone's future, and to realize that that past future is now present, makes things possible. There's a little two-minute interview I did with Victor where I noticed every time he gives a talk, he would highlight a teacher or someone who's made an impact on him in his past.
The question I posed to him was, "You're about to go beyond the limits of any human being before. What are the key things?" He said, "You have to know your history, that whatever we're doing, as hard as it has been, we've been here before. Then your habits, so that's the preparation. Then your homies, who are your friends." He's like, "History, habits, and homies." As I think about that, I want to connect that back to, right now, we're imagining the future. There's a whole variety of possible futures, but we are present with someone else's or a group of people's futures before.
I think about what are the fundamentals, the non-negotiables when it comes to leading the future, to the future. Leadership, as we have talked about, Lisa, we follow leaders because we believe they can take us to a better trajectory than we currently are on now. Those are the care that you start off this conversation with, the understanding that none of us can do it alone, that we need teams, that we need each other, that we need a diversity of perspectives. Then, in this new world where speed and change are faster than ever, I think about curation, which is a skill set we haven't really taught each other.
Not only about museum curation, but how do you curate people, which requires understanding of their stories and how they fit into the context. Curation, connection, and this ability to connect in a fragmented and seemingly disconnected world, is going to be a skill that will be more vital than ever. Contextualization, we talk about credibility and trust in leadership, those are fundamentals, but understanding the context in which you are operating. As you move from context to context, each person has their own set of context. Every time a new team member comes in, the context changes.
Contextualization, I also believe so much in this, which is why I became a biomedical engineer in college, is cross-pollination across different disciplines and different ideas. It's also messy, but a willingness to sit in the messiness of it all, because that's where the unexpected discoveries come.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I love that. You're reminding me, years ago, I flirted with the idea of writing a new book called The New C-Suite. Instead of redefining chief executive officer, chief operating officer, all the Cs that we talk about, the most senior leadership, but exactly what you're talking about, the C-Suite of leadership qualities.
Sanyin Siang: Oh.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Just like you were talking about, curation, connection, and one that I know you're really passionate about, which is curiosity.
Sanyin Siang: Oh, yes.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Of course. I want to dive into a couple of those because you're right, we don't teach curation, which is really about discerning where do you put your energy, who do you invest in, how do you think about bringing things together in different combinations, how do you foster energy towards them. Yet, in this world where so much of the curation is happening to us with algorithms, it's something that we need to even be more aware of. Another point that you make, which I so believe in, and exactly the point you're saying, that in many ways, we are living in somebody else's future.
The work that we're trying to do now is to help, particularly our young people, but all leaders, realize they don't have to outsource their future. That the choices that they make today, whether it's in the kind of relationships they build, as you're saying, in the conditions they create that foster belonging and trust, that that is an act of agency to create somebody else's new future, the way that you model. I just want to go back to how extraordinary it must have been to have that conversation with the captain going up in that mission. I had never heard that before. I love that, history, habits, and homies.
Sanyin Siang: I want to go back to something that you said earlier, this idea of curation. I really honed in on that word because, as we know, we both love creating gatherings, but how we put these gatherings together, creativity comes from constraints, the right type of constraints, which is something that you, in your design thinking, also talk a lot about. For me, the constraints are around the values, the virtues. Curiosity is a virtue, integrity, humility. You have the right type of constraints, and it's around the human values, then you can have a seemingly disconnected, at first glance, like, why are these people together in the same room in dialogue with each other?
It's because of the things that you don't see that are intangible. They look at the bio, and they're like, "No way these two people should talk." Throughout history, the unlikely friendships that have driven a lot of history, we can look back. I can go into that because I was really excited about that when I was visiting Seville. When I was in DC visiting the Asian Art Museum, they have a Whistler Room. In that art museum, Whistler Room, they had a painting by Whistler, and then a piece from 1,000 years ago, Greece, pottery. What was so fascinating as I was reading the description is, oh, curation is putting these two pieces in dialogue with each other.
There's a dynamism to that. Individually, each piece stands on their own, but in dialogue, that pairing expands your mind. The curator did that intentionally. The dynamism, when I think about AI, what AI has done very well is given us fixed things because it's based on probability. It's like, here's a fixed answer. You go ask, probe it. With human beings, when we're in dialogue with human beings, because there's the "Oh, I don't know the answer to that, I haven't encountered it," then that dialogue is actually what creates the imaginative possibilities we haven't thought about before that can lead to really cool futures.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I have seen you do that again and again. I think, maybe let's get super concrete. How do you think about that? You have a topic that you're curious about, something that you want to foster. How do you literally go about thinking about who should be in this call? How should the question be framed? How do we think about creating those conditions for connection? Again, in the spirit of things we're not taught, I'm just amazed we don't teach how to facilitate, we don't teach about that contextual intelligence that happens when you bring different people. I'd love to hear, because you're such a master at it, what are some things that go through your mind?
Sanyin Siang: Oh, Lisa, thank you. You're very kind. It's one of the things I love doing the most. Every year, we have a theme that we just explore deeper. Really, at the end of the day, the content is a vehicle for connection. We have a annual summit, and then we also have these curated gatherings through Zoom calls. If we look at the outcome as connection, if you connect great people together and can foster that emotional resonance with each other, then I will trust they may come up and create something. It may not be until 10 years from now, but I'm going to trust that.
At the same time, we're also getting really, really good insights into a particular topic. I think about efficiency as through one action, we can hit multiple objectives. One objective is connection. One, it just starts off with, I think, suspension of judgment. Not coming in with a particular idea, but just having a series of conversations, and you're listening for words, and you're listening for things that will give you a jolt. You're not trying to direct the conversation a certain way. You're like, "I think this is a thesis. Let's just test it out." If you suspend judgment, and you enable the other person to really play out their thoughts and not make assumptions about what you think they mean, but actually say, "Oh, okay, you said upholding human dignity is so important," even though you completely agree, you dive in, and you say, "What do you mean by that?"
Then they will give you a fabulous example that will make you think about something differently. It becomes a richer conversation for everyone. Your job is not trying to prove how smart you are. Your job is to understand the conditions and the emotional connectivity, and also the tone. Whoever you call on first, that will set the tone for the entire conversation. You already know their backstories. If you call on someone who's, say, finance-oriented, and they're very methodical, I guarantee every single answer after that will have that feel. You call on someone who's talking about drawing on parenting and families, then every single answer after that would be more warm fuzzy. It's an awareness of that. That's also part of the context.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I love going under the hood a little bit. Just to clarify, this is with the Center for Leadership & Ethics at Duke that you run, the Coach K Institute. Already, you're pulling from an incredible source of trust and admiration.
Sanyin Siang: I would say I think that process works across different generations. This year, I have picked up this book called Designing Hope. I read the first chapter. The key theme was we're in a poly crisis moment, and yet all of our futures that we see on media have been apocalyptic. Therefore, we need to actually empower people to think about positive futures. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we do, especially with this generation. Let's go to the college students." I love creating these mini labs. My labs are 3 to 4 sessions, small group of students, 30 to 40.
No credits, no grades, and I just go through it. I remember for the first session, and I have interns that I'm bouncing these ideas off of, the first session was approaching, and I was in a panic. I know there were ideas and takeaways I wanted to share with them, like practical wisdom, which is stop trying to prove how right you are, but instead, what does the moment call for? That's Barry Schwartz's book, Practical Wisdom, because we surely will have disagreements, but that friction is actually what's going to be good if we know how to manage it.
For the first session, I went in. I asked my interns, because they were going to be a part of this, I'm like, "What do you struggle with when you think about futuring?" One of them, Bennett, said, "I think a lot of us are trying to figure out how do we find our people. How do we go out in the vast world and find people who want to work on the same type of projects, or towards a similar direction? I was like, "Oh, that's good." Then Charlotte, the other intern, I was like, "How do we do that?" She was like, "What if we have post-it notes where they just write down an attribute that they would like to see in a positive future?"
I'm like, "That's brilliant." Then that's how they go find each other in the messy world. The first session happened, and we imagined what they would write would be peace or environment, and then coalesce into groups that work on environment and sustainability, or whatever range of things that the world doesn't lack for help on anything. Again, suspension of judgment. They couldn't stop talking to each other. They want to talk to each other. There was a point I'm like, "Am I adding value to this?" I'm like, "No, but this is what I'm so excited about."
They need to talk to each other. These are across freshmen to seniors. Then the second thing is, as they had their post-its, the post-it notes were, I actually have their name tense here, where they wrote down things like open-mindedness, "I want my future to be unpredictable and open-minded. Exciting." These were the words. I'm like, "Wait, more emphasis on genuine well-being connection rather than only on material growth." I'm reading that verbatim. I was like, "They're writing about virtues?" What they coalesced around were virtues like innovation, happiness, open-mindedness, and purpose. I was like, "Oh, this is so different." I think if we suspend judgment and we listen and observe, we can get a lot more insights from that. It's all through testing and engaging with your audience.
Lisa Kay Solomon: What I love from that example, Sanyin, is first of all that these are principles you can apply to lots of different audiences. Here you are working with students. What I heard particularly in that first one is giving them space for discovery, which I just don't think people have. Discovery about themselves, discovery about their peers, about you're a freshman, you're a senior. Again, so much of the future is being thrown at people with algorithms, with splicing of the attention, with big sweeping statements of opinion that people take as fact, versus, hey, what's going on here?
How do I feel? Let me carve out space. Let me also, as you were saying, set the conditions to learn from someone else to realize, wow, we're aligned here, and what we can do here. Then that second part you were saying about helping them think through the narratives that are being told to them, and how they relate to or how they differ from what they think is possible. Again, it's starting to empower them to be like, "Wait a minute, I don't need to accept that. How else might I think about the future that is more aligned with the clarity of those values, the open-mindedness, or innovation or thriving?"
It's amazing to me, but that just doesn't happen, particularly in a world that is both filled with all these poly crises that you mentioned and speed. What you're asking them to do is slow down, become more present, learn from each other through this dialogue in a trust-based place, so that they can continue to feel what it's like to feel honored and seen for wherever it is that they are.
Sanyin Siang: It's also, I think, in academia there's a tendency to just jump directly to, "Here's the skillsets," but there's not the space for, we've got to be comfortable in the messiness, the discovery, and get to know each other. That's what I love about what you're doing at Stanford, about How We Future. It's all the design thinking. The feeling, oh, I'm so glad you brought feeling because the feelings are part of the emotions are part of the context.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I know. So rarely, I used to think like in business school, there is no, hey, bring emotion to the table. It's always like, no, be serious. I'm like, "No, we're humans. There's a source of data in there as well to learn from." I know that that just underlies all that you do in your programs and your coaching. All right, I want to continue to really now get into where we started about mentorship, which is another form of building connection and discovery. You just launched this fabulous new course on LinkedIn. I don't know any young person that doesn't want a mentor, but they don't always know how to go about it. This is a course that really unpacks the values of mentoring and how mentoring helps both the mentee and the mentor. I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about why you're so passionate about mentoring and what you hope this course can do for people.
Sanyin Siang: For everything that we do, we have to be our first consumers. Whether it's a business we're launching or a project that we're launching, not only is it based on curiosity, but there's an emotional connection to it. My connection to this world of how to be a good mentor is I have been the beneficiary of so many amazing mentors. For those who can see the screen, behind me is just a small sample of mentors and also mentees because I'm part of a continuum. On days when I'm like, "Oh, I'm so mad, I'm frustrated, I just want to quit," I turn around like, "What would you say, Francis?" Then, "What would you say, General Brown?"
I realize I can't quit because they've invested so much in me. Then I also can't quit because I have a responsibility to my beloved mentees, whom I'm also learning quite a bit from. For me, I wanted a different take at mentoring, where instead of the traditional, "Here's the checklist of things that you do," I wanted to connect the idea of how, when you mentor others, it's relational. The act of mentoring, if you're intentional about it, can also be a great personal leader development where you're getting the feedback loop, you're testing out things.
As in parenting, you love your children all the same, but you cannot parent them the same. Mentoring is the same thing. Here's the fundamentals, but you really got to listen to them and listen for different hopes and dreams and fears. One project idea that I'm really excited about as I'm thinking through how to be a good mentor, and I took a lot of the lessons that I learned by being the recipient of mentoring in sharing out this course, and in actually how I mentor, is I realized we may not all have the benefit of great mentors. I think back to Leonardo da Vinci.
He was 21 when he painted the Annunciation, or Michelangelo was 25 when he started on the Sistine Chapel. You think, "I don't think they have enlightened mentors," because back then, it's not like it is now, but what made them masters? They must be great apprenti. I started thinking about the idea of apprenticeship. How do you learn how to be a good apprentice so that regardless of whether mentor is teaching you or not intentionally, you're able to draw and extract beyond the content they're giving you to also the process of how to do things?
Medicine still is where you're watching, but you're extracting because there's nuances, but they're also sharing the cultural norms of what it is like to be in this profession, or more broadly, what is it like to be a good and effective human being contributor for society? I've been diving into how we think about creating a sense of agency for this generation about the future, which is what you and I care so deeply about. It's also how do you create a sense of agency for your own learning because we can learn from books and from AI, but if you can also know how to learn from people and the context, you can be a master at anything.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I think you hit on something that we don't talk enough about, particularly to our young people, which is the power of learning from anybody at any time. You don't have to have a formal mentor relationship to learn from others. Again, it's not really spoken about around how you pay attention to how someone is masterful at what they do. Not so that you can do exactly what they do, but you can learn from their craft, and you could pay attention to how they introduce somebody, for example, or how they conduct an interview, or how they show up with presence, so that you can learn it for yourselves.
I just also want to call out a huge favorite book of mine, and we'll stick this in the show notes. It was from Eric Weiner. He wrote the book The Geography of Genius. I love this book. He, like you, is a just huge discoverer, past histories, great leaders, and he was really curious about what made certain moments in history just exceptional. What made the Renaissance to be the Renaissance, to give birth to the Michelangelos, the Leonardos? What was it about that time that allowed for the flourishing of art, the flourishing of sciences, the flourishing of both at the same time?
Because we know, of course, Leonardo was both a scientist and an artist. What made ancient Athens, Greece, to be the great birthplace of Plato and Socrates, and what made that special? He goes through about 10 different geographies in different moments of time, ending with Silicon Valley. The book is now over 10 years, so I'd be curious to hear what he would say. Ultimately, for the Renaissance chapter, he talks about that they valued apprenticeship, that that is what they valued. You had the model of these wealthy families, the Medicis, bringing in these young artists and really fostering the conditions and the expectations.
Yes, you will mix paint, and you may not be doing the most interesting things, but the benefit of learning from a master is so extraordinary. I think this is a time where we can turn our attention, again, to what makes people great and how you can learn. With the advent of so much information being available all the time, that doesn't make it craft, and that doesn't make it your own style. I think what you're getting at here, and the emphasis that you put on relational learning, is really asking people to dive into the human part of the wisdom transfer. I don't even want to call it skills transfer.
Sanyin Siang: I love that, wisdom transfer. I wanted to go back to something that you said, "As you're watching people, what are you taking away?" I think connecting that to an idea we started off with, which is feelings. For example, when I tell my students, "There's a panel," not only are you taking away the content of what they're saying, but there are some speakers that you're resonating more with. Be aware of what you're feeling, and then reflection is an interrogation of your assumptions and your feelings. Like, why do you feel that way?
Oh, is it because the way that they build on each other's ideas? That's a type of learning that you're in the moment, but if you know what to look out for and what questions, and you're being reflective, that can be super helpful. Then, on apprenticeship, sometimes when you're mixing paint, that sounds so boring. We know, in the world where you have Instagram and YouTube, that everyone seems to be doing only the interesting things, but there's a value in doing that grunt work. I was reading a post about Joan Didion yesterday, and I didn't know that when she was little, she had a typewriter, and she would type out, word for word, Ernest Hemingway's books.
She was trying to inhabit how he thought. This was in high school, and then she won the Vogue National Essay Contest, which is a pretty big deal. I thought about that. I'm like, "Oh, the mind is typing," but she wasn't just typing. It's not just the action. She was processing and reflecting as she was typing, and that's how she learned from Hemingway about how to write. I thought, "Oh, brilliant." Right?
Lisa Kay Solomon: Yes. It reminds me a little bit of an earlier conversation we had with our friend and colleague, Tina Seelig, whose new book about luck is fantastic.
Sanyin Siang: Oh.
Lisa Kay Solomon: She really goes deep into that famous Louis Pasteur quote of chance favors the prepared mind. In many ways, it sounds like she was preparing, like some of that early work was preparing. Also, going back to feeling, what I often say, particularly to my students, is tap into what makes for a great day. It's also one of my favorite interview questions when I'm trying to get at what motivates someone. You can learn a lot when you just say, "Tell me about a great day. What happened?" You're getting ready for bed. You're thinking about the day.
The day was amazing. That idea that there's so much data in the reflection. Again, you could say, "Tell me about a great relationship. What makes for a great relationship?" So often, particularly for young women, you hear, you need a mentor. Then they come after you, like, "Will you be my mentor?" Like that Dr. Seuss book, "Are you my mother?" You know that little duck. "Are you my mentor? Are you my mentor?" That's not the way that mentorship is built. It's built with curiosity, with relational care. I had a chance recently to speak to some women at part of the Stanford Women in Business.
I had to say to them out loud, like, "If the first time you're reaching out to a professor is to ask for a recommendation, it's like, that is way too late. It is way too late. They are just not taught to carve out the time to invest." The other thing which Tina goes into a little bit, and I know you've thought about this a lot, is the fear of imposter syndrome of like, what do I have to offer? If I'm not coming to an office hours with an actual question on my problem set, what are we going to talk about? They don't trust themselves that the curiosity that they bring, that the interest they bring in a professor or in someone that they admire's work is a currency in and of itself.
It's just like they just haven't learned that, in part because some of their foundational time was in COVID, but in part, someone just said, "This is the work. This is the good stuff that will help you be an adaptive learner and leader, and able to take in different perspectives and discover more widely." Yes, would love to hear your thoughts and how you get your students to realize how important that is.
Sanyin Siang: I think it's practice, to start. I had a leadership lab last fall, which was also an experiment. I was reflecting on the things that I see in engagements with leaders that really help move things forward. Like, how do you ask a good question? How do you start a first conversation? This idea of "Would you be my mentor?" when I made that mistake of asking that in my 20s, it just fell flat. I realized all the great mentoring relationships I have started with me asking a question and asking for advice. Like, "Hey, I noticed that you did this, and I was wondering how you think about doing that."
In that asking of that question, I'm helping them reflect, and that is the value, that if people are afraid that they don't bring value, asking a question that makes people reflect is valuable in and of itself. That's how to ask a question. Then the thing that I've gotten feedback on that resonated the most with students is, how do you read a bio? How I read a bio is before the reach out, I would do my research, and I would read the bio. Then I'm not reading for actually what they do. A lot of times, I don't know what the job function is. Maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud, but it's okay.
I'm reading for how they want to be perceived and what they value. In what, a 500-word bio or shorter, you're trying to put out in there a perception about yourself. If there's a bio that has a lot of accolades, you're like, "Oh, they want to talk about their research." By the way, there's different bios for different situations. The majority of my bio starts off with my mission in life is to enable greatness in others. Then the end, it says, "Sanyin lives in Durham with the love of her life, Chad, and their three children." I should really change that from her three children to their three children.
The way to get to me is you start talking to me about kids, and I'm like, "Oh." I said, "People are giving you signals about what they value and how they want to be perceived. Then you craft the question." You just start with, "Hey, I noticed in your bio you said this, how do you think about impact?" That reflective question, and we practiced. I gave them a bunch of bios of people they were going to meet, and then we just practiced that. Then you'll get a feedback loop. You may not get 100% good hit all the time, but so what? You're getting feedback.
Then you just evolve and change. In the aftermath of that, one of the students there who was going to go into medicine said, "I just tried that with an interviewer, and they were like, 'That's a really good question.'" She's like, "I know how to read a bio now."
Lisa Kay Solomon: Oh my gosh. Talk about skills we're not taught. That is genius. I often say when I get the opportunity to speak in front of a group, and the host will say, "How do you want me to talk about you?" I just say, "Please don't read my bio." Say something that is personal, that's connected, that will help the audience want to find a connection." It's just in part because we default. I'm just going to read the bio. I love that, that you can actually learn how to read a bio in a totally new way, talk about an invaluable skill, and then learn how to ask great questions.
You could practice it ahead of time. You're reminding me, Sanyin, you love this. We had John Tanner on How We Future, who is the coach of the Stanford Women's Water Polo team.
Sanyin Siang: Oh, wow.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Over 10 NCAA championships, just tremendous leader in how he coaches these teams. At any given moment, he has four to six Olympians. One of my favorite things he does is he has this favorite faculty dinner where players have to reach out to a professor and invite them to a very special gathering at the Sports Café on campus, where they change it, and they make the menu a little nicer, and all the players dress up.
At some point during the dinner, every player gets up and introduces their guest without notes, without a phone, and it's not a bio read, to your point. It's, "This is my guest, Sanyin Siang, let me tell you about why she's here. She's so extraordinary. Yes, she has over a million followers on LinkedIn, and yes, she has five classes on LinkedIn, and yes, she has a regular column at MIT, which I love, called Ask Sanyin, but that's not why she's here. She is here because of how she shows up for her students, how she's constantly inventing new ways to engage them, how she knows all of their needs."
It goes to the value stuff that you're talking about. People leave there, it's their favorite night of the year. I love that you are creating leadership labs that allow students to create these skills for themselves. I just think it is so, so valuable.
Sanyin Siang: Thank you. Lisa, you do that all the time. There are so many ideas that I'm going to borrow from you, like asking, what makes for a good day? That's brilliant. The thing is with this next generation, you're not aiming for perfection, because perfection, what's perfect now, maybe the context may change. Perfection is changing all the time, the definition. It's the learning and the growth, and what's the risk of the, okay, they botched up the introduction, and so they'll do better next time.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Last year, I had the opportunity of working with the team right after the day after the dinner. Again, this is a team filled with Olympians and all-stars. I said, "What's more nerve-wracking? Getting up and giving the introduction of your guest or playing in the NCAA finals?" Without doubt, they were all like, "Oh my gosh, the introductions are just brutal."
Sanyin Siang: Really?
Lisa Kay Solomon: The other thing that JT, as he's called, that's how John Tanner goes by, they said, "JT does these cold calls." They practice, to your point. She said, "Sometimes they generate tears," because they put so much pressure on themselves, and you have to work through that to get to the other side. The point is not perfection. The point is engagement. The point is appreciation. Even if you stutter or you didn't quite get it right, you're up there trying, and there's so much admiration for it. The way I think about it, particularly with our younger leaders to come, is they need safe places. They need reps. Right?
Sanyin Siang: Yes.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Maybe we don't have time for Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours anymore, but if we can create 3 hours, if we can create 10 hours, that's better than 0 hours when they feel like they're on the hook. Maybe, Sanyin, I could talk to you for hours, but that's a good place to start, which is just gratitude. Thank you for being you and for doing, as I started, all of that heartfelt work, not just the thought leadership work to make our world better.
Sanyin Siang: Thank you, Lisa. If there's something I want to leave the listeners and viewers with, it's this. Delight in each other, and delight in yourself, because this conversation is so much fun. Anytime Lisa asks you to do something, the answer is yes, because you will be better for it, because I delight in you. It's just every conversation with you is joyful and fun, and I walk away learning a lot. I hope that those who are listening can hear the delight Lisa and I have in each other. This is actually what we hope you will have as you go out and engage with other human beings in the world.
Lisa Kay Solomon: Love it. In my conversation with Sanyin, I was reminded that leadership is dependent on the spaces we create for learning, reflection, and emotional connection. If you're looking to create a mentor or mentee relationship, here's a simple place to start. Reach out to someone whose work you admire and ask them one authentic, thoughtful question. Name why you're drawn to them and what you hope to learn, and invite them to tell you what they're curious about, too. Be sure to follow How We Future, leave a rating, and tell us how it went in the comments. You can find more practices like this on the How We Future Substack. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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