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When I was in graduate school,
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there was a student who I looked up to.
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His name was Peter.
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Peter was the type of person
you wanted to be like.
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He was smart, articulate and winsome.
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One day I saw Peter in the library.
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It was his final quarter in our program
and he was about to graduate.
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"Peter, congratulations.
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You must be so excited."
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His response surprised me.
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"I am, but I haven't built
my network like I should have,
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so I don't have any jobs lined up yet."
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His answer terrified me.
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If someone as impressive as Peter
didn't have a job lined up,
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then what was I to do?
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As the son of two immigrants,
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education was the key to success.
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I could not afford
to waste this opportunity.
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I found myself feeling
anxious and fearful.
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I had to find a way to protect my career.
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The stakes were too high
for me to finish school
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without having a job lined up.
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Then I remembered the advice
I'd been given countless times.
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Go network.
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Build relationships.
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After all, it's all about who you know,
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not what you know.
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They were right.
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Education wasn't
the highway of opportunity.
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It was merely an on ramp.
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The highway of opportunity
was social capital.
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Your network,
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the people you know,
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and more importantly,
the people who know you.
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I was determined.
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I set off to build a network
that would guarantee my success.
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I spent as much time as I could
building relationships with people
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who could hire me when I graduated.
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The process worked.
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But it didn't feel right.
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I was having the right conversations,
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I was meeting the right people.
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Internship and job opportunities
began to open up,
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but networking and building relationships
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began to feel gross.
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I was approaching people
as a transactional consumer,
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not as a relational investor.
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My driving question was focused
on what can I get from this person?
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How can they help me?
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I was asking the wrong questions.
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Networking was a necessary evil.
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It felt gross.
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Then one day, the tables were turned.
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I saw a childhood acquaintance
at a coffee shop.
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We started a conversation.
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He then spent the entire time
trying to convince me
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to join the multi-level marketing scheme
that he was a part of.
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(Laughter)
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You see, the more people
he signed up underneath him,
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the more money he would make.
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But that's not all.
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He'd help me build an empire as well.
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In fact, I could make so much money,
I would never need to work again.
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I could give to my parents
for all that they had given to me,
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and all by simply helping people
change their spending habits
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and just begin to buy products from us,
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products that they were already
going to buy on their own anyways.
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It was at that moment
that I began to realize,
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if networking ever feels gross,
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you're doing it wrong.
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It turns out that social scientists
had studied what I've experienced.
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In 2014, researchers
from the University of Toronto,
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Harvard and Northeastern
teamed up to investigate
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the impact of building social capital
on people's sense of morality.
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What they discovered across their work
was that when people built relationships
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for selfish pursuits,
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it left them feeling psychologically dirty
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and even morally stained.
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Decades of research confirms
the common advice about networking.
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Building social capital leads to a host
of positive outcomes: job performance,
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salary levels, employability
and so much more.
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If you want to build
your career or your business,
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then networking is a good strategy.
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But here's the dilemma.
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When people built relationships
for selfish gain,
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it left them feeling dirty.
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And when they felt dirty,
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they were even less likely
to engage with those people
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and to build those relationships.
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Even though that might be
exactly what they needed
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for their success in their careers.
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There's a reason that I felt gross
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when I was approaching people
as a transactional consumer,
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instead of as a relational investor.
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How do you do relationships in a way
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that you don't feel like you need
to rinse off after every coffee meeting?
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I began to ask a different question.
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Instead of "What can I get
from this person?"
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I began to ask, "What can I give
to this person?"
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Everything changed.
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I discovered generous relational investors
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who introduced me to a different paradigm,
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a new way of doing relationships.
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Jeff, a business leader
in Seattle, was one of them.
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If you ever sit with him for coffee,
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you quickly realize his goal
is to understand how he can serve you,
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not how you can serve him.
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This new mindset moved me
from being a greedy,
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transactional consumer
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to being a generous relational investor.
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Relational investors leave people
better than they found them.
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The goal isn’t giving to gain
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or even about paying it forward
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so that positive things circle
back around for you one day.
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Relational investors give
out of the overflow of who they are
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and what they've already been given.
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They bring generosity beyond reciprocity.
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They ask a different question.
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Instead of "What can I get
from this person?"
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They ask, "What can I give
to this person?"
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It represents a mindset shift
from fixating on pathology
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to focusing on potential.
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The human default is pathology.
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Pathology is all about the barriers,
the obstacles, the brokenness,
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the things that are going wrong.
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My PhD is in industrial
and organizational psychology.
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For decades,
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psychology and many other
human-centered disciplines
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have focused on pathology.
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What's broken?
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How do we fix it?
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Over the last 30 years,
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there's been a revolution that's pushed
against pathology, though,
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and begun to look for potential.
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What's working?
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What's going well?
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How do we make things even better?
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It's a shift from scarcity to abundance.
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And it starts with the assumption
that there is possibility,
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and there is potential to be realized.
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Both are important.
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We have to pay attention
to barriers and limitations,
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but we also need to recognize
possibility and potential.
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But our baseline
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is self-preservation.
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Protect my career.
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Position myself for success.
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When I became free
from the fear of finding a job,
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I was able to move
from protecting my pathology
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to looking for potential.
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As the old saying goes,
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it's even better to give
than it is to receive.
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And you don't have to be wealthy
to be a relational investor.
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I was a poor student.
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I discovered that generous
relational investors give their time,
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their treasure and their talent.
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Generosity looks different
in different seasons of life.
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It could be as simple as the gift
of your undivided attention.
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The next time you're meeting
with somebody.
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Or maybe it's a heartfelt thank-you note,
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letting someone know you've appreciated
how they have invested in you.
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Perhaps it's a timely introduction.
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You've built a relationship with somebody
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and you know somebody else who would be
mutually beneficial for them to meet.
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So you make that connection.
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Generosity could even look like helping
a coworker who's behind on a deadline.
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Taking a little extra time
to help them get caught up.
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It could even be as simple as the offer
to review someone's resume for them.
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The possibilities for generosity
are only limited by your imagination.
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Because people aren't a process.
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People are the purpose.
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And business is all about people.
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It's not about extracting value
or leveraging relationships.
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It’s about building meaningful, generous
and mutually beneficial relationships,
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looking for ways to serve other people,
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even if they are the ones
who are helping you.
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You might not get
anything back right away,
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or even at all.
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But there's still value
in the relationship
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because every person has inherent
dignity, value and worth,
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regardless of the outcome.
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Years after my conversation
with Peter in the library,
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I found myself working in a university
helping lead a graduate business program.
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I was meeting with a prospective student
to learn about his goals.
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He was a great candidate
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and I really wanted him in our program.
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But over the course of the conversation,
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I began to realize what he was looking for
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wasn't quite what I had to offer.
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Reluctantly, I pointed him
in a different direction.
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A year later, I had another
similar conversation
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with a young woman
who was also exploring our program.
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She was incredible.
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Her goals aligned with our training
and she became one of our best students.
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But it wasn't until after she started
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when I discovered she had
found out about our program
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from the young man I'd met
over a year before.
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He had told her if she met with me,
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I'd put her interests first.
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And that if she wasn't the right fit,
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I'd point her in the right direction.
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Focusing on the interests of other people
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can absolutely pay off for the long term.
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But that's not the point.
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There is nothing more rewarding
than giving to other people.
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My parents, they impressed
the value of education on me,
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but they also demonstrated
the value of generosity.
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They have been avid suburban gardeners
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for over 40 years.
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They started composting in Seattle
before composting was the thing to do.
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Every year I have watched them
till the ground, fertilize,
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prepare and plant seeds, water them
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and care for their garden
with great intent.
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They do such an excellent job
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that every year, they harvest
so much produce,
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there's absolutely no way they can
possibly consume it all themselves.
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They have so much
that it will go to spoil.
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It will go to waste.
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So what do they do?
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Instead of letting it go to spoil,
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they spoil their friends.
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They take all the excess.
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They put it in bags and baskets,
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and they generously share it
with all of their friends and neighbors.
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Most years,
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they even take their extra seeds
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to help friends start their own gardens
for the following year.
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Looking back, I realize, my parents
didn't garden just for themselves.
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Don't get me wrong,
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they enjoyed the fresh fruit and produce,
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but they had equal, if not greater, joy
in giving to the people around them.
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The relationships in their lives
represented a place for giving,
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not a vehicle for getting.
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They showed me that you can get
more than you give
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by giving more than you get.
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Our networks, our relationships
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are also like a garden.
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If we tend them well, they will grow
and they will produce fruit.
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So much, in fact,
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there's absolutely no way
we can possibly consume it all ourselves.
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Instead of letting
relationships go to waste,
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we can invest in them,
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give to them, serve them,
connect them with each other.
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When we give social capital,
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we don't lose it.
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It doesn't decrease.
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It increases.
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Who knows,
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we might even help someone
start their own garden.
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Becoming a generous
relational investor, it's a lifestyle.
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It's a different paradigm
of relationships.
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So what's your relational posture?
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Are you a greedy, transactional consumer
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or a generous relational investor?
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Are you protecting your pathology
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or pushing for potential?
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It's never too late to begin
to ask a different question
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and to start to look for what can I give,
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not what can I get?
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(Applause)
