Shaping a Winning Team

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to Career Cast at Chicago Booth to help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Paul Fayad. Paul wrote, co-authored an amazing book, Shaping Winning Teams. You kind of changed my life with the book. He's the co-founder of Positive Leader and Elm Learning. He has focused on organizational behavior through more than four decades of founding and holding executive positions with numerous organizations.

Fayad has consulted with corporations, school systems and healthcare facilities to establish programs based on positive leadership skills. He has lectured at universities and colleges and business schools in the United States, Canada, and Hong, Kong. And Paul, I love this that you also give back. He has also co-founded and stayed active with foundations across the world that help children.

Well, Paul, thank you so much and I looked up the meaning of your last name because I wanted to pronounce it correctly. The meaning of your last name are so aligned and you know this, but our audience may not know this. Fayad means overflowing with generosity. Even your being on this call today is in my opinion, an act of generosity.

Paul Fayad: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm really pleased to be here.

Anita Brick: l say that it's some really good questions and some tricky situations, and maybe in the course of our conversation you can weave in rowers, sitters and drillers because that plays such an important role in how we operate and how we lead. So here's the first question from an MBA student, "I'm a first-time manager and I believe I'm a positive leader, hopefully a full-fledged rower. That said, I have a highly skilled member of my team who is a driller and who will voice her opinion of why things won't work. She does this in meetings with our senior leadership team. When you work with clients, what have you seen as an effective solution to having someone who is talented and yet very disruptive?"

Paul Fayad: That's the number one question. I did a lot of work consulting with hospitals and healthcare at the very beginning of my positive leader and when I had my old company, which was a support services company for healthcare facilities. So it's always like the clinical nurse or the doctor who are very highly skilled, but very low emotional intelligence produces more driller-like behaviors than rower-type behaviors. Problem is this and it is a problem. The problem is you can't change them. That is the root of who they are.

Anita Brick: You mean the drillers or the rowers?

Paul Fayad: Can't change anybody. Even modified behaviors is so difficult to do as we've seen through science. You can't change people. It's the bottom line. What ends up happening is these drillers who are highly skilled, and I'm assuming that they're referring to this other person as a highly skilled driller because they tend to be negative, is a person that will always do what they do and no matter what you do, they will not change. Now, if you address them, they will become more aggressive. Problem is you almost have to ignore them more so than address them or challenge them because they want the challenge. That's where the energy goes. The energy goes in a negative. When you challenge somebody who's negative, you are feeding into their desire to have more negative energy. So you either ignore them completely, try to formulate conversations around them and hope that they either leave or they get terminated.

Anita Brick: Well, that sounds like there's a lot out of our control. Are you really saying that when someone is a driller who is negative, complains, bullies, is it possible to control that or do you need to figure out a way to get rid of them, which is, I said commentary, but it seems like there's really not another path out.

Paul Fayad: The answer is this, how much energy do you want to spend on a driller who's not going to change when you have rowers and sitters out there that want to excel, want the attention, can provide positive feedback. How do we divide our time as managers? If we look at the old style, we think that if we focus our attention on the drillers that we can change them and then productivity goes up. But it's the opposite. When we focus our attention on the drillers, one, they don't change because people don't change.

So now I've wasted all this time and I've got this opportunity loss that I could have been working on my rowers to improve their skill levels or my sitters to become rowers. I have to sit and I have to look at the team and I have to say, I have got this person. Any energy that I put towards this person is energy that I don't put to where it actually will produce a positive outcome. The answer is they got to go. And I tell people this straight up when I consult with them, if there is no opportunity for change and if I have to put a tremendous amount of energy, then they have to go.

Anita Brick: Okay, so let's unpack a few things. So rowers are those people who lead and advance and they have a practical but positive outlook. Sitters are the people who it's been done this way before, let's just keep doing it, and they're very malleable. They'll rise to become more positive and moving things forward. Or if the drillers who are the people who literally are there to drill holes in the boat so that it sinks. Like you said, not only is it not going to change the driller to give them attention, it could also, for lack of a better word, corrupt or influence the sitters to become drillers, and now you have this really untenable situation. Then in practical terms, in a company, it can take a long time to get someone to leave. What do you do in the meantime? So say it takes three months or six months to actually get them out, how do you manage the team to still win if they're there.

Paul Fayad: Oh, it's a beautiful question, and by the way, your definition of rower, sitter, drillers is excellent. I deeply appreciate it because sometimes it takes me too long to explain it all because I want to get into too much detail, but that was a very good explanation. So I would say first of all, when we focus our attention on the drillers in any way whatsoever, we're wasting our time.

Second of all, don't cut them any breaks. In other words, to the fullest extent of the permissible write-up or whatever the case you would call it, critical conversations that you have within your organization, they get no breaks. They do something that goes against the organization, you write them up. You follow the format as closely as possible because you want to move them out as soon as you can. In the meantime, you're not focusing your attention there because now you know. I hate to say this, but somewhat ignore them and don't kowtow or start the arguments or allow them to take over meetings or do anything that allows them to have any attention whatsoever. By doing that, they will become more disruptive, which will make it easier for you to terminate them.

On the flip side, to increase productivity and to increase the opportunity for things to improve within the organization, focus all your attention on the rovers. So we talk about social learning. These are all research science. When we focus our attention on the drillers, the sitters will drill because they want attention. Even if it's bad attention, they want attention. It's just a natural social issue that we have. If we focus our attention on the rowers, the sitters will row. Sitters are opportunists. They are profit seekers. They don't move from their sitting position unless it is profit to them.

So if they see the profit going to the rower, then they're going to want to be a part of that. Can they sustain the rowing? No. If I'm constantly as a leader focusing on what people are doing right within my rowing, then I'm going to get as much as I can out of those sitters. They're at least not at a drill because they're going to see that I'm also dealing with the drillers.

Where people get frustrated in organizations that are rowers and even sitters is the fact that drillers get away with murder, and mainly because of the fact that maybe they're highly skilled, so suddenly we think, "Well, we got to put up with that clinical nurse who's really good at what she does, but she's a pain in the you-know-what to the rest of the team and even to some of the customers." Then everybody gets frustrated. Rowers don't want to be a part of that. They want it to be positive.

Anita Brick: They do. I was having this conversation with a friend who's pretty senior in a global biotechnology company. He was saying that sometimes people who are these negative drillers either are in extremely senior positions where they have a lot of power and influence and/or are bullies. I think that sometimes it is too scary to deal with them because they tend to make the world look like it's your fault and they're going to get you.

But let's shift for a second. This is an interesting question. This also happens to be from another Booth student. It says, "Hi Paul. There is a clear rower who heads our team and she's terrific. That said, multiple senior leaders tend to squash her ideas and proposals. I believe it's a combination of risk aversion and jealousy. How can I as a non-executive help support her, which I believe can help her, the team and beyond, and I would say based on what you say in the book that if they don't take care of this rower, the rower's going to leave. How do you make sure that the rower gets enough time, attention and development?"

Paul Fayad: Well, it's got to come from above. Obviously, support from staff members is beautiful too. The recognition of people that report to her in her position is always great. You go home feeling good, they go home feeling good. There's a lot of positive chemicals that enter the brain when we hear gratitude and compassion. Those are huge things, instilling meaning. Those are all very, very important to people, whether it's coming from above or below. The problem is if above this rower, there are people that do not appreciate her or do not appreciate what it is that this person is accomplishing, don't see it, don't provide gratitude, she will leave. She won't have a choice.

Rowers are interesting and there's a very small population of them. They're very interesting people. They will not stay. They'll pick up and they'll leave and they'll go somewhere else where they're appreciated. They're not sitters. They want to create, they need gratitude, they need reinforcement. They enjoy it, they love it, and they don't need it in order to produce outcomes. They need it to justify the fact that they're working so hard. They're going to produce the outcomes with or without gratitude, but gratitude is so vital.

As leaders, we should be looking to do that as often as possible to these rowers. That person's going to leave, and unfortunately the person below her or the reporting position has recognized this and sees this and is worried obviously with the question, "Oh my God, if she leaves, then who's going to be my next boss?" But there's nothing they could do about it because they don't have any power or capacity to make change. Providing gratitude, great. Just do that part.

Anita Brick: Well, it sounds like we've put ourselves in a box here because you can't control the drillers. If you have leadership that doesn't recognize the rowers, it sounds like the company is going to decline and potentially pretty rapidly.

Paul Fayad: Take a look at all the companies out there, how many of them are successful and sustainable for long periods of time? This concept that drillers make change happen. A person can be completely obnoxious or rude, and that's a can-do type person. Kindness is considered to be a weakness, and that's where we're wrong. Kindness is actually the greatest strength that there is because kindness means that I'm vulnerable, that I could say with gratitude "I appreciate the work that you do."

Whereas leaders that are drillers are people that say, "I shouldn't have to say that. You should be doing it on your own." They don't understand how the brain works and they don't understand the chemicals that are emitted from the brain, and the minute that they start to understand those things, if they have the capacity to understand it, then they would change their ways, but they don't and they won't and those businesses will fail.

Anita Brick: All right, so here I am, I am a student, I'm an alum, I'm a friend of Chicago Booth. I want you to help me figure out how to identify a company where at least their current leadership, are people who are these positive, driven, highly outcome oriented, but basing it on gratitude and kindness. How do you even find a company like that?

Paul Fayad: You really, really, really have to do your research and you can't be desperate.

Anita Brick: No, I mean, okay, so let's get practical. Not to interrupt you, but let's get practical. What are the three things I should be doing as part of my research, my due diligence to make sure I'm on the right track?

Paul Fayad: Social media helps. It does help in some ways. It's not always the best way to go. Through social media, we get feedback. Organizations are posted on LinkedIn. Sometimes they're posted in Instagram, sometimes in TikTok, nowadays they could be in a lot of platforms. Glassdoor is another one. Indeed. All of those different areas are areas where you just got to do a lot of research. That's number one. Find out what the success of the company is. Financially, are they capable of moving forward? Obviously, companies that are struggling financially tend to have leaders that turn out to be leaders that are cut type leaders. They're designed to put the company back on its feet again, so they're not overly concerned with how to do it properly for the long term. So you've got to find all that out.

The other way is find somebody who works at that company, an existing employee. There's got to be somebody that you know or somebody who's attached to that company that you know is familiar with how leadership does things, look for their mission, vision, and values. Sometimes those can be phony on the website. They just post them there or they posted their DEI and they're really not a DEI organization. You have to look at as many things as possible.

Then when you get to the interview process, is it organized? Are they asking you the right questions? Do you have a series of questions that you want to ask them about the organization, which can dig deeper? People show up at a interview process with the understanding that they're the ones being interviewed, when you should be interviewing the company itself. So have your questions prepared from your research, from the background, from the data, from everything that you've collected. Try to find people that are there that can kind of tell you what the mood is. You can make those decisions as you move along. Now, is it a hundred percent accurate? Not until you get there, but then you're going to see things very rapidly once you enter the workplace.

Anita Brick: Would you also speak to someone who left the company?

Paul Fayad: Yeah, I'd be very, very careful about that because confirmation bias, when a person leaves the company, they are very biased. No matter if it's positive, negative or whatever the case may be, more than likely you're going to get a bias answer. You can't depend on that. What if the person that was terminated was a driller? You get what I'm saying? Now that person's going to rip the company apart, but if people are terminated for any reason or laid off for any reason, there's going to be bitterness. When somebody asks them why they left, they will have a confirmation bias as to this is the reason why I left, and here's proof for that, and they'll provide everything that's negative in order to support the reasons why they left. I would be really careful with that without question.

Anita Brick: Okay. All right, so here's a situation, interesting because the person is being pretty vulnerable here, so this Boothie said, "Hi, Paul. You talk about being stuck in unproductive patterns because this is the way it's always been done. How do you begin to break the pattern if you are also caught in that pattern?"

Paul Fayad: Oh, man. Yeah. Wow, that's a beautiful question. More than anything else, we have to become more conscious of who we are. You have to kind of dig deep into yourself, this consciousness that you have, who you think you are. One of the things that I spent a lot of time and just published my second book, which is more the personal aspects of rower, sitter, driller, how do we get ourselves stuck in these positions where we think that we're not good enough or somebody has put their thumb on us where we believe them that we're not good enough. You have to move out of that. The only way to do that is self-reflection. We constantly take a look at our self-value. We question ourselves on a constant basis in a positive way. What could I have done differently? What do I need to do?

The brain is set up to where when we are put down or brought up in an environment or part of a toxic environment, we are fear-based in the overrides everything else. When we start to question ourselves as to why do I feel this way, we activate our prefrontal cortex and it provides us with the ability to learn and make decisions. We've got to get out of that loop, and in order to get out of that loop, we have to question ourselves, what is my value? Why do I think my value is less than anyone else, and how do I make it so that I could see the value? Change the people you're with, that you hang out with, and look for other people that could be good mentors or rowers that you could be a part of. If I want to change my own perspective, I have to change what's in front of me, the view of who I am and the view of all those people that are around me.

Anita Brick: Well, we do become very much so the people we hang out with.

Paul Fayad: Yes.

Anita Brick: Changing that can be very difficult because no one wants to be rejected, and if we move away from someone, that in itself can be scary, especially if they're that negative driller who's going to attack you. I remember having a conversation with a friend who I've known for a long time, and she actually happens to also be a therapist, so she comes from an interesting combination of perspectives. And she was saying, if you're with people that don't treat you well, if you're with people who you tend to fold into their negativity, it doesn't mean you can't like them as individuals, but you can light them at a safe distance. It doesn't have to be up close and personal. For me, a little bit enlightening. I had never thought about it that way, that it's not either or.

Paul Fayad: No, it's beautiful. You establish what are called strong boundaries. I did some workshops recently on dealing with drillers and establishing strong boundaries. It could be your mom, it could be your dad, it could be somebody who is very close to you, but you didn't see it and now suddenly you see it and you're thinking, how do I get this person out of my life? Depending on how serious it is, to the point where it could become damaging, you may have to walk away completely,=.

But look, we are only on this planet for a short period of time. My point that I'm trying to make is we're supposed to make the best of who we are and what we can. We can create a better person, but is it going to take work? Is it going to take sacrifice? Does it take setting up strong boundaries? Yes, absolutely. Either that or you will be stuck doing what you're doing, marching to other people's beats. You're not going to live a satisfied life what leads to anxiety, high cortisone levels, all kinds of heart issues. It's time for people to take control and say, "I've got to do this for my self health."

Anita Brick: I get that. I understand that, but I'm sure there's someone listening who says, "Paul doesn't realize I can't leave my job right now. I have a family to support." Maybe I'm on a visa. How do you advise someone to set those boundaries if they can't leave right away, even if the plan is to exit?

Paul Fayad: You have an exit plan. If it's five years, 10 years, whatever the case may be, suddenly I've got a couple of babies and I'm working on a visa, whatever the case may be, I get it a hundred percent. Don't think I haven't been there. Don't think my background was an easy background. It wasn't. But I had to establish a plan. I had to have something in my future and I had to have short-term plans. Do I save my money as much as I can?

The problem is that we get stuck in positions, but we don't get stuck in positions because we can't find another job. We get stuck in positions because we get out of control with our financials. That I have money saved and not have to be so stressed out. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I need to be able to do something else. How do I get there? So finance, huge.

Anita Brick: You're absolutely right, and a plan isn't a one and done thing. The plan needs to be reviewed and updated periodically because things change. But what if you're on a team right now you're with someone who is, let's just say it, toxic, maybe compromising your sense of confidence or something related to that. How do you set a boundary if you're working side by side with someone who you would not choose to work side by side for, but that's just how it is right now.

Paul Fayad: Let me tell you, I've lived it. I've done it. At that moment in time, you have to just put your head down, and you have to do what is necessary for you to do. You have to protect yourself because they will use you. What ends up happening is when we work alongside drillers, those of us who are kind and those of us who are rowing are naive and we think to ourselves, "This person could be a good person. Maybe I'm reading it wrong. Maybe they had a tough childhood." We're more than willing when we have a certain personality type to give ourselves up and to let other people be more important than us. Now you're working alongside a driller. You're kind of stuck in your position, let's say. You cannot transfer to another department, so this is your existing reality. In that case, you got to be careful what you share with that person. You have to be extremely careful about what you provide because what ends up happening is most people want to make them our friends. Maybe I can change them. Maybe I'm misreading the situation. Maybe they're really good people.

And we'll convince ourselves of that, and by that we open ourselves up to be hurt even more, to be damaged even more. You got to work alongside of them and there's nothing you could do about it. Don't share. Don't provide personal information. Don't go out drinking with them. Just leave it to work. Put your head down, get your job done, and know that they will take advantage of you and hurt you whenever chance they can.

So strong boundaries are stay away as much as possible. Be polite at work without question. Be cooperative when it comes to getting things done, but know that they are out to get you. I'm saying it as clear as a bell because nobody wants to listen to me and they're going to get hurt. Anita Brick:

I get it. I remember in the book you'd given a program and you had a one-on-one conversation who had been trying to, I'll use the word trying very specifically, but trying to change or elevate someone who would fall into that negative, complainer, driller personality. Nothing changed and she felt cheated because she had invested all that time and it didn't yield anything, and it sounds like she's the epitome of what you don't want to happen.

Paul Fayad: The one part about human nature is we want to share, we really, really need our relationships. We value relationships more than anything else in the world, and our success is based on those relationships. So we're willing to give ourselves up in order for a relationship to be good, and that's wrong. That is absolutely 100% wrong. So when we look at this and we say, "Okay, what is this relationship with this driller I have at work?" Don't let it be anything else but work. Don't think you're going to change them. Don't think that you understand them better. Don't think that you have this capacity to be able to modify somebody who's at that point. You're setting yourself up to be hurt, and then in the end you are going to blame yourself anyways. You're going to say, "Maybe I misread the whole thing." Just stay away.

Anita Brick: All right, so how do you know the difference between someone who is hardcore negative driller and someone who's just going through a bad time, maybe doing a little blaming and complaining. It's not their personality and it's not going to last.

Paul Fayad: So I get it. I, know, these are really good questions. I appreciate it. I consider myself to be a rower. I feel grateful that I have a specific personality type. I've had the capacity to be able to modify behaviors from the way that I was brought up to become even a better rower. But there was a point in time in my life when I was faced with the divorce, became very depressed, lost a lot of weight. I would come into the office. Before that, I would walk around and just greet everybody.

I went into every single office as a CEO, I would say good morning every single morning, and I didn't do that. I would just come in, go straight to my office, close the door, I would snap at people. And a person who worked as my assistant in the corporate office came in, closed the door. She looked at me and she said, "You got to get over this Paul, because everybody's nervous. Do you understand that your behavior has been changed a hundred percent and that you need to snap out of this and get back? Whatever you got to do to get it done, please do it because you're affecting the whole office."

Anita Brick: Good for that person. Wow, courageous.

Paul Fayad: She is something else. Very much courageous. But see, she knew she could be courageous with me. She knew that deep down inside that I wasn't a driller. You can't do that to a driller.

Anita Brick: Okay, so she knew that because she had seen other behavior. If that negative behavior has been consistent over time, then it's likely that the person is not just going through a blip. That's how they are. A life event changed you, not for the better. But because at least your assistant and maybe many others had seen that and she had the courage to say, "Look, you've got to get ahold of this, otherwise you're going to lose the people you don't want to lose," and you were able to make that move back. But it really is what is the consistent or the go-to behavior versus a blip because of a negative change?

Paul Fayad: Beautiful. The key is remorse. Point out to a driller. "Wow, that really hurt." Their response is going to be something like, "You know what, I'm really trying to help you for your own good." And that will be consistently what they will say because they're not wrong. They're never wrong, so they never have remorse. When she said that to me, I looked up at her and I said, 'I'm sorry." I spent a year and a half in therapy and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I cleared that stuff out of my brain and I got back in gear again. I said I was sorry because I realized at that moment, wow, I'm affecting all these people. Drillers do not have remorse. They do not say they're sorry. So the minute you get somebody who could justify the way that they treat you or other people, you got a driller.

Anita Brick: Okay, that's really good. And the sorry has to be real. Use our best judgment on as well. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Paul Fayad: I have all the time in the world.

Anita Brick: Okay, great. So this is an interesting one. Many people at Booth and other business schools have individuals who want to go into strategy consulting. And here's a question. "I'm the engagement manager of a global consulting firm. While we were doing very well with our clients and continue to do so, the turnover at the consultant level was greater than we expected or wanted. The stakeholders are reluctant to share their perspectives on this, and it's a really untenable situation. What would you advise someone, especially here where the stakes are very high, create psychological safety as a next step so that people can feel comfortable helping us all solve the problem together?"

Paul Fayad: What I'm saying is right off the bat, you have to look at the entire process. The hiring is number one, if you hire the wrong people, which includes your leadership, then you're going to struggle. So the people that have been put in those positions had to have been hired that end up making those decisions. So if your hiring process is off, then the people that you promote are going to be off. You could end up with drillers in those positions. If people are afraid out of safety to be able to say things in front of other people in order to improve things, that's a telltale sign right there that you've got the wrong person in the position that gets to make the decision as to what could be said or not said. That starts at the beginning of the process.

Anita Brick: Okay. Okay, that's fair.

Paul Fayad: Yeah. I have to always break it down to the very beginning of everything because I don't have all the data when these questions come at me. I have to assume that they don't know how to hire correctly and then they don't know how to train correctly or disseminate or decide or make decisions based on whether a person is capable of being a solid leader, which is another part that has to take place in order for them to be able to allow people below them to provide creative input in a safety way in order to be able to make the company better.

They're literally caught in a loop to where people are leaving, probably blaming the people that leave, the people that are staying are saying there's a reason why people are leaving, but the people above them don't want to know. That's a loop.

Anita Brick: I want us to end on a practical and positive note. What are three things that you would advise someone to do to be able to shape a winning team from both the individual and the team perspective where both can succeed and thrive?

Paul Fayad: I'm going to start with, you got to have a proper hiring process. Think of it this way, if you look at the turnover rate of organizations, that's very vital. One, great hiring process to where you really can discover what needs to take place in order to improve the culture across the board in an organization, bring in the right people.

Anita Brick: Before we go to number two, I think there's a responsibility for the person who's the candidate as well.

Paul Fayad: A hundred percent.

Anita Brick: The candidate sometimes interviews out of fear and understand that. And at the same token, the candidate needs to assume responsibility as well to make sure that that person wants to be hired by that organization. Just saying. Okay, so number two,

Paul Fayad: All right, number two, constant communication. Constant communication of the vision, the direction of the organization, short-term and long term. What are we in business for? How do we communicate that to all the masses down the board, instilling meaning in everyone's job as to what it is that they do. Have the right managers at every level. Be able to provide for their level, what exactly it is that they're job that they're doing is so important. That's always in front of them. Your job is important for the success of the vision and the direction of this company, has to be communicated at all levels, and it's the responsibility of the CEO to make sure that they are visible and available to everybody within the organization. They cannot hide in their office.

Anita Brick: I agree.

Paul Fayad: So that's number two.

Anita Brick: I agree. And I also think if you are an employee at whatever level you're at, you need to take some responsibility for how you interact with others in the realm where you do have some level of control because it's not just top down as the person who maybe asked that question. They also need to take responsibility to make their environment better as well. Like you said, you may not be able to impact executive leadership, but you can at least show compassion and empathy and gratitude for the person who is your manager.

Paul Fayad: Wow. So it's like a matrix without question. It's like the opportunity for other departments to also witness and be a part of the success of those departments across the board at all levels, backwards, forwards, up, down, left and right. Everybody's communicating with each other. So communication is so important.

So the third thing is everything on a constant basis should be reviewed. In other words, the success of an organization is that we're constantly looking at is there a better way to do this? And that means that we're looking for people at all levels to produce outcomes or changes or creation that will provide a better organization tomorrow. So there has to be accountability, responsibility at all levels, but we have to be willing to listen.

So it's the opportunity for people to feel that they can be vulnerable and say, "You know what? I've been doing this for five years, six months, there's a better way to do this, and if we do it this way, this is what the results can be." When we are grateful for those people and we let other people know that that's happened in a public forum, then other people will start to think, okay, they're willing to listen. We're constantly looking at improvement.

Anita Brick: Anything else, Paul? This is great. Thank you. And thank you for writing the book, the whole concept of rowers, sitters and drillers, especially the drillers, because drillers can be pretty intimidating and you think sometimes it's you. Maybe sometimes it is you, but most of the time when you're dealing with someone like that, it's not. But any other closing words for us?

Paul Fayad: Well, I want it to be positive. I know our brains are built towards a negative. We're more interested in that because it's a survival thing that our brain, prehistoric time. So I get all that. I wanted to be positive. Look, find rowers in your life and thank them. I went back and thanked my uncle. I thanked some mentors, I thanked some coaches, I sent that out to them and it made me feel good about it because I can recognize rowers.

We tend to focus our attention on drillers all the time, and that's for safety reasons. Know that you could be hurt by drillers. Stop thinking that you can help people who are drillers because you yourself will get hurt. Focus on the positive parts of life, positive parts of your job. Look for the rowers to team up with and work with, and you're going to be a lot more satisfied in the long run.

Anita Brick: And happy, I guess, is too.

Paul Fayad: Yeah.

Anita Brick: Paul, thank you for the work you're doing. Thank you for writing the book and thank you for making time for us. I know you're a busy person, so we really appreciate that you gave us a little bit of your wisdom today.

Paul Fayad: Well thank you for the time. I appreciate it and good luck to all of the students over there. I'm hoping that this will help them.

Anita Brick: Agree. And there are a lot of alumni who listen too. So you are speaking to people who are in school today and maybe have been out of school for 40 years, so you are influencing many. And thanks again, Paul.

Paul Fayad: All right, thank you.

Anita Brick: And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with Career Cast at Chicago Booth. Keep it dancing.