Why Community Matters More Than Achievement with Daniel Coyle

**Daniel Coyle** (0:00)
One of the great kind of heists of, I think, the tech world is to steal the word community. A digital community is not actually a community. A community is a complex set of interactions where I'm feeling the presence of someone. You cannot do that through words on a screen. Words on a screen are just words on a screen. Followers are not friends. And I think we're starting to, as a society, learn that distinction.
Really understand that, yes, you can have all the followers in the world, and you're the most lonely person on the block. You can be a super success on a screen and be hollow inside. We're learning that now. We did it 10 years ago. It's taken us a while to learn it. But I think we're learning that that analog piece is how we're built to thrive and flourish.

**Guy Kawasaki** (0:45)
Hello, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we have found another remarkable person.
His name is Dan Coyle, New York Times bestselling author, blah, blah, blah. His books include The Talent Code, The Culture Code, and his latest book is called Flourish.
So today, you're going to learn how to flourish in less than an hour. So basically, he has spent, I want to say decades, but I don't want to date him. He has spent decades inside of organizations like Seal Team Six and the Cleveland Guardians. Basically, Dan is an expert in helping people and companies flourish. So that's what we're discussing today. Welcome, Dan.

**Daniel Coyle** (1:35)
Thanks for having me, Guy. It's such a delight to be here with you.

**Guy Kawasaki** (1:38)
Dan, we're going to go down a little bit of a rat hole right now, but as I'm reading your book, I got to tell you, so this is the overlap between your book and our podcast.
So we've had Dan Simons, we've had Ellen Langer, we've had Nick Epley, we've had Julia Cameron, we've had Alison Wood Brooks, and though you didn't name her, you talked about the growth mindset, so we've had Carol Dweck. So it was like a whole deja vu preparing for this set. It's like all these people I know, all these people is like telling the stories of Nick Epley meeting the woman on the train with the red hat and all that. So yeah, I loved it. I loved it. So of course, the logical place for us to start is for you to define flourishing. So what is flourishing?

**Daniel Coyle** (2:36)
Joyful, meaningful growth shared.
And what's not in that definition? Success is not in that definition. Happiness is not actually in the definition either, right? Performance is not in the definition. But it's really a word and a concept that comes out of the biological, the ecological world. Machines don't flourish. Machines can produce a result. They can be predictable. They can create an outcome, but to flourish. And it's a feeling and an experience that I think we've all had. And so it's that thing that we've all had and the thing we all want more of. We want more joy. We want more meaning. We want more growth. And the key word there that catches a lot of people by surprise, and that I didn't really appreciate until I dug into this whole topic, was that last word, shared.
Shared. That you can't do it on your own. There's no little hermit in a mountain cave in Switzerland who is flourishing. We need other people. We need interaction with people. It doesn't happen as individuals. It happens in these ecosystems, these relationships of people. We become our best selves in and through other people. Another synonym for flourishing would be the power of community. It's all about creating community. That's how we're meant to flourish, and how we're built to flourish. And if we go back in time, how human beings have always flourished, not alone, but together.

**Guy Kawasaki** (4:01)
See, you're telling me I was going to come to this question, but since we're here, you literally mean that a hermit, I don't know, an extreme introvert, a loner, someone living alone cannot flourish by definition.

**Daniel Coyle** (4:15)
By definition. Cannot. Cannot. We need other people. We're built to do that. Our brains light up. You can look at it through a scientific lens. If you and I were to have a contest right now, and we were to compete individually, our brains would light up a certain amount.
If we were to be on the same team and compete together, they'd light up even more.
Plato knew this. Socrates knew this. We are social beings. We require other people. So you can achieve performance alone. You can achieve success alone. You can behave like a machine alone. But to really grow into your best self, to have joyful, meaningful growth, you've got to be with other people, which is the challenge of this moment we're living in. We're surrounded by screens and technologies that are built to keep us kind of alone and ticked off and not disconnected, you might say, and we're all focused on optimizing and maximizing as if we're separate individuals and we're sold to, as if we're separate individuals. And yet, if we all were to close our eyes and think about the times in our life where we felt the most joy, the most meaning, the most growth, they wouldn't be when we're alone. They would be when we're connected to other people in community. And so the challenge we're facing is like, how do we create that, how do we tap into that power of community in this age that we're living in?