Lex Fridman: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. But in fairness too, for him, during the time that we were dealing with him, he was always in election versus election, and then election. And what he was saying wasn’t wrong. And I think he was more expressing his concerns given the dynamics. And we never held those concerns against him, we just said those are real concerns he had. We respected those concerns. But then we helped him prioritize to help accomplish the right things. And that’s ultimately what the partnership is, right? My job was to represent America, his job was to represent Israel, and you had other parties representing their own interests. And as long as you assume that people were acting mostly in good faith, you were able to navigate areas where you didn’t have complete overlap of priorities and objectives. Just to go back to the trust thing, you sometimes see that with leaders, where it looks like they’re trying to screw over the other person when they’re talking. And so, not having that, I think is a really powerful thing for earning trust. That people actually can believe that you’re results driven and are working towards a certain end. Is there a skill to that? Is that genetics, you’re born with that? Or is that something you develop? So basically, it requires you to look at the game of politics and not have a kind of cynicism about it, to where everybody’s trying to manipulate you. And actually just go in with a kind open mind and open heart and actually speak truthfully to people on a basic human level. I would say that I always would think about how can I be a partner to others like I would want somebody to be a partner to me? And a lot of it comes from just my different experiences in business. I’ve had great partners, I’ve had terrible partners. My father, again, a lot of my childhood was I was exposed to business. My father, on Sundays, he would take us to job sites and to the office with him instead of to football games like my friend’s fathers would do. And so, we were exposed to business. And what he would say about his father, who was an immigrant to America, came over with nothing, had no formal education, but he would always say, “A good deal with a bad partner will always be a bad deal. And a bad deal with a good partner, you’ll figure it out.” And so, going through some of the challenges that I had in my life early on, whether it was the issue with my father, that I’m sure we’ll talk about, or even going through some tougher financial times during the Great Financial Crisis, I really learned a lot about partnership. And I always thought, “How can I act in a way where I could be the type of partner or friend to others that I wish others would be to me?”…

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