Why success and trust grow faster when someone is willing to go positive first
There’s a podcast I keep returning to, and the subject is Peter D. Kaufman. He runs Glenair and edited Poor Charlie’s Almanack, so he’s spent a long time thinking carefully about how things actually work, not just in one field but across a few.
He’s also been extraordinarily successful by any sensible measure, while keeping a relatively low profile.
In this episode, Shane Parrish of The Knowledge Project is working through Kaufman’s thinking from a speech he gave, and within the first ten minutes Kaufman says he can teach you everything you need to know about leadership in twenty-two seconds.
I’ll come back to those twenty-two seconds, because how he gets there matters as much as the lesson itself.
He starts by talking about specialists, and he makes a point that’s easy to miss if you’ve spent your life getting good at something. Deep expertise is useful, of course it is, but it also creates blind spots, and those blind spots tend to show up at exactly the moments when the stakes are highest.
His way around that is what he calls “index fund reading”, which just means reading widely, well outside your own lane, into areas that feel unfamiliar enough to make you slow down a bit. The aim isn’t to become an expert in everything. It’s to build a sense of how things connect.
He then runs ideas through a simple test. He holds them up against three very large reference points: the physical universe, which has been around for billions of years; biological life on Earth, also billions of years; and then human history, going back thousands of years.
If an idea makes sense across all three, it’s probably something you can rely on. If it only works in one place, it might still be useful, but you treat it with a bit more care.
There’s one idea he says passes every time, and it’s this: what you put out, you tend to get back. He calls it mirrored reciprocation, and you can see versions of it everywhere, in physics, in ecology, and in human behaviour across every culture that’s kept a written record.
It sounds almost too simple when you say it out loud, which is often a sign you’re looking at something fundamental.
So if that’s the pattern, the practical question becomes what you choose to put out first.
Most people wait. They wait to feel respected before they offer respect, to feel trusted before they extend trust, to feel warmth before they show it. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just cautious, and over time that caution creates distance. Kaufman’s view is that someone has to go first, and he phrases it precisely:
“Go positive and go first.”
In practice, you see it in quite ordinary ways. The people you deal with want to feel noticed, listened to, treated properly, given some sense that they matter.
This is where the 7 Skills framework connects directly, especially through Rapport and Leadership Rapport. Those ordinary human needs, to feel noticed, listened to, respected, cared for and meaningful, are the building blocks of Identity: Safety, Belonging, Esteem and Sense of Purpose.
Kaufman is describing, in plain terms, the same things the Identity model tells us people are subconsciously checking for in every interaction. Before they decide whether to follow you, trust you or build something with you, they are asking a simpler question: does this person actually notice me?
That is Rapport at work, and in leadership it matters even more, because people are far more likely to listen, contribute and stick with you when they feel safe, respected and valued.
When you meet those needs genuinely and consistently, you’re building the kind of trust that survives under pressure.
That’s also Attention Direction working properly. Where you point your attention shapes what the other person experiences. If your attention is mainly on your own agenda, people feel that. If it is fully directed towards them, they feel that too.
From there, the conversation moves naturally to Outcome. What does a good result actually look like, not just for you, but for everyone involved? Kaufman frames this as a genuine win-win, where the arrangement works for customers, suppliers, employees, owners, regulators and the wider community.
If one of those groups is quietly losing, even if it’s not obvious at first, the situation is less stable than it looks. The aim is to create value in a way that stands the test of time, then share it properly.
Which brings us to the twenty-two seconds.
Kaufman says that if you want to be a great leader, you need to become the kind of person people are always hoping to find but rarely do. His list: trustworthy, principled, courageous, competent, loyal, kind, understanding, forgiving and unselfish.
In 7 Skills language, these are SQAs: Strengths, Qualities and Attributes. They are qualities you start to notice in yourself, build through everyday challenges, and practise until they become your instinct when things get tough.
If you absorb the qualities on that list, people tend to want to be around you, to work with you and to build things alongside you. He’s not dressing it up as easy, just as clear.
What’s interesting is what’s not on that list. There’s nothing there about being especially clever or dynamic. The focus is almost entirely on how you treat other people, which tells you something about what actually earns trust.
The final piece is what you do with that once it starts to build.
He talks about compound interest, not just in financial terms but as steady, incremental progress carried on over time. The word that matters there is “constant”.
Most people lean towards bursts of effort followed by a drop-off, which feels productive at the time, but rarely keeps things moving for long.
What tends to work better is a quieter, more consistent approach, something you can repeat without needing a reset every time.
He finishes with a line you’ve probably heard before, but it reads slightly differently in this context.
“If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
The people around you aren’t something you collect at the end, they’re shaped by who you are and how you’ve treated people along the way.
Einstein, Kaufman tells us, considered “simple” to be a cognitive level above “genius”. You know you’re dealing with something useful when you can understand it straight away and put it into practice the same day.
Go positive first. Build trust. Treat people in a way that makes them want to stick with you. Repeat it consistently. This is one of those ideas.
If this piece made you think about the kind of person people experience you as under pressure, the IDQ Snapshot is a useful next step.
It gives you a quick read on how your Identity tends to steer your attention, your reactions and the signals you send to other people when things matter.
Take the free IDQ Snapshot here.
