Justin Trudeau's Leadership: Navigating Challenges and Unity

Justin Trudeau learned to connect with people by overcoming preconceptions, prioritizing authentic conversations, and embracing diverse perspectives.

### Justin Trudeau: Leading Canada with Authenticity and Empathy
* 🗣️  Trudeau focuses on building genuine connections by quickly moving past preconceived notions or expectations to have **real conversations**.
* 👨‍👧‍👦  Growing up with his father as Prime Minister, Trudeau learned that the **little moments of service and engagement matter the most**.
* 👍  Trudeau believes that leadership requires **putting the mission above the ego** and **empowering others to perform at their best**.
* 💔  Trudeau deals with criticism by **empathizing with the critics and striving to improve their lives**, even if they won't give him credit for it.
* 🤔  Trudeau is aware of the impostor syndrome but overcame it by **earning the trust of his constituents through hard work and authenticity**.
* 😌  Trudeau maintains a work-life balance by prioritizing **sleep, exercise, and spending time with family and friends**.
* 🌐  Trudeau's approach to leadership involves finding **common ground** and seeking the **best possible solutions** that **nudge the country forward**.

Adam Grant: I'm actually curious
about this idea of putting people at ease. How do you think about doing that
when you show up? 

Justin Trudeau: I don't,
I don't think about it. Being able to just try and get
through people's preconceived notions or expectations or nervousness to try and have a real conversation
as quickly as possible is just something that I guess ... I guess I learned how to try
to do throughout my life. Talking about the weather
always sort of bored me, but actually having real conversations
about things that matter was what I always wanted to do
whenever I'd meet anyone. And people would come at me
with a certain amount of preconceptions because my father was prime minister and there's a known factor around me that getting them to a place where they could actually
be comfortable in being themselves quickly became something
that I wanted to see and do in all my interactions. 

AG: Mission accomplished.

JT: There you go. AG: This is something
of the family business. You got to see the Prime Minister's job
up close long before you took it. What surprised you the most
that you didn't expect? JT: Yeah, my first 13 years of life
growing up with my dad in this role was the international summits,
the speeches, the people coming up
to him in restaurants for the rest of his life saying, Thank you for doing this,
Thank you for doing that. And it was always the big things. The little things were the things
I didn't see as a kid that really matter. When I first got elected, I wasn't leader, I wasn't even on the government side. I was just a simple backbench MP discovering the ways in which being
a community's representative, being their voice here in Ottawa, being in service of people, even if you're not in government,
even if you're not in charge.

actually makes a difference. And discovering that made this job a lot more
like what I knew professionally, which was being a teacher. It's those little moments, those engagements, that explaining things, empowering people that was key for me. AG: So it almost sounds
like there are aspects of the job that are better than you expected. JT: As a little kid, you know,
I wanted to, I guess, either be a fireman or an astronaut
or a prime minister like my dad. But, you know, they were all unreal. And then I went through a long stretch
of not wanting to go into politics because I knew how different
I was from my father, and he was a very successful
prime minister. And it wasn't until later that I realized
that there was a path through being a teacher,
around process, around people, around connection with people. It was very different than my father's
more intellectual approach to politics. AG: How do you deal with the fact
that no matter what you do at work,

millions of people are going
to disapprove of your decisions and probably dislike you as a person? JT: First of all, I mean, the line is, no matter
what you're doing, you know, 30 percent like you, 30 percent hate you, 40 percent are completely indifferent
to the fact that you even exist, right? I mean, you don't get into this job
because you want to be popular or you want to be liked, or if you do, you're in for a rude awakening because that's not
what this job is all about. That's not what this life is all about. This is about service. This is about feeling you can
actually make a difference that is meaningful in people's lives, in the direction of the country, in how your country
has an impact on the world. The fact that there are people
who approve of what I'm doing, there are people who disapprove
of what I'm doing

is all par for the course. And if nobody had any opinion on me,
positive or negative, it would be that I wasn't doing
anything consequential. So you do need to have a little bit
of pushback if I'm, you know, raising taxes on the wealthiest
as I am right now. If they weren't pushing back, I'd say, OK, maybe I'm not doing it enough. But the other piece, on a personal level, I was about seven years old
the first time I remember some kid coming up to me
in the schoolyard and saying, My parents didn't vote for your dad. So I don't like you. And I had to sort of adjust to the fact
that that had nothing to do with me, who I was. It was everything to do
with external perceptions and everything to do with them
and I had to learn to put that aside. But then a few years later, as I got a little more active at going
with my dad to different places,

I'd go to these rallies where everybody loved him, and therefore everybody loved me. And I also had to learn to put that aside, that it was no realer. The people who loved me automatically than the people who disliked me automatically. And getting a really strong sense of self and being able, when you get criticisms or congratulations, to reach below the emotions of that and say, OK, well, what is the nugget of useful criticism that I can actually take constructively, even if it's not meant that way in the slightest? Did I really go a little too far here, or did I really not take into account the concerns of this community there? Well, certainly reasonable criticism out there, whether it's constructive or not, you can find that. And similarly, if people say, Oh, you're awesome, why exactly? Is it just how it makes you feel? So being able to sort of detach yourself from people's perceptions of you.

is really, really important
in a job that is, you know, requires a certain amount of popularity,
for people to vote for you, but you cannot allow that to drive you
or even define you. AG: What do you say to yourself when the criticism feels
particularly painful? Is it just, Well, that's my avatar
they're reacting to, it's not me? JT: More recently,
when I see people, you know, really over the top in the kind
of the hatred and polarization and toxicity that is just
par for the course in so many democracies now, my instant pivot is, OK so what happened in their lives
to lead them to that place? I try to go for a place of empathy,
of, well, what can I do, even if they'll never give
me credit for it, to make sure that their life is less bad? And sometimes I can't
imagine how to do it. But other times, like I have to go
to a place of reminding myself

and it's not hard because it’s in me. I'm the prime minister
of 40 million Canadians, not just the millions who voted for me. I'm for everyone. And therefore, no matter
how much they dislike me, I still have to try and think
about what I can do to make sure that them or their kids
or their community is doing better. And that exercise
sort of detaches a little bit from what their actual opinion is of me. It gets harder when it goes to my family
or some of my team members, where I'm not as able to detach it,
because that's, you know, you're coming after my people. Come after me all you're like,
I put my name on a sign, I'm standing here
for election, I'm doing it. I'm welcoming it. But for others, it makes it harder. AG: Now I'm curious about just
the confidence it takes to want to do this job in the first place.

It used to seem to me to be something that required an unusual level of ambition, maybe even arrogance or narcissism, some would say. And then over time, I've started to see you just have to think that you could do this job better than the other viable candidates. You don't have to think that you're capable of doing a perfect job running one of the most powerful countries on earth. How do you think about that tightrope? JT: I guess it's not something I think about too much now, because I spent so much time thinking about it over the years. I only saw myself getting into politics, you know, when I was younger, I thought, OK, maybe I do politics one day, but it'd be much later, once I've gotten out from under the weight of my last name and historical expectations. And, you know, once I've proven myself in business or written a few books or started a school or done things that are really meaningful.

and then I can go in on my first name. But in my 30s, I was very
much a youth activist. I was doing environmental stuff. I was a teacher through my 20s. And I learned from working
with young people, who had no connection to my father, that I had things worth saying. And as I sort of got, you know,
pulled in, a little bit indirectly, into partisan politics, I realized, I'm actually good
at the things my dad wasn't great at, which is the campaigning,
the handshaking, everything. I learned that it was very much
my maternal grandfather's side, who was, Jimmy Sinclair, was a great
retail politician, he loved it. As I discovered that I was good
at pulling people together and mobilizing them,
and organizing and inspiring and building a great team, I got more and more into politics. And every step of the way, I was somewhat hesitant
to take the next step.

My father's party, the Liberal Party, reached a total nadir. Like, we were down to 35 seats in the 300-plus seat House. We were on our way to oblivion when I came in as leader, and it was an opportunity to rebuild from scratch. But then as I looked around at who else could be leader, I realized, oh wait, nobody gets how hard the work is going to be or the work that needs to be done, and I can sort of see that clearly. So I'm sort of going to be the one who does it, because it's going to take an incredible amount of work that I think I can do better than others. And turns out, I was pretty good at it in terms of rebuilding the party. AG: You mentioned feeling hesitant to take a leadership role. Some of our PhD students at Wharton have shown that a feeling of reluctance, of saying, I'm not sure if I want this.

actually can lead
to more effective behavior when you're at the helm, because you don't think
you know all the answers. You don't think you have to make
every decision yourself, and it may actually lead you
to empower other people more to learn from other people around you. JT: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. Being a good leader, if I was going to be any good in this job, I had to bring around the most brilliant, successful, smartest, most driven people
I possibly could to build the team. And I sort of understand that I come to it with an ability to bring people together and mobilize them and create a big vision. But leadership for me was never about being the one
at the top of the pyramid, you know, barking out orders. A good leader is someone
who's figuring out how every member of the team
can be at peak performance in the most important moments, and that idea of lifting up
everyone around you

is the way I sort of fell
into this leadership role. AG: One of the risks
of surrounding yourself with people you think are smarter than you is that sometimes you feel
like an impostor, and you wonder, do I really belong here? Has that affected you
over the last eight years at all? JT: I was very aware
of the impostor syndrome all my life. As a teacher, I kept waiting
for someone to knock on the door and say, This was a terrible mistake,
we're pulling you. Or any time I was giving a speech
on environmental responsibility, I was expecting someone, You never actually finished your graduate
studies in environmental geography. What are you doing? I was very aware of that. The first day I walked
onto Parliament Hill as an elected MP, after what was a very tough
election for our party, but it was good for me in 2008, I searched for that impostor syndrome. I said, OK, here it's going to come.

And it wasn't there. And for the first time in my life, and I think it was because I worked
so hard on the ground for the two years to sort of overcome people's
name recognition expectations of me. Like all my opponents then
and pretty much since have said, Oh, it's just
an accident of history that he's in the role he is. He's expecting everyone to vote for him
because of his last name. And that'll catch up with him
sooner or later. Or, “He won’t get elected the first time. And I worked the ground. I went door to door
right across the district. I got to all the different
community organizations, and I earned their support
in that election. And people actually came out, put a little X beside my name, and said, No, we definitely want you to go. And I'm like, OK. People actually chose me
through a process of saying,

we're trusting you
to be our voice in Ottawa, and we're making that choice deliberately. And I'd also run in a very authentic way
about who I was and what I was. And I felt that people knew
what they were getting when they voted for me in my district. And so I didn't feel
that impostor syndrome, and I haven't since. I keep saying, look,
I will continue to serve. I'll continue to do the best I can and try to do it in as authentic
a way as possible, way that is true to me,
with all the strengths and flaws that I have as any individual does. AG: Well, what you're describing tracks with the evidence
of impostor thoughts. JT: I'm so glad to hear that. AG: You would otherwise have
to change the way that you think. JT: Because that's what
psychologists do so well, they make people change
the way they think. AG: We do that for a living,
and it always works.

JT: You're so successful, exactly, exactly. AG: Thank you for respecting my profession every bit as much as I admire yours, Prime Minister. I think that, in all seriousness, one of the surprising benefits of those impostor thoughts is they create a gap between what you think other people expect of you and what you feel capable of. And that leaves you motivated to close the gap, which you did. Do you ever worry that not feeling like an impostor makes you complacent? JT: No. There's no ability to be complacent in this job. Not when you're still charged up about it. The challenges, particularly in this time, that continue to get thrown at us, all the range of crises that are hitting right now all around the world, our democracies, but also our countries, combined with all the steady progressive work that we need to do of, you know, lifting kids out of poverty and helping with 10-dollar-a-day child care

and delivering the fight
against climate change and creating good jobs
through a greener economy. And, you know, working with reconciliation
with Indigenous people. There are so many big things
we have to keep doing while there's war in Ukraine,
conflict in the Middle East. You know, climate change
hitting the world, backsliding of democracies,
foreign interference. You know, rise of autocracies.
There's all this going on. There's no complacency in this job. AG: You're describing
some of the many things that make this one
of the hardest jobs on earth. And it's unbelievable to me
that it comes with so little training. But here you are,
doing this job every day. How do you deal with
the ongoing thoughts about, Do I want to keep doing this? I know you've gone on record saying you think about quitting
approximately every day. JT: Yeah, I think that's part of a process.

where if you're going to be honest
about doing a job like this, that has the responsibilities
and the impact that it has, you have to check. Maybe not every day, but you have to check
that you're up for it, that you're all in every given day. Because people out there, the 40 million people that I am directly
responsible for serving, deserve a leader that is focused on them
with everything they have every single day. And that sort of check on,
you know, am I able to do that? Am I motivating my team to do that? Am I driving that forward? Am I fully all in, even though I've been in it
for a few years, even though it's harder now
than it was before, even though my opponent's getting traction
for all the wrong reasons. All those different things,
if they're enough to make you say yeah, no, maybe,
then you shouldn't be doing it.

I learned this being a teacher, where I would, you know, work hard all day, come home absolutely exhausted, but so excited about what the next day was going to bring. When you find a job that charges you up like that, where you are deeply excited about doing it, no matter how hard it gets, and aware of the awesome responsibility and impact that you get to have, then it's sort of intellectually honest to check yourself, check in with yourself regularly. AG: How often do you actually think about quitting? JT: These days, not at all. There was a moment last year, as I was facing some difficult moments in my marriage, where I really wondered, OK, is there a path? And I just realized that that's not me. There is so much to do still. And the stakes are ... higher in some ways for our democracies than ever before. The need to try and hold things together in a rational discourse

around doing things that are meaningful and are going to nudge the arc
of the moral universe forward matters so much that I couldn't be the person I am, the fighter I am, and say, yeah, no, this particular fight.
I'm walking away from. No, I can't do that yet. AG: You look like you're
having fun in your job more often than I would expect,
given all the stressors of the work. But I also, I don't want leaders
to have too much fun. And I think about some evidence that guilt-prone leaders
are actually more effective because they're more likely
to think about mistakes they made and try to right wrongs as opposed to, you know, just sleeping well every night. Talk to me about what guilt
feels like in this role, because I don't like being responsible
for four people, let alone 40 million. JT: Anytime you see me having fun, I'm connecting with people.

Like, I'm doing things where people
are having genuine interactions, and that's real. The work I do here at this desk,
the debates in chamber, the things like that,
that can be a bit of a grind. I mean, that's sort of the solitary work or the teamwork around the cabinet table. You know, figuring things out,
wrestling with big decisions and stuff. That's not always fun. You've always got to think
about the opportunity cost, what the consequences are, and just being aware of the weight
of these decisions is fine, but also not putting
on yourself a level of expectations to be perfect all the time. I mean, so many politicians spend
all their time saying, I can't make any mistakes. If you can be authentic, and the one thing that I tend
to fall back on is, I think Canadians have a pretty good
sense of where my values are, what I'm trying to fight for.

I'm trying to build a more inclusive, positive society in which everyone has a fair chance and where, I'm sure, do some suboptimal things in this policy or that. But when a crisis hits, when a challenge hits, I'll, as we all do, revert to our core values and our core instincts. I think that's important. In regards to sleep, that's one of my rules. I sleep about eight or nine hours every night. I exercise as much as I can, I eat well, I play well with my kids, with friends, you know, getting that balance of being a real person and not saying, for these years that I am prime minister, I have to be only prime minister and focus only on that. I mean, that's a route to madness. It can still be me that finds joy even after difficult moments and getting that balance of allowing myself to be a real whole person with good days and bad days and successes and challenges

I think grounds and uplifts you
at the same time. AG: I imagine one aspect of your job that's harder now than it used to be is getting people to speak truth to power. You come into office. You were a peer with a lot of the people
that you've brought in, and now anybody you hire
has to look at the prime minister. How do you make it safe
for people to speak up? JD: I want to focus on making sure people
were their community’s voice in Ottawa, in Parliament, instead of being Parliament's voice
in their communities. We sit in 338 seats
in the House of Commons, where each of us, including me, represents a very specific district. And our responsibility is to vote and speak for the people, our peers who elected us
to come and sit in this House. And anchoring my team, all the MPs, in their responsibility
to speak for their community, even if that's, you know

concerns with something I'm doing is really, really important. That actually leads not to negative
consequences for them, but to me saying, OK,
because I heard you on this one, as we move forward on this policy that I know isn't going
to be really popular in some parts of your community, I'm going to say that I know
it's not going to be popular, or we're going to bring
in this mitigation, or we're going to try and adjust this, and creating a space where people can
share with me their concerns in a way that I'm not going
to fly off the handle at them or belittle them, just basic interpersonal ability
to take criticism and, you know, put people at ease when they're telling you something
they think you don't want to hear, which, maybe you don't, is part of being a leader
that actually pulls together diversity. And you cannot run
or serve a country like Canada.

unless you're ready
to fully embrace diversity. If you can't model that amongst your team, then how are you going to do right by a country that is
as variegated as we are? AG: Well, I'd love to know what your team
is pushing you to improve at. How are you trying to grow as a leader? What feedback or notes
have you gotten lately? JT: I've been on a kick
lately of just saying, Look, if we could just explain
what this policy actually is, if we could show the charts
and the graphs, and if I could just sit down
and talk through why this is the right policy and how it's actually going to help, and everyone will get it and they'll agree
and then we can move on, and there won't be this debate
over whether putting a price on pollution that puts more money back
in people's pockets is a good idea or not, because everyone will see.

If I could just explain it enough
and use the right charts. People are like, Boss,
you're not a teacher anymore. My team, my MPs will come
to me and say, No, no, we just need you to get out there
and talk about the world we're building and reassure people
that you've got the plan and you're confident in it, and you're projecting it, and we're going to get
to that better place, and you're going to reassure them, and you're going to connect with them and stop it with the explaining. And that's one that I've had
a lot of trouble with. And I think my team
finally said, OK, fine, we'll make you do
lots of podcasts instead, where I do get to do, as one
of our mayors once famously put, politics in full sentences. AG: I have a clear vision
of what the meeting looked like after you left the room.

PM is trying to show PowerPoint again. How do we get around this? Podcasts! JT: Exactly, exactly. It was pretty much it. I said no. I even wrote a script for an explainer video where I can do this. And it was like, God, OK, we'll try. And they've done little bits of it and some of them work a bit, but it's still me trying to be a teacher, as opposed to me being the leader that is telling the story of where Canada goes. AG: Well, that, I think, is a good segue to the lightning round. Are you ready for this? I have a bunch of rapid-fire questions. First one is, who's a leader you admire who's no longer alive? JT: My dad. AG: That's an easy one. Anyone you're not related to that you would add? JT: Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our natures

is one that I always go back to as he handled a divided country in the most challenging ways. You know, I think to him,
every now and then. AG: I feel a little bad
that you chose an American leader. JT: No, you shouldn't. America has provided
some of the best leaders the world has ever seen. AG: OK, so one of my all-time
favorite Canadian contests was to come up with an equivalent of as American as apple pie for Canada. JT: And the answer in Canada was as Canadian as possible
under the circumstances. AG: You have done your homework. JT: Yeah, it's a classic Gzowski piece. AG: What does that mean to you? JT: Oh, God, that's a good question. I think it means that we're people
who understand compromise and reality. That things don't always go
towards our ideal. There's no manifest destiny
like there is in the United States.

It's a sense of, you know,
we're going to figure this out. We're going to roll up our sleeves, we're going to figure out
how to get along, and solve the problems
given the tools we have. AG: Basically, it's a slogan
for Canadian agreeableness and adaptability. JT: You know, saying sorry
after someone bumps into you is a way of, you know,
easing that dynamic as well. AG: Touche. What's the worst piece
of leadership advice you've been given? JT: Try to be more like your dad. AG: Why was that bad advice? JT: Because I'm not him. And people say,
I like the way you did that. It was just like your dad. I'm like, I have to be careful of that. Growing up with parents who are very
successful or take up a lot of space, you know, forces you to be very deliberate about what you're choosing
to take from them.

what you're choosing not to. And then you have to deal
with all the expectations. All my life, people said,
Your dad was prime minister. Do you want to be prime minister, too? My kids are going through it now, too. Two generations. Are you going to be the third generation? And it's like, I'm a teenager. What the hell do I know? Right? And learning how to be grounded
in who and what you are and unapologetic about it and not trying to be
something you're not ever is hugely important. AG: What's something
you've rethought lately? JT: Rethinking all the forces
that ended up leaving Canadians divided or grumpy post-pandemic. During the pandemic, we scrambled
to try and do everything we could. We delivered a 500-dollar-a-week income
replacement for low-income people. We brought in a 75 percent wage subsidy
that kept people on the payrolls.

We encouraged and, you know, created conditions in which everyone
was encouraged to get vaccination. We had a higher double-vaccination rate
than just about any of our peer countries. We had a less bad pandemic
than just about any of our peer countries. And yet, some of the lingering
impacts of those policies continue to divide Canadians. And I'm still trying to figure out
how to bring Canadians back together. And it's something I'm grappling with. AG: What's a book you read
recently that you loved? JT: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which is a lovely story of a young woman
who was born in, like, 17th-century France, who made a Faustian bargain
and lived forever. But anyone she met would instantly
forget her the second she walked past. And what kind of a life is that when you
actually can't have a lasting impact on anyone around you? I read almost only fiction on my downtime.

because I read so much
nonfiction for work. AG: What's the question you have for me? JT: Well, you give advice to leaders
of all different types on how to adjust and how to lead today, given social media,
given post-pandemic world, all that. Would you give the same advice
or different advice to political leaders as you would to other types of leaders, and what would be your best advice on how to create cohesive communities in this time of division? AG: I think I'd say both. I give some of the same advice, because I think there are
aspects of leadership that generalize regardless
of what environment you're in. At the end of the day,
you have to make good decisions. You have to get people to respect
your integrity and your competence and your care and want to follow you. And so I guess my most basic message
to leaders in any environment would be put your mission above your ego. That's an easy one.

Things I would say differently
to political leaders. Although I actually think that the business world has become
more like this in recent years, our political leaders have to care
a lot more about constituents and their opinions
and their approval ratings. And I think that now we're actually seeing that leaders are facing that kind
of pressure in other environments as well. In terms of your question
about how to bring people together and create community, I don't think anybody has easy answers. And as a social scientist, I've been wracking my brain on it
for the last few years and reading everything I could find. And I think probably the most
useful thing that I've come across is a lot of people are very quick
to slip into binary bias: good versus bad, us versus them. Pick your least favorite version of it. The way that we normally try
to fight that is we try to build up, we're good, they're bad. And I think a better solution is to say
we actually need a door number three.

We need to ask, OK, if these two views are dividing people, what's the third point of view that actually the silent majority might hold? And that seems to me, at least, to be a good starting point for thinking through this. JT: No, listen, I love that. And I've been reading on a phenomenon that says the majority actually starts to think it's in the minority now because those minorities are so loud. You know, there's so much noise out there that people start questioning the goodness and thoughtfulness of the silent majority. I think I'm someone who got into politics to try and pull people together. And it is so easy to fall into sort of divisive rhetoric or... or even position. Then you have to be careful with this, too. I mean, I made the decision early on in my leadership that I was only going to have pro-choice MPs. That members of Parliament needed to be willing to stand up.

for a woman's right to choose. And a lot of people accused me
of being divisive on that because I was excluding, you know, parts of the population
from being able to run for our party. And traditionally our party
had had both sides of that debate, both pro-choice and anti-choice. And that is a position that, on the one hand,
is somewhat divisive, right? Because I am saying, no, you don't get to take away
a woman's right to choose. But at the same time,
it's one that I believe is the right position in absolute terms. It's empowering an individual woman
to make whatever choice she wants. If she wants to be anti-abortion,
she can do that. If she wants to start a family,
like, she gets that choice. But it's portrayed as a binary situation that has caused me
to really think about the nature of you know, taking a clear
position on a thorny issue versus trying to accommodate
as many different viewpoints.

And obviously, in many situations,
you want to bring people together on, you know, protecting
the environment is good. And, you know, growing the society
for everyone is good. But sometimes there are sharp
lines to be drawn. And navigating the difference
in those moments is something that is fraught
with extra peril in a time of polarization and such amplification
of divisions online. AG: When you navigate these kinds
of decisions now with your team, how do you actually go about thinking
through the different options? What does your decision process
actually look like? JT: Well, I try to anchor myself
in trying to find out what the actual right decision is,
first and foremost. What is the best science or the most up-to-date science on it? What is the consensus? What are the experts saying? Can we find experts
to disagree with each other and try and pull from them
their points of disagreement, to find if there is a position

that actually you can build
some sort of consensus around. And then you look at, OK, now that we know
what the optimal answer is, does this fit in with both
where people are and where people are willing to go? And, you know, does it fit
into the rest of what we're doing? Because, you know, you could have
the absolute right answer for something that is, yes,
the absolute intellectually, academically, best solution
for a given problem. But if you look at it and say, but Canadians won't be able to support it, it's too much of a step,
it's too much of a leap, then can you figure out a half-measure
that nudges us in the right direction? So next year or next mandate
or next leader or next prime minister
can complete that work. And that's the art of the possible. One of my favorite prime ministers, other than my dad, was Wilfrid Laurier.

He was turn of the century. He was a French Canadian,
our first French Canadian prime minister ruling over a majority English Canada. And he understood the need
not to just anchor in your own identity and be unflinching on it. But that political courage,
actually sometimes involves and usually involves compromise
and putting water in your wine, and finding common ground, and bringing together a cohesive vision
that we can all get behind, even if it's not optimal for either side. And that idea of trying to find the best way
to come together in our differences, to agree on a path forward, continues to be the elusive goal
of Canadian politics. AG: That's a nice challenge,
actually, to rethink compromise. I've long been allergic to it because it seems like both people
are leaving unhappy. But I think what you're saying
is that you actually care about the other person's happiness, too. JT: Well, politics shouldn't be win-lose
because fundamentally

we all sort of agree on the same things. People should have good jobs
and give meaning to their lives. They should have opportunities to advance. They should have a clean environment. Everyone should have a chance to succeed. We should be, you know,
not at war with neighbors or people on the other side of the world. Everyone sort of knows
what the ideals are. Lots of disagreements about how to best
organize ourselves to get there. But the more you can get down
to those basic principles of let's try and figure this out together, and can we find a way that nudges us
forward in a meaningful way, well, that does require
finding that middle ground, that common ground. AG: I feel like most
of the time we get asked, what's the advice you would give
to your younger self? But I want to flip the question and say, if you can give advice
to Prime Minister Trudeau a year or a decade down the road,

what guidance would you give
to the wiser, older version of you? JT: Be patient with yourself. Allow that sometimes it takes time
to get to the right answer. And perfect is the enemy of the good matters as a principle. That taking meaningful steps forward are sometimes more
transformative and lasting than trying to change
everything all at once. AG: Thank you. JT: What a great conversation,
thank you, Adam.

Leadership Lessons From the Prime Minister of Canada | Justin Trudeau | TED

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