What if the best way to lead isn’t by having all the answers—but by asking better questions?
Brian Glaser, Google’s Vice President and Chief Talent and Learning Officer, shares a leadership philosophy grounded in humility, agility, and experimentation.
From his early days at JetBlue Airways to shaping Google’s leadership school, Brian explains how the best talent leaders balance clarity with curiosity—and why the future belongs to those who embrace change.
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[00:00:00] Brian Glaser: When you have check-ins and one-on-ones, ask people questions like, Hey, what did you learn this week? How can I help you? It's moving from a place of being an advocate or really thinking about how to land your opinion to being somebody who's a lot more of an inquirer, someone who's really listen and asking good questions.
[00:00:16] Dave Travers: So what does it really take for your business to attract world-class talent? Today, I'm Dave Travers, president of ZipRecruiter, and on Talent All Stars, we shine a light on the people and the day-to-day processes behind recruitment and retention at some of the world's most influential businesses.
Today's show is a special one because we have a talent All-Star from one of the world's most influential companies, Google. Brian Glaser is Google's chief talent and learning officer, and he is played a critical role in shaping its famously employee-friendly, learning oriented culture. He even founded an internal school for Google's leaders.
So today Brian shares his advice for building a culture of learning and development. At any company, his tips for managing change and staying adaptable, and a couple of specific questions you can use in your next one-on-one. So without further ado, let's bring him in. Brian Glaser, welcome to Talent All-Stars.
[00:01:11] Brian Glaser: Thank you, David. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. So excited to have you.
[00:01:14] Dave Travers: Okay, so you have an amazing background, JetBlue, Google, so many interesting things you've done. You're this big fancy executive with a fancy title. But before we get there, as you trace back through your career, when did people and talent feel like something that this isn't just my next job or my current title, but this could be a career and a, a calling or a passion.
[00:01:39] Brian Glaser: I didn't realize it at the time, but when I got my driver's license, I immediately went to Norfolk International Airport because I always loved airlines. And I went around each of the ticket counters and I asked 'em if I could work there for a day.
They all thought I was crazy, except Lynette at Continental said, sure, come on back. And so I interned during high school at Continental, and when I was there, I remember hearing about this guy, Gordon Bethune, who was a CEO and how he was taking Continental from becoming worst to firs,t all focused on culture and leadership.
And really at the time I had no idea what that meant, but I stayed there for about four years before going on to Virgin Atlantic, and I really became much clearer about the role that culture and leadership. Made in the context of organizational performance. And then I guess when I was in college, I took a class in the business school, organizational behavior, and then it became clear to me, oh, this is actually a thing.
[00:02:28] Brian Glaser: And then went on from there.
[00:02:30] Dave Travers: Yeah. So that's great. So you had this moment where you'd heard about people and culture, but you hadn't really experienced it. When was, do you remember the time? When it like became visceral for you when you're at Continental or wherever it was and you're like, wow, this is what a powerful culture is like.
[00:02:46] Brian Glaser: I had the best experience being part of the startup team at JetBlue because the leadership team really practiced what they preached. The vision at JetBlue was to bring humanity back to air travel, and I can tell you day in and day out. David Neeleman, founder and the executive team, did everything they could to bring humanity to employees.
Their premise was, if we do this inside, it'll happen on the outside. If we treat our employees with respect and dignity and make them feel like they really matter, they will then pay that forward to the customer. So it was the first time when I could see the ways of working inside have a direct impact to what happens on the outside and, and in fact, if you're not doing that within your organization, it's gonna be really hard to build that brand reputation outside your organization.
[00:03:29] Dave Travers: Yeah, boy, that is so true. And the wisdom you just touched on where you know the expecting your employees to treat your customers well. If you're not treating your employees well, is a logical fallacy in that people make without thinking about it.
And the power of treating people well and just expecting that will therefore flow through to your customers, I think is super, super powerful. As a someone who's flown JetBlue, I get it. It feels it. And I remember, especially in those early days, um, at that time in the air travel industry, it was visceral how different it felt.
[00:04:03] Dave Travers: Okay, so then you went on and you started becoming a leader, not just a practitioner, not just someone who was learning. Did you always know that you wanted to grow and, and become an executive, or was there a moment when you started to see that in yourself or realized that was something that was exciting and a interesting challenge for you?
[00:04:23] Brian Glaser: Yeah, it's interesting in the sense that when I was at JetBlue, I really loved my job, but I definitely wanted to try to do practitioner work outside the industry. So I started my own firm and I did that for about 10 years. Google was a big client, and when I joined Google, I really wanted to focus on my craft.
I had done a lot of work in business development, running a firm, and although I liked that, I wanted to get back. To my roots, practicing the work. So I was here for about six months, and I remember distinctly being in a room in Mountain View and my manager at the time, Trudy said to me, Hey Brian, I'm moving on to another team.
I need to find someone who can take on this role. And I kept thinking to myself, God, who would be good for this? And I was brainstorming some ideas with her, giving her some names, and she said, I think you could do it. Kinda looked around. What is she talking about? First of all. I wasn't really interested in managing people.
I didn't really want a team. I wanted to just practice my craft. So I said, okay, Trudy, I'll do this. Let's call it three months and see where things go and what I realized at that point. Which I sort of knew in theory but I didn't realize it in practice, is that I could either stay down the path of being a practitioner, which I love and I still enjoy the work, or I can work with others and figure out ways to scale impact through them.
Someone once told me, you can either, you can either make lightning strike or create the conditions for lightning to strike, and I was well positioned I think, to make lightning strike, but when I realized I can get work done through others and have. An exponential impact. I got really excited about that in ways that I couldn't necessarily do when I was external doing consulting.
And so from there started to really fall in love with this idea of leadership and management as someone who is doing the work versus someone who is consulting to people who are doing the work and had been on that path ever since.
[00:05:59] Dave Travers: That's awesome. So I, there's so many people, uh, uh, reflecting back in my own career and talking to others where that early part of your career, where the idea of getting to the point where you're the one who gets to help make the lightning strike as opposed to just implementing someone else's vision about how to do that.
If you could go back in your career and think through to younger Brian or to the, the younger Brian who's listening to this and give them one piece of advice about how to, to go from that individual contributor to that leader role who's helping make the lightning strike, what would that be?
[00:06:34] Brian Glaser: Wow. I would say there's two things that I would probably give myself advice on that I didn't know at the time.
One is when you go from individual contributor to leader or manager, your signals. The feedback that you get changes. So no longer are you necessarily being recognized or being held to account for getting the project or the deliverable over the line. All of a sudden, you're now being assessed on whether or not you can] build collaboration and connection among people with disparate ideas and help them come to a better outcome than they could have come to alone.
And that's challenging because people are dynamic and they have different perspectives, which, which makes it wonderful and also daunting. So really rethinking your feedback signals. I think helps a lot so that you're not in a zone of wondering whether you're, uh, you're doing a good job. I think the other thing is that if you're wondering whether or not everyone else around you knows the answer and they're just waiting for you to figure it out, they probably don't know the answer either.
And so letting yourself be a little bit more free and have agency to run experiment. I wish I had done more of that. Instead, I think for a while I was wondering, gosh, am I being tested here? Are they just waiting for me to do what they think is right? It turns out. A lot of the people I was working with, whether JetBlue or Google, even on my own when I was consulting, they didn't necessarily know the right answer either.
And so I wish I had been a little bit more free to venture out and try new things and learn and iterate versus perhaps maybe waiting a little bit longer to step into that.
[00:07:59] Dave Travers: Oh, that is so good, because I can identify that so much and I've seen others do this masterfully where when you're in that room, and especially when you're the one of the more junior people, but no matter what role you're in, when you're in that room and you're like, I am desperately trying to figure out something smart to say right now, 'cause this is very difficult.
It is such a power move to be like, I. Man, this is a really hard one you guys like, you can just see everyone's shoulders relax. Everyone laughs a little bit and is like, Ugh. Now we can have the real conversation rather than put on this, I have this next one. Maybe if we slice the data 10 more times, but just having the self-confidence to label it like that is super powerful.
[00:08:39] Brian Glaser: It is David. And the thing I find interesting about leadership is that many times people are looking to us to know and to remove uncertainty. People know when we don't know people know when we're not exactly sure. I think one of the most powerful things you can do is be vulnerable and say, look, this is a tough one.
We've not crossed this bridge before. I'm not sure what the answer is, but do dot versus looking for another slice of the data or coming up with something that may not really be in line with where we need to be headed. I. So being willing to say, Hey, I'm not sure that goes a really long way. And by the way, how could we be sure there's so many first time ever sorts of situations if we rely too heavily on what we've been taught and rely too heavily on our past, it could be our worst enemy.
[00:09:19] Dave Travers: Yes, yes. So true. And also like often when stuck in that moment of a really difficult problem. Like reframing in some way and acknowledging that the problem's really hard helps give the license to reframe a problem.
To say, Hey, rather than compare this to what a theoretical perfect solution might be, let's compare it to where we are right now and how can we make this 10% better today and then figure out the rest of the hard problem later. That's if that snowball starts rolling downhill. Sometimes it gives, it builds a little momentum on its own.
Okay. As you move to Google. You got really into helping people learn and grow in their current roles was a big part of your role. For those in organizations that don't have as well-developed a learning and development or internal university or anything like that, talk about what the power is. And how to talk about the getting the snowball rolling downhill.
If I am on a people team and we don't have a function where we're training people in an explicit way or a big department to do that, talk about the power of and how to get started on the journey of developing your own people in a really formal way.
[00:10:29] Brian Glaser: Yeah, no, it's a, it's a great question. Oftentimes at Google, we think of our jobs in my world as being belief builders.
It's one thing to build great content and have access to awesome resources. We're really fortunate in that sense. But actually a lot of what we do is try to shift people's mindset so that they care as much about things like people and leadership excellence as they do in Google, like product excellence.
Right? And that doesn't actually take a lot of headcount. It doesn't take a lot of dollars, but it does take time and the way we think about that here, my team and I really do a lot to try to understand the problems that people are dealing with in the business. Sometimes hr, I think we create great solutions and then we go looking for a problem versus really understanding the context that the leader or the business is in, and then figuring out what we might be able to do to support.
That consultative mindset, I think goes a really long way. So really helping managers, for example, understand how important it's to set expectations, provide consistent feedback, recognize people for doing a great job, recognizing teams for their performance. Um, those things you don't need a school to do.
It's really about setting the course around a series of habits that we know, dry performance and baking those in to help people show up every single day.
[00:11:42] Dave Travers: Oh, that's so good. So gimme an example of a habit if I'm just getting started or if this is a side project, 'cause I see myself as a leader and there's an opportunity to do this. If I were at a smaller company, I. Gimme an example of a habit that you could create a, a program around, or a, a nudge to managers to be able to ingrain for the benefit of the company.
[00:12:01] Brian Glaser: Yeah. So a couple things that we do here, some of which we actually discovered more apparently during COVID. So one thing is how do you as a manager start to really understand the strengths of your people?
Oftentimes we come in with a lot of different assumptions about work, about people, about the goal. Taking a minute to really ask questions about what your people are interested in, what they've done before, and where they wanna go. That goes a really long way in terms of how you're thinking about prioritizing work and how to stack the team up against your biggest set of priorities.
May not always be obvious to someone though, who hasn't been a manager before. Another thing that's really pretty simple. That goes a long way when you have check-ins and one-on-ones ask people questions like, Hey, what did you learn this week? How can I help you? Things like that are very supportive in nature, and they give people the opportunity to reflect on what they've done and give you an opportunity as a manager.
To lend yourself to their success. So a lot of times it's moving from a place of being an advocate or really thinking about how to land your opinion to being somebody who's a lot more of an inquirer, someone who's really listen and asking good questions.
[00:13:07] Dave Travers: Ooh, I like that. What did you learn this week?
I'm gonna steal that one. That's a very good one. I love that because it is very hard as a leader to come into a room and just tell people, this is where we're going. Follow me, or let's do this together when you haven't done the work. Of understanding where we are today and where each of the individuals are today, and when they get a sense what, and what you're talking about doing is a way of very organically getting a sense of where are we right now?
Where are we starting from in order to get to this place? Makes the vision part of it and convincing people to join in the vision so much easier.
[00:13:44] Brian Glaser: Totally. And I think for a long time the research and the practice and leadership has shown how important context is. But if you look at the literature, a lot of that is around world context , organizational context. One area that hasn't come into play as much is personal context. So if you can understand somebody's world, and this mean, this may not mean that you go deep on their entire history and their life, but if you can understand more about where someone's coming from, what's going on for them, what are they working up against that really helps mobilize the team?
[00:14:15] Dave Travers: So true. And so speaking of context, one piece of context that everybody, Google, and everyone else is dealing with today, ZipRecruiter, every company is change. There's technological change, there's competitive change that things are changing all the time and people being their nature, they love to learn and grow, but sometimes they're also parts of their existence that they just wish would stay the same.
And so one of the things that I think is interesting in your position is you have to teach people to have the guts to start embrace a little bit of change. How do you do that at such a rapidly moving place like Google?
[00:14:53] Brian Glaser: Yeah, the first thing we do is we talk a lot about ego and a lot about vulnerability.
As a leader here, you have to be willing not to know the answers. I. You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to pick a direction versus a destination, which means you set the team off on a particular course, you pay attention to what's going on around you contextually, and then you have to be able to pivot quickly.
So part of it is realizing that we can't know all the answers and being really comfortable with that, as we talked about earlier. The other thing that we need to be doing, I think as leaders and managers, and even as individual contributors, is taking stock of our emotional, cognitive, and social. To all the change that's going on around us.
Boy, there is a lot happening in the world. There's a lot happening at work, and that takes a toll on people being able to recognize when you need to step back. Take a break, lean on somebody, reprioritize how you're approaching a project. That's really important. 'cause at the end of the day, we all need to refuel, reignite, and bounce back from whatever it is that might be coming at us so that we can stay the course.
So I would say those are some things that we're thinking a lot about. The other thing that we're thinking a lot about is this concept of agility at Google, right? How do you have range of motion? And by that, how do you know what the situation is calling on you to be, and how do you step into that with intentionality?
Sometimes, as a leader, I need to be really strategic. I need to step back and think about vision and long-term plans. There are other times where I just need to get in there and roll up my sleeves and get it done. And so this idea of range of motion and, and really asking yourself what is the situation calling on to be right now?
Is the heart of agility and that's something we're really trying to, to help people think more about. And that requires you to take a step back, really assess the landscape and the context. Be intentional about how you want to show up in that moment or in that experience.
[00:16:47] Dave Travers: Oh wow. I love that notion of agility. 'Cause that is so true. There are just moments that call for, like sometimes in a meeting when I'm one of the leaders, I'm thinking about how can I be the yin to the yang of this, you know, group here. And sometimes it's like the group is super tactical and I'm thinking how do I take a step back and be strategic?
And sometimes everybody wants to be the strategist and I have to be the one to be like. Hey, so what are we gonna do like later today? Like how are we actually gonna push this forward? That's a really powerful, okay, so now applying all this about how you think about developing your internal talent, apply that, all those learnings you have now and think about how do you think about then?
Bringing in external talent. When you're thinking about how talent acquisition works today and how it should work tomorrow or five years from now, what needs to change so that we are bringing in talent that can add to this tapestry of, uh, great more agility and learning faster and embracing change and all these things.
What would you do differently than is done today at most companies to bring in talent?
[00:17:51] Brian Glaser: So I think what we want to be able to say here at Google is that we are doing everything we can to create the conditions for people to learn and grow and to take on new, exciting roles. And so at the end of the day, we become the best school anywhere because here you have access.
To the best learning experiences, we are cultivating future talent. That said, we'll never be able to cultivate all the talent that we need. We recognize that there are other people outside the company who have really important perspectives, that have different experiences that will really compliment the work that this great talent at Google is doing. I think one thing that we really need to continue to pay attention to is culture. And we have incredible people who apply to Google every year, and the people who come into Google have incredible technical chops. The question is, can they do some of the things that we've mentioned, right?
Are they able to really be agile? Can they pivot quickly? Can they galvanize a team around them when they don't necessarily have. Their positional power to rely on, because oftentimes we're working cross-functionally in this matrix, right? One thing I would say is that we need to be able to understand how people work just as much as what they know or what they've done in the past, because at the end of the day, the most incredible technical expertise, if not channeled in this organization a way that is conducive with ways of working, typically don't enjoy it. They typically don't enjoy it here, and the teams don't enjoy it either. So I think just a, a continued focus on not only what the person has done and what they can do, but how they go about bringing their superpowers to bear is critical.
[00:19:28] Dave Travers: When you're thinking about bringing people in. Thinking about, rather than how do we round off the person with the fewest weaknesses, but really empower someone to bring their superpowers and allow them to be a little bit pointy, obviously their minimum standards for lots of different areas and things, but really unlock someone's superpower is such a great way of thinking about the recruiting process.
Okay. Brian, at the end of these episodes, we always do the, the sort of rapid fire section where you're imagining you're getting in the elevator with, and it happens to be just you and the CEO as you hop in, so there's Sundar and at Google or at Alphabet, and he says, Hey Brian, I haven't seen you in a little bit.
I'm thinking about my own team and I'm thinking about how to coach my leaders teams. What's the one thing I should do this year? To develop them even further. What could I do to develop my team? If you gave me one tip on something, as I'm leading a team, what do I do to develop my direct team this year?
[00:20:25] Brian Glaser: Great question, Sundar. So I would say, I would say that Sundar, we know from our research, we know from our practice that the organization's performance cannot outpace the performance of our people. Full stop. In order to really make sure that our people are performing at the highest levels, we need to be able to provide them with not just incredible development experiences in the form of coaching and programs.
We really need to be giving people new experiences. We need to really tap into mobility because mobility gives you the opportunity to see different parts of the world. It gives you an opportunity to see different businesses. If they're going through those kinds of experiences, people come out the other end with a much more expansive view of what's going on in the world, what's going on at work, and what the possibilities are for our company.
So I think really being an exporter of talent across the company and thinking about how to give people those opportunities is gonna be especially important as we look at all the global and geopolitical issues facing us that are yet to come. I think that's paramount.
[00:21:27] Dave Travers: The mobility thing is so smart. It's good, it's a win. It's great for the company and it's great for the individual and their career and their own development. As you say, if, if you decide to go straight back to the job you had before, you will be so much better for having a little outside perspective.
[00:21:43] Brian Glaser: I think that's right. Yeah, and I think the other thing that we need to think a lot about is the fact that AI is here, right?
AI is really what we're going on about at Google. We're an AI-first company. We know that by the year 2030. 70% or so of the jobs that we have today will be fundamentally different. I don't think AI will replace humans, but I think that people who use AI will replace those who don't. So we need to really be better as organizations stepping into this concept that we're going on a lot about here called co-intelligence.
It's coined by the author and academic Ethan Mooch who talks about this idea that when you bring machines and humans together, you can create really powerful outcomes by bringing out the best in both of what those two things do. Helping our people understand what their relationship looks like with technology is gonna be really important as we enter this AI era.
And of course, for good reason. There are a lot of people who might be a little bit skeptical about. This, right. It's very new. Getting people more comfortable with the conditions to experiment, try on new ways of, of bringing AI into their daily work routine, to be more efficient and productive, I think is gonna be super important.
Something that all CEOs, CHROs, and C-Suites should be thinking about.
[00:22:49] Dave Travers: I think that's something everybody is thinking about from top to bottom at almost every organization, and you're so right that it's such a powerful reframing for an individual who's thinking about, Hey, is AI coming for my job to think, no, I should be not afraid of ai, but afraid of not being the person who embraces it to use it and make my job even better.
[00:23:11] Brian Glaser: Exactly.
[00:23:12] Dave Travers: Exactly. Brian Glaser is so clear why you're a Talent All-Star. Thank you so much for coming on today.
[00:23:18] Brian Glaser: It was awesome being here. Thank you all so much for the opportunity. Pleasure to talk to you.
[00:23:26] Dave Travers: That's Brian Glaser. He's the Chief Talent and Learning Officer at Google. We'll put his LinkedIn profile in the notes below. And just a reminder, we put the video versions of these conversations on YouTube, also on the official. ZipRecruiter channel, and if you have feedback for us or ideas for future episodes, send us an email at talentallstars@ziprecruiter.com. I'm Dave Travers. Thanks for listening to Talent All-Stars. We'll see you next week.