3 Lessons From Tim Cook

The alert pops up on Sunday mornings — and Tim Cook pays close attention to it.

It details the amount of time spent that week using one of his company’s devices.

“My philosophy is, if you’re looking at the phone more than you’re looking in somebody’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing,” Cook, the Apple CEO, said.

Since taking over for Steve Jobs in 2011, Cook has largely been doing the right things to elevate his company — and was recently featured in a lengthy GQ profile that has some key leadership lessons for us.

1. Is more of your product always a good thing?

Cook, interestingly enough, doesn’t think a world of people holding his products and fixating on them is healthy. It’s why Apple has these screentime alerts.

“We don’t want people using our phones too much,” he said. “We’re not incentivized for that. We don’t want that. We provide tools so people don’t do that.”

As leaders, we often want our team members and those who follow us to be all in on our mission and to shape their lives around our goals. But while commitment and intensity are obviously necessary to achieve anything worthwhile, too much of anything can horribly backfire and leave us stressed and anxious, making the ultimate ambition more difficult to attain.

2. You can’t lead as a clone

We constantly hear the cliche of “Be yourself,” and it can be difficult to place that into context and act on it. But it became clear very early on at Apple that Cook was not Steve Jobs — and he had to come to terms with that.

“He was a once-in-a-100-years kind of individual, an original by any stretch of the imagination,” Cook said. “And so what I had to do was to be the best version of myself.”

We can idolize people, study them and apply various strategies of theirs, but in the end, if we’re trying to lead as clones, we’re doomed. We have to trust we’re in the positions we are become someone believed in our visions and leadership qualities, not because they wanted a duplicate of our predecessor.

3. Don’t be hidebound in your beliefs

Apple is obviously strategic in its product releases, but it’s also open-minded to possibilities and doesn’t hesitate to pivot and adapt when presented with new information.

“My thinking always evolves,” Cook said. “Steve taught me well: never to get married to your convictions of yesterday. To always, if presented with something new that says you were wrong, admit it and go forward instead of continuing to hunker down and say why you’re right.”

While Apple's success is far more nuanced than just the aforementioned points, we can all draw a bit from Cook's sensitivity and adaptability.

The key to increasing our team's productivity might not be doubling down on work or being more bullish about our existing beliefs.

It might, instead, just be keeping an open mind.