Nvidia CEO’s advice for young leaders: Lower your expectations

It’s hard to think of a more important CEO right now than 英伟达 ’s Jensen Huang.?

After years of toiling in relative obscurity, Huang and his company are at the very center of the AI revolution, producing the chips that power the new technology. NVIDIA hit a new record last month for largest single-day market gains for a company, and Huang was front and center this week as he unveiled new chips that the company will be selling at an event nicknamed “AI Woodstock .”?

But Huang had some surprising advice for aspiring leaders in a recent interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business, writes my Fortune colleague Orianna Rosa Royle .?

“People with very high expectations have very low resilience—and unfortunately, resilience matters in success.” He went on to say that one of his great advantages is having “very low expectations.”?

Huang emigrated to the U.S. at nine years old, endured bullying while attending high school in Kentucky, worked at one point as a dishwasher at Denny’s, and successfully navigated his company through the dotcom crash and the financial crisis. An early mantra for Nvidia was: “Our company is 30 days from going out of business.”

Huang went on to say that he believes resilience comes from enduring tough times, and wished the group of assembled graduates “ample doses of pain and suffering.”??

“Greatness comes from character and character isn’t formed out of smart people—it’s formed out of people who suffered,” he said.?

Leadership Tip of the Week ??

Managers spend a lot of time trying to boost their lowest performers—but they also need to think about their top workers, writes my colleague Trey Williams . The highest performing workers do an inordinate amount of work, and they can be easily overloaded with tasks—but that can lead to burnout and attrition. So bosses should take time to identify these star employees, think about how to reward them, and let them know how important they are to the company.

Leadership Next

Seifi Ghasemi began his career in energy by attending a school in the middle of a refinery in Iran. Now, at nearly 80, the Air Products CEO believes hydrogen is the only option for fighting the effects of climate change. “There is no other source of energy,” he says.

In this episode of Leadership Next, he discusses with Alan and Michal why he believes Air Products has a responsibility to push markets toward clean energy solutions like hydrogen; whether or not hydrogen-based fuel will be ready for our 2050 net-zero goals; the moment he started paying attention to climate change; and why he hasn’t been on a vacation in 20 years.

Listen to the episode and subscribe to Leadership Next wherever you listen to podcasts, or read the full transcript here.

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-Azure Gilman , Fortune’s Deputy Leadership Editor (and the new writer of Learning to Lead)