Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today
Speaker 1: we have Jonah Sachs on the podcast. Jonah is an author, speaker, storyteller, designer,
Speaker 1: and entrepreneur. He's the author of Winning the Story Wars,
Speaker 1: Why those who tell and live the best stories will
Speaker 1: rule the Future, and most recently, Unsafe Thinking. How to
Speaker 1: be nimble and bold when you need it most. Thanks
Speaker 1: for chatting with me today, Jonah. Yeah, thanks, Scott, it's
Speaker 1: great to be here. Cool. We got some mutual interest,
Speaker 1: don't we. Yeah, definitely. Your last book, Wired to Create
Speaker 1: was a big inspiration for me in writing this book. So,
Speaker 1: oh well, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's great. I've
Speaker 1: bodored to hear that. Yeah, it's a great book that
Speaker 1: you wrote. And you know, a lot of like I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of mutual topics that we're interested in. So
Speaker 1: the thing with that is it's always difficult to be like,
Speaker 1: where do I start, you know, when you have like
Speaker 1: so many topics that are interesting, but I'll start with
Speaker 1: It's in the Tyler book Safe Thinking, right, So what
Speaker 1: is the safe thinking cycle? So the safe thinking cycle
Speaker 1: is this idea that we get into this place with
Speaker 1: a changing world in which we get a certain amount
Speaker 1: of threat awareness no matter what we do. If we're
Speaker 1: being unsuccessful in our work, we start to get nervous
Speaker 1: that there's you know, threats to our well being. But
Speaker 1: even if we reach high levels of success, you know,
Speaker 1: what we were doing yesterday probably isn't going to be
Speaker 1: working tomorrow. So how do we respond to that? Threat
Speaker 1: awareness is the beginning of the safe thinking cycle, And
Speaker 1: of course we're programmed by evolution and biology to respond
Speaker 1: to threat awareness with you know a certain amount of anxiety, fear,
Speaker 1: and back on the savannah of the African planes, for
Speaker 1: our earliest ancestors, we would greet that fear by narrowing
Speaker 1: our thinking and we would you know, our vision would
Speaker 1: get very acute, but our peripheral processing would slow down
Speaker 1: so that we could run or fight now. The more
Speaker 1: that we think in stereotypical ways when creativity is needed,
Speaker 1: of course, the more threat awareness we're going to find.
Speaker 1: So we get nervous, we start to think we got
Speaker 1: to change, but then our change kind of neurons start
Speaker 1: to shut down and we start to think, we just
Speaker 1: got to do something quickly. We got to do what
Speaker 1: worked last time. We got to do what someone else
Speaker 1: is doing that's working. You know, we face a novel
Speaker 1: challenge with stereotypical thinking as we're programmed to do, and
Speaker 1: so we you know, we greet change with I'll do
Speaker 1: what work for somebody else. I'll do it worked last time.
Speaker 1: I'll do what works what I can do quickly and
Speaker 1: get it over with. And that doesn't allow us to
Speaker 1: actually open up and find the novel creative solutions that
Speaker 1: we need, leading to more threat awareness, because we're still
Speaker 1: sinking deeper and deeper into the problem that we originally
Speaker 1: faced because we don't have new creative thinking. And so
Speaker 1: that cycle can just keep going and going. We keep
Speaker 1: making that safest, most obvious choice, and the pressure keeps
Speaker 1: rising and we're not breaking out. And that is a
Speaker 1: big thing I'm exploring in the book is how do
Speaker 1: you actually break out of that cycle as a pressure
Speaker 1: gets more and more because you're not changing. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: And do you go in and consult for companies and
Speaker 1: help them break out? Like do you show up You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to help you all break out today, you know, like,
Speaker 1: do you inspire them? I bet you do, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I started my career seventeen eighteen years ago doing
Speaker 1: social change communications on the internet, so you know, earliest
Speaker 1: viral videos, social change viral videos. I was doing for
Speaker 1: environmental groups and for human rights groups. And I found
Speaker 1: that while creating a great piece of media could sort
Speaker 1: of change an organization, really the work of helping to
Speaker 1: tell a better story was really about looking at you know,
Speaker 1: what are we doing, what are we stuck in? And
Speaker 1: why aren't we making the social change that we want
Speaker 1: to make? How do we actually start to change ourselves
Speaker 1: in our organization? So I started drifting further further away
Speaker 1: from just doing communications into you know, how to open
Speaker 1: up the creativity of an organization. So, yeah, I'm doing
Speaker 1: a lot of that work. Now. You know, this is
Speaker 1: a bit of a tangent, but you're just having me thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some people that like social change, that
Speaker 1: phrase has that almost like insertain circles, you know, in
Speaker 1: the political sphere, has become like a negative phrase. What's
Speaker 1: up with that? Like, what do you think is going
Speaker 1: on in the cultural trends of because there's a huge
Speaker 1: like cultural we're going on. People even like say, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a time when saying cultural change was like
Speaker 1: a wonderful, beautiful, you know thing, and then if you
Speaker 1: don't want to get into that, that's fine. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean I think we live in I think we
Speaker 1: live in a pretty cynical time where you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point if you if you if you
Speaker 1: came on my show and you're like, hi, my name
Speaker 1: is Joana, I'm a social justice warrior, I'd be like, okay, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it's I think that we live in a
Speaker 1: time where sort of every term becomes contested, right, and
Speaker 1: every intention gets questioned and can be turned against us.
Speaker 1: I think the idea of social change really though, is
Speaker 1: about people who are trying to devote their careers and
Speaker 1: their time to bringing their values out into the world,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of the heart of democracy. So I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, hopefully that never goes out of
Speaker 1: style for people to be out in the public square
Speaker 1: fighting for what they believe in, whether it's what I
Speaker 1: believe in or something else. I think we need to
Speaker 1: keep that going, so I'm not backing away from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what role does intuition play in this creative process
Speaker 1: I'm trying to link? You know, you do talk about intuition,
Speaker 1: but also how it can lead to bias thinking. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not always bad as noways good? Right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I started looking into actually started by looking into
Speaker 1: counterintuition because I was thinking, so much creativity comes from
Speaker 1: ideas that on the surface seemed you know, crazy, just
Speaker 1: kind of against the grain and make no sense from
Speaker 1: an intuitive perspective. But oftentimes what's intuitive can be just
Speaker 1: sort of conventional wisdom disguised inside of our own brains,
Speaker 1: like oh no, no one would ever get into a
Speaker 1: stranger's car and use it as a taxi. That's not safe.
Speaker 1: That's you know, Well, it turns out it's the most
Speaker 1: intuitive way now of traveling. But it takes someone seeing that.
Speaker 1: You don't just dismiss every idea that runs counter to
Speaker 1: the way we currently do things. To bring an idea
Speaker 1: like that forth, So I started looking into you all
Speaker 1: the flaws of intuition, and certainly, you know, as Daniel
Speaker 1: Conneman says and many others, there's this you know, fast
Speaker 1: processing that instantly, you know, looks at patterns and dismisses
Speaker 1: ideas and puts things in boxes. And that could be
Speaker 1: very dangerous. Right. It helps us process the world, but
Speaker 1: also can lead to racial bias, gender bias, or just
Speaker 1: as general creative bias that keeps us locked in that
Speaker 1: sort of safe thinking. But like so many other things
Speaker 1: that's discovered in this book, you can't live without intuition too,
Speaker 1: and you can't be creative without intuition. So it's not
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a chapter about how bad intuition was,
Speaker 1: but you know, wound up running three chapters, one all
Speaker 1: about the amazing subconscious processing power of intuition. Right, to
Speaker 1: be creative, you need to spot patterns that others aren't seeing.
Speaker 1: And our conscious mind, only you know, takes in a
Speaker 1: small percentage of what we perceive. But our subconscious mind
Speaker 1: is constantly processing and pattern matching two. And then every
Speaker 1: once in a while it'll shoot a aha moment up
Speaker 1: to the surface and we get this rush often through
Speaker 1: our body of feeling in our body. Wow, that's a
Speaker 1: great idea. We can't just dismiss those things and say
Speaker 1: we're gonna rely totally on data here. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: listen to his intuition. We're not going to listen to
Speaker 1: John because he doesn't have any way to justify it
Speaker 1: just coming from his intuition. We actually should put intuition
Speaker 1: at the front of our consideration when we're looking at
Speaker 1: new ideas, but we also do need to analyze it
Speaker 1: and see is this true intuition, is this this true
Speaker 1: pattern matching, or is this conventional wisdom or bias disguised
Speaker 1: as intuition. I spoke to Robin Hogarth, who's one of
Speaker 1: the main most foremost researchers on intuition, and he basically
Speaker 1: told me that, you know, intuition are brilliant ideas that
Speaker 1: need to be deeply interrogated, in questioned. And I thought
Speaker 1: that that was, you know, probably about the right way
Speaker 1: to look at it. They're not always brilliant ideas though,
Speaker 1: right right right, My intuition sucks. Yeah, yes, of course.
Speaker 1: So I did research on Silicon Valley investors, who are
Speaker 1: people who are paid millions of dollars, essentially for their
Speaker 1: brilliant intuition, and researchers who have talked to them find
Speaker 1: that they rely more intuition than they do on analysis.
Speaker 1: But their intuition is constantly steering them away from investments
Speaker 1: in female entrepreneurs who tend to actually outperform the market
Speaker 1: or their male counterparts. They get like a thirty fourth
Speaker 1: of the amount of investment because the intuition says, this
Speaker 1: woman doesn't look like someone we invested in before, This
Speaker 1: doesn't match the pattern. But the pattern is all wrong.
Speaker 1: And so even in these places where intuition is vaunted,
Speaker 1: and you know, these are the best intuitions in the world,
Speaker 1: they can easily get polluted and opportunities missed because of bias.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting. Are you aware of all the controversies
Speaker 1: surrounding the IAT. You know, some of these in the
Speaker 1: field trying to measure and pus it biases, and you know,
Speaker 1: criticisms of those measures as and then questions about what
Speaker 1: is it really measuring? Is it measuring are we consciously
Speaker 1: racist or biased? Or we just you know, we've soaked
Speaker 1: up the cultural norms at the subconscious level, and you know,
Speaker 1: and there's no such thing as like, can your unconscious
Speaker 1: be sexist? You're just sexist if you're if you act sexist,
Speaker 1: right or no? Can you what do you think? It's
Speaker 1: an interesting question, though, isn't it. Yeah, it is an
Speaker 1: interesting question. I guess. No, your subconscious doesn't have a
Speaker 1: free will. I guess if that's the question, And like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't really impact you can't be responsible for your
Speaker 1: subconscious in a way, although I saw some interesting research
Speaker 1: from people who have been trying to educate their intuition. Essentially,
Speaker 1: like if you put up on your screen, some Harvard
Speaker 1: researchers that were putting up on their screen savers kind
Speaker 1: of counter stereotypical images, just like when they looked at
Speaker 1: their screen, they would see a you know, someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't belong in that role by stereotype. And by being
Speaker 1: confronted with images that are counter stereotypical every day, for
Speaker 1: hours every day, apparently that help to educate their underlying biases.
Speaker 1: So I think if you can expose yourself to things
Speaker 1: that counter your biases, you can re educate your intuition.
Speaker 1: And so in those ways, we can be responsible for
Speaker 1: our subconscious thinking. If we keep ourselves in bubbles and
Speaker 1: constantly locked away. You have to take responsibility when our
Speaker 1: subconscience become more and more biased. So I actually, you know,
Speaker 1: know that so much research is based on it, but
Speaker 1: I hadn't been aware of new controversies maybe around it.
Speaker 1: There's kind of a lot of conversations now about there
Speaker 1: is are these measures reliable? Are these measures valid? Were
Speaker 1: they predicting? You know a lot of them don't necessarily
Speaker 1: predict explicit racism or explicit you know. Yeah, So then
Speaker 1: the question is like, if you're not explicitly doing it,
Speaker 1: like are you racist? You know? Are your thoughts bad
Speaker 1: in themselves? Can you be a bad person if you
Speaker 1: just have bad thoughts in your life but you do
Speaker 1: wonderful things? Isn't that an interesting question? I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting question. We can't impact our automatic thinking in
Speaker 1: a sense with new experiences, and so that's maybe the
Speaker 1: place where we can cut some control. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: a good point. And you know, I've always been interested
Speaker 1: with I really like the dual process model of cognition,
Speaker 1: you know, and the Seamer Epstein's that's my favorite to
Speaker 1: out of all the thousand dual process models that exist
Speaker 1: in the field. The thing that's interesting about that, and
Speaker 1: also Keith Stanovich's dual process theory is that you can
Speaker 1: separate out evolutionarily driven intuitions from like our learned intuitions
Speaker 1: throughout our own lifespan. And that's interesting to think that
Speaker 1: we have all sorts of different we have intuitions. We're
Speaker 1: being pulled in so many ways we don't even know
Speaker 1: consciously realize. Yeah, we pulled by these evolution drives, are
Speaker 1: also pulled by the things that, like our parents said
Speaker 1: to us when we were younger, you know that we
Speaker 1: don't want to be we don't want to be pulled
Speaker 1: by that anymore. So it's interesting, like how do you
Speaker 1: separate all these things? But the point you're making, which
Speaker 1: is excellent, you know, really is the more conscious we
Speaker 1: can become of all this, the better. Right. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: spoke to Philip Tetlock, who's an expert on experts, and
Speaker 1: you know, he was talking about how wrong experts often
Speaker 1: are and how they're worse than dark throwing monkeys that
Speaker 1: you know, at predicting the future. But when I asked
Speaker 1: him to kind of wrap up everything we were talking
Speaker 1: about and you know, what do you do about this?
Speaker 1: He just said the most valuable thing you can do
Speaker 1: is think about how you're thinking. Whatever kind of metacognition
Speaker 1: you can put on your own thought processes, is time
Speaker 1: really well spent? And I thought that was a really
Speaker 1: nice wrap up. That we can't break free of all
Speaker 1: of our flawed thinking and of all of our human flaws.
Speaker 1: But if we do think about and observe the way
Speaker 1: that we think and spend time watching ourselves think, we
Speaker 1: get smarter. That. I really like that advice. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why meditation is so popular these days, you know, as
Speaker 1: one technique to do that. Yeah, So how can you
Speaker 1: challenge and change yourself when you need it most. It's
Speaker 1: not a easy question, is it. It's definitely not a
Speaker 1: one size, fit's all solution on that one, But I
Speaker 1: looked at it a couple different ways. Essentially, I think
Speaker 1: there are many many ways that we can have strength
Speaker 1: with our thinking. You know, some people are very have
Speaker 1: learned to rely on their intuition, for instance. Other people
Speaker 1: have learned to rely on analysis. Some people are really
Speaker 1: invested in expert thinking, while other people are more sort
Speaker 1: of dilettants and like to explore broadly. Some people spend
Speaker 1: huge amount of time outside their comfort zone and never
Speaker 1: really focus enough on, you know, deliberate practice what they're
Speaker 1: really need to get good at. And what I push
Speaker 1: in the book is this idea that kind of whole
Speaker 1: brain thinking and whole brain behavior is really what's powerful.
Speaker 1: So if there are things that you've left behind and
Speaker 1: say I'm just not good at X, Y and Z,
Speaker 1: and you spend all your time chewing away on the
Speaker 1: things that you're really good at, the time spent outside
Speaker 1: of your area of expertise, outside of your comfort zone,
Speaker 1: with people that you don't like to associate with or
Speaker 1: don't agree with in uncomfortable situations, that time is the
Speaker 1: highest growth potential time, And so finding how to use
Speaker 1: those parts of yourself. In the book looks at many
Speaker 1: of those different pieces, so some parts will resonate with
Speaker 1: some readers more than others, I think, But how do
Speaker 1: you dip your toes into your weaknesses and focus on
Speaker 1: what you're not good at? That is the most direct
Speaker 1: way of starting to break those habits and ruts and patterns.
Speaker 1: This idea of deliberate practice, by the way, which may
Speaker 1: be familiar with, is you know, the best musicians in
Speaker 1: the world don't practice longer than other positions and they
Speaker 1: don't do different exercises. But what they do do is
Speaker 1: they stay on the parts of the music that they
Speaker 1: are the worst at and they really pick away at
Speaker 1: that until they get good at it, while other people
Speaker 1: tend to really enjoy doing what they're best at, and
Speaker 1: that seems to be what pulls them apart. And so
Speaker 1: that's one of the things I really look at is
Speaker 1: sort of how do you create those uncomfortable situations and
Speaker 1: enjoy getting outside of your routines and patterns, which is
Speaker 1: hard because the human brain is definitely programmed to enjoy
Speaker 1: being in pattern and routine. And then the other thing,
Speaker 1: you know, I relied and spoke with Teresa Mobula at Harvard,
Speaker 1: who I know, you know, and she really talks about
Speaker 1: the context of creativity being very important too, that it's
Speaker 1: not just about you being creative, it's about you know,
Speaker 1: where are you, Are you around the right kinds of people,
Speaker 1: are you in the right processes? What's the environment? And
Speaker 1: how do you change that environment to unlock your own creativity?
Speaker 1: Because I think there is this feeling of like it's
Speaker 1: a innate talent and skill and something we need to
Speaker 1: draw forth, but in fact, sometimes changing our collaborators, Our
Speaker 1: situation helps it birth burst out of us. Now, the
Speaker 1: word creativity doesn't appear in your book title whatsoever, But
Speaker 1: this is fundamentally a book about creativity and organizations and entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: Anyone you know who wants to be creative? Would these
Speaker 1: some of these principles not apply? You always said there's
Speaker 1: no one size fits all. Are there situations where some
Speaker 1: of these principles like wouldn't apply if you have to
Speaker 1: like meet a deadline tomorrow and your client doesn't really
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to be creative? Yeah, definitely. I mean so,
Speaker 1: I guess there's two things, you know. I think Adam
Speaker 1: Grant spoke about it really well in Originals where he
Speaker 1: talks about that portfolio of risk. I think he calls it,
Speaker 1: you know, this idea that we can't be on that
Speaker 1: creative edge at all times. It's totally exhausting and it's
Speaker 1: not appropriate. And nobody really wants to be around the
Speaker 1: guy who wants to break everything all the time. So so,
Speaker 1: in some ways, the title, you know, with the exploding
Speaker 1: light bulb on the cover, is maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: misleading in that I'm not saying that you need to
Speaker 1: be this of like you know, provocateur at all times.
Speaker 1: So we do need to think about when we want
Speaker 1: to push risk. But I think we all know in
Speaker 1: our lives that there are times where like I need
Speaker 1: to get out of this pattern, I need to change this,
Speaker 1: and then we fail to do it. This is a
Speaker 1: book about really when to do that and how to
Speaker 1: do it. And then you know John Cleese, who's a
Speaker 1: favorite of mine from Money Python. He talks about the opening.
Speaker 1: He's wonderful, he's hilarious and brilliant, and he talks about
Speaker 1: the open enclosed mode, which I know you wrote about
Speaker 1: something quite similar about this idea that there are times
Speaker 1: in the creative process where we need to go wide
Speaker 1: and really get out and just get as many ideas
Speaker 1: and unusual collaborations and break expectations. And then there are
Speaker 1: times where we just need to buckle down and focus
Speaker 1: and we don't need to be questioning again and don't
Speaker 1: need to be like opening up Pandora's box at all times.
Speaker 1: And to really know where you are in the creative
Speaker 1: process and to stay in creative flow, you need to
Speaker 1: sort of be able to map and say, you know,
Speaker 1: now is time to push ourselves to the edge. It's
Speaker 1: time for intrinsic motivation. Is time for play, and now
Speaker 1: it's time for execution. It's time to focus on extrinsic motivation.
Speaker 1: It's time to dive deeply and execute. And then we're
Speaker 1: going to commit to this idea and then we'll test
Speaker 1: it and go back to the creative mode again if
Speaker 1: we need to. So understanding where you are and this
Speaker 1: is not just creativity for creativity's sake, I think it's helpful.
Speaker 1: One thing about like old style books about creativity that
Speaker 1: I don't like, you know, earlier generation is profiling these
Speaker 1: creative geniuses and being like, look at this amazing creative
Speaker 1: genius and how did they do it? In a way
Speaker 1: that sort of takes away from the reality of what
Speaker 1: we have to do every day, this iconoclass. So this
Speaker 1: is I know that sort of the part of a
Speaker 1: new generation of creative books. I creativity books. I think
Speaker 1: that trying to make it more accessible to everyday people
Speaker 1: and not just look at Steve Jobs and how he
Speaker 1: did what he did. So are you referring to like
Speaker 1: Frank Baron's books or what are some old school ones
Speaker 1: you're referring to? Well, how old are we talking? Well?
Speaker 1: You know, there's like a you know, I think maybe
Speaker 1: ten years back, but yeah, this is sort of like
Speaker 1: a lot of portraits of creativity, portraits of great artists,
Speaker 1: and you know there's some amazing books like that as well,
Speaker 1: but that sort of use these case studies that feel inaccessible,
Speaker 1: I guess in a sense. And I know that I
Speaker 1: try to use a bunch of case studies that it's
Speaker 1: kind of everyday people who've done extraordinary things. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: so there are these different phases of the creative process,
Speaker 1: and I want I want to turn that idea, and
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: And then you talk about the collaboration. So when there's
Speaker 1: the part of the creative process where you need to
Speaker 1: collaborate with others, what's the effect of working collaborating with
Speaker 1: people who only share your values. I love working with
Speaker 1: people who only share my values. It's very fun, no,
Speaker 1: I know. I mean I started a creative agency based
Speaker 1: on values, and I had all kinds of litmus tests
Speaker 1: about who I wanted to have in the company. And
Speaker 1: you know that's the same as like Google, you know,
Speaker 1: hiring for culture. We see it. It's accepted as this
Speaker 1: sort of are you going to fit in, are you
Speaker 1: going to make are you going to add to the
Speaker 1: ease and comfort of this organization so that we can
Speaker 1: get our work done effectively. And the problem with that is,
Speaker 1: you know that creates, it reinforces by us thinking it
Speaker 1: makes everybody feel good on the team, but they're spending
Speaker 1: more time making each other feel good and happy and
Speaker 1: not challenging each other. You know, these experiments to find
Speaker 1: that he hand picked teams of experts who share experience
Speaker 1: and perspectives underperform on creativity tasks. You know, random groups
Speaker 1: of beginners. Because these random groups are beginners just see
Speaker 1: the world totally differently, and so new and novel ideas
Speaker 1: can come forth. But there's something kind of even deeper,
Speaker 1: I think, which is that when we enforce strict moral codes,
Speaker 1: it's okay to talk about this, it's not okay to
Speaker 1: talk about that. This is in bounds, this is out
Speaker 1: of bounds. We just shut down so many different avenues
Speaker 1: for exploration. So I profile a pastor in the book
Speaker 1: who was trying to fight crime in his neighborhood and
Speaker 1: stop violence in his neighborhood. And it was when he
Speaker 1: was working with the at risk youth, he wasn't getting anywhere.
Speaker 1: But when he was working with the kids, when he
Speaker 1: stepped out and started hanging out with the kids who
Speaker 1: were actually committing the crimes that you know, the murderer
Speaker 1: on his block, all these ideas started bursting forth. And
Speaker 1: he was part of the Boston miracle that saw you know,
Speaker 1: a sixty six percent drop and in Boston in murders
Speaker 1: because he actually started looking for creative solutions with the enemy.
Speaker 1: And so I just think that organizations that are trying
Speaker 1: to get too comfortable and too safe by having people
Speaker 1: who don't rock the boat at all, create huge problems,
Speaker 1: and that we all need to sort of stop thinking
Speaker 1: that we'll be polluted by hanging out with people who
Speaker 1: don't share our values and start believing we don't need
Speaker 1: to change their minds, they don't need to change ours.
Speaker 1: To both get more creative just by being exposed to
Speaker 1: each other. So we should rellaborate with our enemies, I think.
Speaker 1: So I think we can. It's uncomfortable, but we can,
Speaker 1: and and I've found there's a it's really hard to
Speaker 1: do that online actually, So there's some interesting experiments that
Speaker 1: just show that people just get further entrenched in their
Speaker 1: thinking when exposed to other people's to counter thinking online,
Speaker 1: but face to face, we are much more likely to
Speaker 1: learn when we encounter another human being and can't reconcile.
Speaker 1: Oh this p it's pleasant and nice and we're having
Speaker 1: a good conversation. That allows us to open up to
Speaker 1: new ideas in a way that watching, you know, ranting
Speaker 1: on a message board does not at all. It just
Speaker 1: that further entrenches us in our thinking. Cool. So we
Speaker 1: talked about collaboration and I want to talk about motivation
Speaker 1: a little bit. How do you stay motivated? Are there
Speaker 1: any tips you know that you talk about in your
Speaker 1: book how to stay motivated when changing habits is so hard?
Speaker 1: That seems to be kind of the default state is
Speaker 1: not wanting to change your habits. Yeah, So, you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that I kind of found to the most
Speaker 1: interesting about motivation is we think a lot about the
Speaker 1: content of what we're doing. Is this thing inherently motivating?
Speaker 1: Do I want to do this thing? Does this align
Speaker 1: with my deepest life purpose? And if yes, we'll be motivated,
Speaker 1: and if no, we won't be motivated. So we need
Speaker 1: to keep looking for that thing that turns us on.
Speaker 1: But creativity is a grind A lot of times, building
Speaker 1: anything new and special doesn't always feel good. And even
Speaker 1: if we are aligned to our deepest life purpose, does
Speaker 1: that mean that we're going to stay energized and often
Speaker 1: know through all the failure and setbacks. And yet people
Speaker 1: do things all the time that are not inherently motivating
Speaker 1: at all, Like they play video games and they grind
Speaker 1: away for hours and hours with complete focus without sort
Speaker 1: of stepping back and asking why it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with their life's purpose, but they're so motivated to
Speaker 1: beat it. And so that has to do with you know,
Speaker 1: in many ways, what you know flow theory tells us,
Speaker 1: which is kind of what I based. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people talk about I base some of my
Speaker 1: thinking on is that if you have that right mix
Speaker 1: of challenge and skill, and the challenge is just beyond
Speaker 1: your skill level, that brings forth a ton of motivation,
Speaker 1: and that brings forth excitement and play. And that's why
Speaker 1: video games are just inherently so addictive and fun. They
Speaker 1: just keep us just beyond our skill level. So instead
Speaker 1: of stepping back and asking all the time, do I
Speaker 1: want to do this? Does this align with what I'm
Speaker 1: most meant to do. Once we've committed to something, the
Speaker 1: most important thing to step back and say, how are
Speaker 1: my skills right now match to this challenge? And do
Speaker 1: I need to sort of tune up my skills or
Speaker 1: bring in other people to add to that motivation so
Speaker 1: we can get up to that level we need to
Speaker 1: be or do I need to tune down the challenge
Speaker 1: or tune up the challenge? And working at that level
Speaker 1: of more, how do I get into sort of creative
Speaker 1: flow by being well matched for the challenge I'm facing
Speaker 1: is more important in some ways than questioning the content
Speaker 1: of what we're doing all the time. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I give kind of a lot of tips for how
Speaker 1: to question whether you or your team are in a
Speaker 1: state of flow when you're trying to be creative, and
Speaker 1: how to add in or subtract some of that challenge
Speaker 1: so that you get to that right place. And so
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a twist I think on
Speaker 1: the usual, you know, declare your purpose statement and then
Speaker 1: maniacally follow it, which I think is a little misguided. Times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel your brother, but think that in the field,
Speaker 1: there's this debate, another debate between what is the difference
Speaker 1: or similarities between flow and the wert practice, because they
Speaker 1: seem to be almost opposite things, or are they not?
Speaker 1: You know, Angel Ducker talks about this debate in her
Speaker 1: book Grit. You know is like, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: in the full state, you're not deliberately consciously trying to
Speaker 1: push beyond your comfort zone. You're kind of in the flow.
Speaker 1: That's the whole, that's the word flow. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: Now you're asking me to definitely weigh in with some
Speaker 1: of the true experts in the field and the degrees.
Speaker 1: So I will do so very cautiously. But I respect
Speaker 1: the way that I the way that I understand it
Speaker 1: is that we engage in deliberate Deliberate practice doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: put us in flow. In fact, it can be horribly difficult.
Speaker 1: We aren't experiencing flow at that time, but we do
Speaker 1: deliberate practice so that we can return to flow when
Speaker 1: we are performing our creative work. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get something done. I hit a wall. I feel that
Speaker 1: motivation flagging. It's no fun anymore. I want to put
Speaker 1: it aside, and I don't know why. And I realize,
Speaker 1: actually I don't know how to do this thing, or
Speaker 1: I don't have the resources that I need to do
Speaker 1: this thing. So I'm just grinding and bang in my
Speaker 1: head against it. What happens if I step back and yes,
Speaker 1: it's going to slow down the project, it's going to
Speaker 1: slow down my performance. I step back and I go
Speaker 1: and learn that thing. I work on that thing. That's
Speaker 1: where the deliberate practice comes in. Now I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit better at it. Now I come back at it,
Speaker 1: and oh I can do it. You know, video games
Speaker 1: the same way, right Like, I'm trying to beat this
Speaker 1: boss and I can't. I need to go back and
Speaker 1: get the right tools. And that may be not as fun,
Speaker 1: but I go get the right weapon. Now I come
Speaker 1: back and I fight. It's a sort of similar practice
Speaker 1: with building something, which is, you know, step away, learn,
Speaker 1: come back, return to flow easier so than done. But
Speaker 1: that's that's how i'd see them together. I don't see
Speaker 1: us getting into flow in deliberate practice. But the truth,
Speaker 1: the researchers mean no more than I do. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your perspective. You know, they're both creally important.
Speaker 1: We can agree on that. Yeah, So why can anxiety
Speaker 1: be a fuel for creativity? You know, we've talked about
Speaker 1: why anxiety sucks. Right, But like so when I was
Speaker 1: looking at this safe thinking cycle, I thought, okay, so
Speaker 1: threat awareness leads anxiety, which leads to stereotypical thinking, how
Speaker 1: do we avoid feeling anxiety? How do we get out
Speaker 1: of that? And in the research that I looked at,
Speaker 1: it was like, you can't actually avoid feeling anxiety. And
Speaker 1: the more that you try to steel yourself against feeling anxiety,
Speaker 1: the more anxiety you're likely to feel. Right Like, when
Speaker 1: you push against a natural response, you're going to feel
Speaker 1: that response even more deeply. So instead of thinking how
Speaker 1: do I stay away from and guard against feelings of anxiety,
Speaker 1: is how do I reframe a feeling of anxiety? What
Speaker 1: do I do when I'm told, uh oh, this doesn't
Speaker 1: feel good, this feels frightening? How do I respond to that?
Speaker 1: And so a lot of the research I looked at said,
Speaker 1: you know, we have that opportunity to reframe to if
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves I've never done anything creative without feeling anxiety,
Speaker 1: Anxiety may be a sign that I am pushing to
Speaker 1: that edge of the known. Anxiety may be a sign
Speaker 1: that I'm taking a risk, and risk is an inherent
Speaker 1: part of building something new. We can actually say I'm
Speaker 1: want to move towards that anxious experience, not a way,
Speaker 1: it's not really a threat to my well being and
Speaker 1: my safety. It's just a sign that I'm pushing into
Speaker 1: the unknown. And that kind of self talk, while sounding
Speaker 1: very simple, was pretty common to the you know, fifty
Speaker 1: to sixty entrepreneurs that I talked to, who all said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know an idea is not going to be good
Speaker 1: if I feel comfortable the whole time through. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: starting to think about when I feel anxious tell myself
Speaker 1: that that is fuel or a sign that creativity is
Speaker 1: emerging can have a profound impact. Although of course it
Speaker 1: takes practice. It's not you know, a single in a
Speaker 1: day you're suddenly moving towards anxiety. But it's an important
Speaker 1: piece of the puzzle. Oh my gosh, does it take practice.
Speaker 1: I deliberately practice that one every day of my life.
Speaker 1: How do you do it? You know, through meditation, through
Speaker 1: changing my automatic pattern. A lot of what you're talking about, brother,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't keep calling you brother, but
Speaker 1: you know I'm in that mood, I guess right now.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of what you're talking about today.
Speaker 1: You know, it's yeah, you do. You gotta keep practicing it.
Speaker 1: You can so easily revert back to the default, right,
Speaker 1: it's so easy too. To think anxious is easy totally.
Speaker 1: And I think, I mean you probably know this from meditation,
Speaker 1: that being kind and gentle with ourselves when we do
Speaker 1: fall back into our patterns, just like in meditation, if
Speaker 1: you start thinking, you don't berate yourself, you you know,
Speaker 1: pull yourself gently back to to focus. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty critical as well, that we need to sort of
Speaker 1: understand that the default state is automatic thinking and and
Speaker 1: patterned behavior, and except that we're going to be doing
Speaker 1: that probably for the rest of our lives. But if
Speaker 1: we can bring those patterns just a little bit, we
Speaker 1: can open up new possibilities. And investing the time and
Speaker 1: thinking into doing that is really well worth it. Greed
Speaker 1: very much agreed. So let's talk about identity. Then we
Speaker 1: talked about values. What's difference between values and identity, first
Speaker 1: of all, because you do talk about identity separately as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I've got really interested in this. Some of the
Speaker 1: research that said, you know, if you say I plan
Speaker 1: to vote, I'm going to vote in this election versus
Speaker 1: I am going to be a voter in this next election.
Speaker 1: When you say I'm going to be a voter, I
Speaker 1: am a voter. We then take on that identity and
Speaker 1: the action that goes with it becomes so much more
Speaker 1: important that we're much more likely to actually do it.
Speaker 1: Just getting someone to say I plan to be a
Speaker 1: voter will vastly increase the likelihood that they will vote
Speaker 1: in the next election of versus I plan to vote.
Speaker 1: Because taking a commitment to take an action that doesn't
Speaker 1: tie to who we think we are is really different
Speaker 1: than an action that we do because of course someone
Speaker 1: like me would do this. We're always doing things to
Speaker 1: match our actions to who we think we are. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a primal force within us, so we take on.
Speaker 1: If we start to take on that identity of I
Speaker 1: am an unsafe thinker, then suddenly unsafe ideas become attractive
Speaker 1: as opposed to just frightening. And so it's a little
Speaker 1: bit different than value is. To say you know, I
Speaker 1: care about X, Y and Z puts us a little
Speaker 1: bit of a remove, you know. But if you say
Speaker 1: you know, I'm someone who fights for X, Y and Z,
Speaker 1: that tends to give us a a little bit more
Speaker 1: of that boost of motivation to actually do it. And
Speaker 1: so at the end of the book, I really talk
Speaker 1: about my own journey of asking in the context of
Speaker 1: the context of my company, and a point I got
Speaker 1: to in my career, you know, what would an unsafe
Speaker 1: thinker do in this case, And that actually pushed me
Speaker 1: to sell my company and to move on from the
Speaker 1: only job I ever really had because I realized that
Speaker 1: was at the end of my creative journey with it.
Speaker 1: So it had a profound impact on me. But I
Speaker 1: also think that just so many of the role models
Speaker 1: that we have right now are outdated, and we are
Speaker 1: building our identity as leaders and as collaborators and as
Speaker 1: creative people around sort of somewhat outmoded role models. So
Speaker 1: to see ourselves, for instance, to be a leader does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean to be an expert, and many, you know,
Speaker 1: studies have shown that people would rather follow a humble
Speaker 1: leader than a self aggrandizing leader. And yet we get
Speaker 1: into that leadership role and we start having to project
Speaker 1: you know, expertise and power when really that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: feel comfortable to ourselves and our followers don't really want
Speaker 1: that from us. Either. So can we change some of
Speaker 1: those roles models and change that identity to live up
Speaker 1: to something that's more relevant today, is you know what
Speaker 1: I'm looking at? Yeah? Do you mind telling you a
Speaker 1: little more of your personal story? You only you know,
Speaker 1: you just teased the listeners what was the only job
Speaker 1: you ever had? You know? Like, are you comfortable talking
Speaker 1: about that? Yeah? Definitely not the easiest story in many
Speaker 1: ways to tell, because it involves some failure that I
Speaker 1: wrestled with for quite some time, which is that when
Speaker 1: I was twenty three, I started an agency, like I said,
Speaker 1: to create social change, which I know is a contested
Speaker 1: term now, but you know, how dare you to follow
Speaker 1: my values? You know, I was kind of into heavily
Speaker 1: into helping save the environment and human rights and workers' rights,
Speaker 1: and so we were making these early internet films that
Speaker 1: were getting people to take action on some of these issues,
Speaker 1: and we had some huge early successes. We're getting twenty
Speaker 1: thirty million people watching our things, way before YouTube ever existed,
Speaker 1: you know, leading to actions on the ground and protests
Speaker 1: and campaigns to congress, and the company really kind of
Speaker 1: went well. Things were good, and so we grew to
Speaker 1: about twenty five people, and people started asking how do
Speaker 1: you do what you do and how does it work?
Speaker 1: And I started giving talks and that's when I discovered
Speaker 1: storytelling was really at the heart of what we were doing.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, this is not just about cool technology
Speaker 1: or cool graphics or sounds or humor. This is about
Speaker 1: like these core stories that we're telling. And I got
Speaker 1: approached to write a book about storytelling, which I was,
Speaker 1: you know, a beginner at in a way. I didn't
Speaker 1: know the theory and the history of storytelling or of advertising.
Speaker 1: So I dove in wrote a book about storytelling, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I was like an expert in the field. Right.
Speaker 1: I was traveling around the world giving talks on stages,
Speaker 1: telling everyone how to do it, and that was bringing
Speaker 1: in all these clients and they were expecting us to
Speaker 1: follow this pattern that I was now associated with, and
Speaker 1: so the company turned. I had to start turning the
Speaker 1: company from something that was just sort of it's called
Speaker 1: free range, you know, it's kind of free ranging, kind
Speaker 1: of crazy creativity, this thing that was more structured, and
Speaker 1: we had more and more clients. We grew to forty people,
Speaker 1: and we had a we had a whole system that
Speaker 1: people were expecting from us, and I started. I stopped
Speaker 1: being that beginner who was so in love with storytelling,
Speaker 1: who was trying to learn as much as possible, and
Speaker 1: I started to become more of that disciplinarian who was like,
Speaker 1: this is how we do it, and I'd go up
Speaker 1: on stage, this is how we do, this is how
Speaker 1: we do It's sorry, sorry, I just hopefully I had
Speaker 1: sung during those times. It might help. I'll look for
Speaker 1: other other buzz terms you can jump in. So I, uh, yeah.
Speaker 1: So the company started to lose this creativity, and I
Speaker 1: started to lose my creativity as we grew. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't really obvious in the bottom line. It wasn't obvious
Speaker 1: in our growth, but I could feel that sense of
Speaker 1: we are losing that edge of play and fun and
Speaker 1: cutting edge creativity. And I'll tell you that trying to
Speaker 1: do anything on the internet marketing that's not cutting edge
Speaker 1: is you know, completely irrelevant, you know. Two weeks later
Speaker 1: and so I could really sense that the company was
Speaker 1: going to be kind of falling down on its face
Speaker 1: shortly if we didn't do something different, and if I
Speaker 1: didn't start letting go of that ego attachment to expertise
Speaker 1: and if I didn't become an explorer again, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, figuring out how to do that was really
Speaker 1: the foundation of writing this book. And you know, I
Speaker 1: kept running the company through the research for this book.
Speaker 1: But as I got done with the research, I realized
Speaker 1: that the grind of trying to move something from where
Speaker 1: I knew I needed to move it to somewhere else.
Speaker 1: I had changed the creative process in the company, I
Speaker 1: had changed the creative process in myself. Things were working
Speaker 1: much better. But I felt like now I'm at the
Speaker 1: end of this journey and took a step that I
Speaker 1: never thought I could. I thought I would literally die
Speaker 1: as the CEO of this company, that that was my
Speaker 1: goal was to you know, just the dial. But no, yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that I would, you know, do it till
Speaker 1: I was seventy five, and then I would you know,
Speaker 1: that would be maybe I'd never retire and I keep
Speaker 1: doing this thing that I loved. And it took me,
Speaker 1: you know, changing my identity in a way to make
Speaker 1: that change and to free myself up to do something different.
Speaker 1: And in some ways that's a it's a bit an unknown.
Speaker 1: I'm launching a book. I'm speaking about it, and I
Speaker 1: don't know where it's going to lead. So for the
Speaker 1: first time ever, it's important to know when to grit,
Speaker 1: and it's important to know when to quit. Is that?
Speaker 1: Do I summarize everything you just said? Pretty much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: sentence can edit all the rest own. I just say that. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to edit out. That was wonderful. Thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing that and being vulnerable with our audience.
Speaker 1: So I always appreciate it when I guess do that.
Speaker 1: So I'll just I want to end with a question,
Speaker 1: how can you build an organization that embraces what you
Speaker 1: call intelligent risk? Yeah, so the end of the book
Speaker 1: I really talked on in the last couple of chapters
Speaker 1: about that. As leaders, what do we do to not
Speaker 1: just say, hey, I want more creativity from my company,
Speaker 1: because we're all doing that as leaders, you know, berating
Speaker 1: our people saying, you know, more creativity please, I'm not
Speaker 1: always getting it, and so what do you do? I
Speaker 1: looked at a couple of things that I think are
Speaker 1: particularly effective. One of them is, ironically to me, that
Speaker 1: unsafe organizations are organizations actually that have a high level
Speaker 1: of inherence safety in them. So if you have this
Speaker 1: sort of free wheeling wild West environment where everyone's competing
Speaker 1: and fighting with each other to be the most creative,
Speaker 1: people are going to stop taking risks. But once you
Speaker 1: make people feel inherently safe. I talked to Steve Kerr
Speaker 1: of the Golden State Warriors, the coach of the Golden
Speaker 1: State Warriors, and he said his first work when he
Speaker 1: came to the Warriors was to make everyone in the
Speaker 1: locker room, even though despite all the pressure to win,
Speaker 1: feel that they were inherently valued as human beings. And
Speaker 1: that's partly because he was an amazing three point shooter
Speaker 1: and one of the best ever. He never want to yeah,
Speaker 1: very clutch, So he said that, you know, he was
Speaker 1: always afraid he was going to miss the shot and
Speaker 1: that he didn't really belong in the NBA, so he
Speaker 1: would always secretly not take the big shot. And then
Speaker 1: you know that time in the finals when Jordan would
Speaker 1: have the flu they dished to him and finally he
Speaker 1: put it up, you know, during the shot won the series,
Speaker 1: and he realized that he needed to get past that
Speaker 1: feeling that he was always in the bubble of being
Speaker 1: pushed off the team in order to take any risks,
Speaker 1: and he vowed when he became a coach that he
Speaker 1: would never have any players feeling that they were on
Speaker 1: the edge of being tossed out of the organization, that everyone,
Speaker 1: for as long as they are on the Warriors, would
Speaker 1: feel needed and important and loved, and that turned the
Speaker 1: team around hugely. Now, obviously he's got a lot of
Speaker 1: talent on our team, but he was able to unlock it,
Speaker 1: I think by making a very safe culture for experimentation
Speaker 1: and risk. And that's what we need to do in
Speaker 1: our organization is if we want people to butt heads
Speaker 1: and disagree and fight it out and all that, we
Speaker 1: need to first establish that everyone is valued and safe
Speaker 1: in that organization and not have that kind of chaos
Speaker 1: where we're only rewarding people who create the results, where
Speaker 1: we're rewarding people for taking intelligent risks, where we're outwardly
Speaker 1: rewarding people for breaking rules that no longer make sense
Speaker 1: and telling those stories of how they broke those rules.
Speaker 1: We should be minimizing the number of rules in an
Speaker 1: organization I found, so that anything that people are holding
Speaker 1: people back but are unnecessary, trusting our people more in
Speaker 1: a sense. And finally, we need to kind of be
Speaker 1: putting teams together in which very divergent views are expressed
Speaker 1: and a lot One of the most interesting things I
Speaker 1: found in my research is this concept of shared information bias,
Speaker 1: which is a group gets together and they're most likely
Speaker 1: going to sit around and talk about what they all
Speaker 1: already know. What's the point of getting together. The point
Speaker 1: of getting together is to talk about the things that
Speaker 1: only a couple people know and everyone needs to know
Speaker 1: and so. But that doesn't happen because we actually forget
Speaker 1: that outlying information the minute we get together and start
Speaker 1: discussing the stuff we already share in knowledge. And usually
Speaker 1: the people who are a lower status in the group
Speaker 1: are going to hold that outside information because the boss
Speaker 1: has always been talking about the same thing. Everyone knows
Speaker 1: what the boss thinks, but few people know what the
Speaker 1: people on the edges think. So what we need to
Speaker 1: do is leaders need to speak last. We need to
Speaker 1: make sure everybody writes down what their unique contribution is
Speaker 1: before getting into a meeting, and then making sure everyone
Speaker 1: gets to speak before we end a meeting. So some
Speaker 1: research shows that meetings actually need to run a lot
Speaker 1: longer than they do, which I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't want to hear, but to make sure that
Speaker 1: we're drawing that information from the edges to get that
Speaker 1: creative output and break through is really important, you know.
Speaker 1: So when we bring these diverse teams together, it's not
Speaker 1: enough to just bring diverse teams together, but to make
Speaker 1: sure those diverse ideas are being pulled forth. And that
Speaker 1: means the leader can't dominate the conversation. So yeah, a
Speaker 1: number of things. Organizations can't just say we want to
Speaker 1: be more creative, but really start building around a creative culture.
Speaker 1: There's a really surprising, fascinating study that I saw about
Speaker 1: how discussing political correctness made teams more creative. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is, you know, completely very counterintuitive, but
Speaker 1: apparently because if you discuss political correctness first, it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually shut down the boundaries of what people are willing
Speaker 1: to talk about. It makes everyone feel safe enough that like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm diverse people when they get together feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm safe in this group. We've discussed what feels comfortable.
Speaker 1: Now we can then go knowing we care about each other,
Speaker 1: we can go out and take more risks by being
Speaker 1: vulnerable upfront about our biases and our expectations. So I
Speaker 1: thought that kind of thing is interesting that I have
Speaker 1: a cheat. Yes, but what if you have people on
Speaker 1: the team that like are anti putical correctness, Like, aren't
Speaker 1: you making them feel uncomfortable? Well, first of all, I
Speaker 1: didn't run the study. Okay, I can't. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a you know it was it. Can you please everyone?
Speaker 1: You know? It's like is that realistic? Yeah? But I
Speaker 1: you know, I talk a little bit about generally putting
Speaker 1: some distance in a sense, the idea is to find
Speaker 1: a way to put some distance between disagreeing with ideas
Speaker 1: and just disagreeing with each other as people. So this
Speaker 1: is maybe one way to do it is to set
Speaker 1: some set some kind of conversation about political correctness is
Speaker 1: one way to do it. It's a show we're all value.
Speaker 1: There's many other ways to do it, but and I
Speaker 1: talk about gamifying descent, for instance, how do you actually
Speaker 1: make a structure and a game out of disagreement so
Speaker 1: that it feels safe to like go as hard as
Speaker 1: you can at each other's ideas without devalue each other.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's there's a lot of ways to do
Speaker 1: that as well. But yeah, basically, like, how can I
Speaker 1: tell you that your idea sucks? Without telling you that
Speaker 1: you suck is you know, figure out the best way
Speaker 1: to do that, and you're in good shape. That seems
Speaker 1: like a different issue than in the correctness issue though,
Speaker 1: that that seems like a really I mean, that is
Speaker 1: what the point you just made there, that's excellent point,
Speaker 1: you know. And we want to have diversity. We want
Speaker 1: people to feel comfortable to disagree with each other, you know,
Speaker 1: and not have to feel like everything they say is correct.
Speaker 1: So well, I'm trying to answer the questions that I
Speaker 1: want to answer, and not answer the questions you're giving me.
Speaker 1: I don't really I don't know the answer you're You're
Speaker 1: probably right. It's a good ulication that you could turn
Speaker 1: somebody off by enforcing some norms of political correctness or
Speaker 1: even discussing it. That is definitely true. So I think
Speaker 1: it's more of an interesting as a signpost of an
Speaker 1: idea than maybe some of an activity to do every
Speaker 1: day in your organization. Sounds good. Well, thanks for writing
Speaker 1: this book and for chatting with me today. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: It's been a great conversation. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Psychology podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react, in some way to something you heard.
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
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Speaker 1: the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.