You’re days into a work project, staring at a screen, feeling anxious about your tight deadline. Mid-afternoon your phone lights up with a call from a friend. You want to connect, but you feel like you don’t have a minute to spare. You let the call go into voicemail.

On the surface, this decision may seem inconsequential. But what if you knew that a decision like this, centered on an opportunity for social connection, could make a difference in the health of your brain? Would you make time for the call?

Ben Rein is author of the book, Why Brains Needs Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection. He studies the impact of social interactions on brain health and helps us understand, at a cellular level, the biological importance of human relationships.

After listening to this interview, you may find yourself picking up the phone a whole lot more.

Episode Links

Wired for Connection, Cursed by Computers: How Social Media May Be Affecting Our Empathy

The Sci-Fi Hypothesis that Explains Why You Click with Certain People

Interview With Kasley Killam

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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Digital exhaustion is real. We’re working across more apps than ever before, and since they’re always accessible, work-life boundaries have disappeared. Combine this with our personal tech, and we’ve got a recipe for burnout.

Paul Leonardi is a Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. After decades of business consulting, he’s had a front-row seat to employees’ digital burnout. What he saw led him to create concrete solutions, which he outlines in his latest book, Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life.

These are smart and sensible strategies leaders can put into practice to improve employees’ quality of life – and work.

Episode Links

Developing a Digital Mindset

Are Collaboration Tools Overwhelming Your Team

Interview with Gloria Mark

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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We spend a lot of our lives in groups. Whether it’s at work. With friends. Even with family. Yet we tend to focus on everyone as individuals. We rarely think about things from the group’s perspective.

Colin Fisher is an expert in organizational behavior and an associate professor at University College London, and he wants to change that. His book, The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups, is his insightful attempt at sharing the latest insights on high-performing teams and how to lead them.

Episode Links

Top Six Tips for Terrific Teams

5 Secrets for Getting the Most out of Working as a Group

Interview with Keith Sawyer on groups’ collective genius

The Team

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What prevents some of us from acting on our creative ideas while others dive right in?

That’s the question creativity researcher, Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, set out to answer. It’s what she writes about in her book, The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action.

Zorana is a senior research scientist at Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Through her work, she’s learned that creativity is a choice, and, when things get hard, we need to employ specific psychological and emotional tools to sustain our efforts. We also need to tap into strong and weak ties for support.

If you’re looking to unstick your creative capacity, this is the book you’ll want to pick up. It’s an inspiring read!

Episode Links

How We Think about Creativity Matters

Creativity is a Choice, Not a Trait

What Art Teaches Us

Interview with Moshe Bar, Episode 214, Curious Minds at Work

The Team

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Good things happen when people know they matter. Engagement and performance increase, which then motivates people to stay. In addition, they’re happier, which, makes work more enjoyable for everyone.  

But creating this kind of workplace doesn’t happen by accident. It requires that leaders consistently apply a set of specific skills focused on these outcomes. That’s why I wanted to talk to Zach Mercurio, author of the book The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance.

Zach holds a PhD in organizational learning, performance, and change. He advises leaders on practices for building cultures that promote well-being, motivation, and high performance. His previous book is The Invisible Leader.

Episode Links

Great Leaders Make People Feel Noticed

The Power of Mattering at Work

To Become a Better Leader, Change the Way You See People

Interview with Adam Galinsky on what great leaders do – author of Inspire

The Team

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When’s the last time you ran an experiment? Not as a scientist. But as a person who wants to get unstuck or try something new.

There are messages coming at us from all directions. A popular one encourages us to pursue big dreams often in service of a blanket version of success. For some, these messages are motivating. But for many others, they’re overwhelming. If, instead, we want to pursue our own path, how do we begin?

This week’s guest is Anne-Laure Le Cunff. She’s felt these cultural pressures, and it’s what’s led her to develop a different approach. She tapped into a method that lowers feelings of overwhelm and brings back the joy of discovery. And it’s a strategy that led her to write her book, Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World.

In this interview we talk about what a tiny experiment is and what it can do for us. We also discuss how to plan, run, and learn from them. I was energized by her approach.

Episode Links

The Trap of the Deadline High

Self-Authorship: The Art of Trusting Your Own Authority

Intellectual Self-Doubt: The Psychology behind Questioning Your Own Competence

Interview with Leidy Klotz (Episode 192), author of the book, Subtract

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Something happens at work – good or bad – and it brings on strong emotions. Instead of taking a moment to calm down, we’ve got to quickly shift gears and head into another meeting. We know we’ve got to manage our feelings, but the question is, how do we do that?

Ethan Kross is an experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and writer who specializes in emotion regulation. He is a professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan and Director of the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory there. In his latest book, Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You, he shares simple, concrete ways to do this.

Episode Links

You Don’t Always Have to Process Your Emotions

Are You Overreacting?

The Expert Guide to Taking Control of Your Emotions

Interview with Michael Norton on The Ritual Effect

The Team

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A few years ago, we experienced a solar eclipse. Walking the streets of my neighborhood that day, looking through my solar eclipse glasses and sharing them with others, I felt a profound sense of awe.

And I saw that awe, that wonder, reflected in the faces of the people around me. For one or two hours, we were part of something bigger than ourselves. And that experience took us out of ourselves. It softened and connected us.

Experiences like that are what made me want to read Dacher Keltner’s book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. In this conversation, we talk about what awe is, how it works, and why it matters. We also talk about how to build more awe into our lives.

Episode Links

Here’s Why You Need to Be Cultivating Awe in Your Life

An Awe Walk

Strengthen Your Leadership with the Science of Awe

Interview with Norman Farb author of Better in Every Sense

The Team

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If you think about it, your personality impacts how you approach your life. The choices you make, the risks you take, the relationships you have. Our personalities create a set of habits, automatic reactions that impact what we think, feel, and do.

When we take on new roles, like becoming a manger or a parent, we may find that certain aspects of our personality no longer work for us. As a leader, we may need to be more extroverted, more open. As a parent, more patient, less reactive. But can we become those things? Can we change specific aspects of our personalities?

That’s the question Olga Khazan wanted to answer. She’s the author of the book, Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change. Through her research – numerous interviews with scientists and practitioners – as well as experiments she ran with herself on the road to becoming a parent – she learned we can. And that’s a game changer for anyone who has dreams of doing or being something different.

Related Links

Interview with Hal Hershfield

The Big 5 Personality Traits You Can Change with Practice

I’m Disagreeable – and It’s Backed by Science. Can I Change My Personality?

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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In those moments when we want to disagree, why do we often stay silent? At those times when we want to opt out, why do we often just go along?

A key reason is that it’s hard to defy. It’s hard to question the way something’s always been done. To challenge comments, behaviors, and systems. Yet it’s in those moments of defiance that we flex our values and craft an identity.

That’s why I wanted to talk to Sunita Sah, organizational psychologist at Cornell University and author of the book, Defy: The Power of No in a World that Demands Yes. Her research reveals the importance of defiance and the skills we need to do it well. In her book – and in this conversation – she shares ways we can practice it and support others doing the same.

Related Links

Interview with Vanessa Patrick, author of The Power of Saying No

Speak up at Thanksgiving. Your Health Demands It.

America Thinks It’s a Country of Free Thinkers. But We’re Actually Compliant

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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