Curious Minds at Work

We like to think of our identities as singular and stable: I’m an early riser (and will always be), or I’m a foodie (and can’t imagine otherwise).

But if we take a step back, we see how we not only hold multiple identities, but how many of these identities change over the course of our lives. 

Remember when you were a student? Or a time when you were single?

While there are some identities we can’t change, like our race or birthplace, there are many that we can. It’s the difference between fixating on “who I am now” and, instead, focusing on “who I want to be.” And that simple shift in mindset can make all the difference when it comes to living a happier, more meaningful life.

That’s what makes The Power of Us such an important book, and it’s why I wanted to talk to one of the book’s authors, NYU Professor, Jay Van Bavel. He and his co-author, Lehigh University Professor, Dominic Packer, share helpful ways to navigate the tremendous upsides and challenging downsides of our shared identities.

Episode Links

Dassler Brothers Feud

Social Identity Theory

Henri Tajfel

1951 Princeton-Dartmouth Football Game and Group Perception

Yael Granot

Leon Festinger

Charismatic Leadership and Corporate Cultism at Enron

Jay Van Bavel NYU Social Identity Lab

https://www.powerofus.online/

Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams by Amy Edmondson

Extraterrestrial by Avi Loeb

The Team

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

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How to change someone’s mind. It’s a topic that’s come up a few times before on the podcast. For example, I talked to Jonah Berger about how to make inroads by asking for less. I also spoke with Tali Sharot about how to get further by focusing first on what you have in common.

Yet there’s one tip that’s never made the list. And it’s one that’s proven to have an incredible impact. In fact, we’ve seen some of our most compelling entertainers regularly use it to their advantage, performers like comedians, magicians, and script writers.

It’s the element of surprise.

Michael Rousell writes about it in his book, The Power of Surprise: How Your Brain Secretly Changes Your Beliefs. Teacher, psychologist, and professor emeritus at Southern Oregon University, Michael has studied the topic of surprise for over three decades, and he’s tested it with his students. He makes a compelling case for why we should use it more than we do and provides clear instructions on how we can.

Episode Links

Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett

Sam Harris and Making Belief

Confirmation bias

Wolfram Schultz and dopamine

Elaboration Likelihood Model

The Catalyst by Jonah Berger

Michael Rousell TEDxSalem

Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better by Will Storr

The Team

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

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We like to think we’re in complete control of the decisions we make. From the sandwich we ordered for lunch to the Netflix show we watched last night. Yet, in each case, we’ve got a hidden partner, one that influences nearly every decision we make.

That partner is the designer.

Whether we’re reading a restaurant menu or scrolling a website, we’re taking in information that’s been presented to us in a certain way. These conscious – or unconscious – choices that designers make can influence what we decide. In many cases, though, it’s an aspect of decision making we don’t think too much about.

It’s this element of decision science that Eric Johnson, Professor at Columbia Business School, has spent his life studying. It’s the focus of his book, The Elements of Choice: Why the Way We Decide Matters, and it is truly fascinating. In fact, I bet you’ll walk away from this interview with at least one insight that gets you thinking about design and decision making.

Episode Links

The Decision Lab

Sleights of Mind

Choice Architecture

Coffee Meets Bagel

Derren Brown

Naomi Mandel

Query Theory

Curse of Choice

Experimentation Works by Stefan Thomke

Medicine. Do Defaults Save Lives?

Endowment Effect

Replication Crisis

Meta-analysis

The Team

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

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What do you think makes companies like Amazon or Google so innovative? With Amazon you might say their relentless focus on the customer. With Google, you might point to their powerful search engine or cloud computing.

What you might not think about is just how important experiments are to their success. Not just a few experiments, but tens of thousands run annually so they can improve on what they do.

And experiments aren’t just for tech companies with lots of data. Running thoughtful experiments can yield innovative results for all kinds of companies, big and small, startup to established, across all kinds of industries. It’s how we think about them – how we design them – that matters. And that’s where science and creativity come in.

Stefan Thomke, an innovation expert and Professor at Harvard Business School, is someone who’s spent his career helping companies design and run business experiments. He writes about what he’s learned in his book, Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. It’s not only a riveting analysis of what it looks like to be an experimentation organization. It's a playbook for building one.

Episode Links

Building a Culture of Experimentation 

The Surprising Power of Online Experiments

Creating the Experimentation Organization

The Netflix Data War

The Discipline of Business Experimentation

A Smarter Way to Run Business Experiments

At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure

Jeff Bezos on Innovation

Richard Feynman on the Scientific Method (1964)

Novum Organum by Francis Bacon

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

The Team

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

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I’ve spent a lot of time talking to guests about our relationships at work. For example, we’ve discussed how to listen better, how to navigate conflict, and how to influence others, just to name a few.

What I’ve spent less time talking about are the relationships that go beyond work. That’s why I invited Kat Vellos on the show this week to talk about her amazing book, We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better Friendships.

Kat’s book is more than a callout to the power of friendship. It’s a roadmap for making new friends, and, equally valuable, it’s an owner’s manual for deepening existing friendships.

Episode Links

How Many Hours Does It Take to Make a Friend by Jeffrey A. Hall

Better Than Small Talk

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Donald Horton and Richard Wohl and Para-Social Communication

Loneliness and Social Connections

Choke by Sian Beilock

Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg

Kat Vellos TED Talk

Happy City by Charles Montgomery

Having and Being Had by Eula Biss

The Team

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

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One of the messages our culture delivers is “not enough.” Not clever enough. Not busy enough. Not successful enough. It’s a cultural mantra that beats just below the surface of many conversations, especially the ones we have with ourselves.

That’s what’s so refreshing about Vanessa Bohns’ book, You Have More Influence Than You Think: How We Underestimate our Power of Persuasion and Why It Matters. Vanessa’s message, when it comes to influence and persuasion, is that we’re more than enough. That’s why it’s so important we understand how they work because, like our favorite superheroes, we can use these powers for good or for evil.

Vanessa is a professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and Harvard Business Review, among other publications.   

Episode Links

Erica Boothby and The Invisibility Cloak Illusion

Thomas Gilovich and The Spotlight Effect 

Shared Experiences are Amplified

Audience-tuning Effects on Memory

Saying is Believing Effect

Social Media and the Invisible Audience

The Benefits of Asking for Help

Frank Flynn

A Face-to-Face Request is 34 Times More Successful Than An Email

Marianne LaFrance

Mary Carskadon and Brown University Sleep Lab

Prison Book Program

Adam Galinsky and Power Perspectives Not Taken

The Burden of Power: Construing Power as Responsibility

Chatter by Ethan Kross

Mindwise by Nicholas Epley

Kurt Lewin

To Reduce Sexual Misconduct, Help People Understand How Their Advances Might Be Perceived

The Team

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

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I have a confession to make. I enjoy talking to people I don't know. I like learning about them and hearing their stories. I'm sure it explains why I started this podcast nearly six years ago.

Yet I know a lot of people who avoid talking to strangers. And if, for any reason, they have to, they dread it. But these feelings of dread work against us. Study after study shows that when we talk to strangers, we nearly always feel good afterwards.

And in a time where people feel more isolated and lonely than ever, the good feeling that comes from talking to strangers may be just the thing we need to bring us closer together.

That's why I reached out to Joe Keohane to talk to him about his incredibly entertaining and enlightening book, The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World. He explains how we got to be so suspicious of strangers and what it's cost us. And for anyone who avoids talking to strangers because they don't know what to say, he's got you covered. Joe shares things he's learned from workshops he attended while writing the book. 

Episode Links

Georgie Nightingall and Trigger Conversations

Gillian Sandstrom

Nicholas Epley

Juliana Schroeder

The Lesser Minds Problem

Michael Tomasello

Douglas Fry

Stranger Danger

Stanley Milgram and Stanford Prison Experiment led by Philip Zimbardo

Oscar Ibarra

Theodore Zeldin and The Feast of Strangers

Braver Angels

The Ezra Klein Show

The Team

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

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Numbers have power. They convey certainty. For example, when we know whether cases of Covid-19 are rising or falling, we feel like we have more control. Like we’ve got the answer.

Yet numbers can be slippery too.

Sure. Counting the number of people in a sports stadium is objective. But what about race totals in the U.S. Census? The same goes for the number of people who fall below the poverty line or the number of people the Jobs Report counts as unemployed.

While those numbers might seem certain, a closer look offers a very different story. We need to ask ourselves: Who decides what’s important enough to count? Who creates the categories we use? And how do the questions we ask – and the ways we ask them – bias the answers?

When we ask these kinds of question, we start to realize that the numbers aren’t that objective after all. Instead, we need to investigate each one to understand what’s behind it.

That’s why I wanted to speak with Deborah Stone. She’s written an incredibly insightful book to help us do this, and it’s called, Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. As she so expertly explains, with so much riding on the data we gather, we owe it to ourselves to think more deeply about what gets counted and why, as well as how we decide to count it.

Deborah has taught at Brandeis, MIT, and universities around the world, and her previous book, Policy Paradox, has been a seminal work in the policy field for over three decades.

Episode Links

Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin

Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone

Federalist Paper 54

Three-fifths Compromise

Ronald Melzack and gate control theory alternative to pain scale

Mollie Orshansky

The Team

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

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So often, when we try to solve a problem, we focus on what we can add. Let’s say you're moving to a smaller space. Your first thought might be to research shelving or rent a storage unit.

But what if, instead, you subtracted? What if you thought about what you’d sell, donate, or just throw out? 

That’s the question Leidy Klotz answers in his book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less. It’s a topic he was inspired to pursue while building a bridge of Legos with his son. Faced with a design challenge, Leidy chose to add Legos, while his son subtracted. That simple action – a highly counterintuitive one – set Leidy on the path to writing this book. It’s since become a lesson he’s working to apply to all kinds of problems, like climate change and sustainability.

An Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Virginia, Leidy studies the overlap between engineering and behavioral science, all in service of more sustainable systems. He’s worked with the Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, the National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, and ideas42.

Episode Links

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin

Subtract: Why Getting to Less Can Mean Thinking More

Why Do Engineers and Behavioral Scientists Have to Learn from Each Other?

Using Behavioral Science to Redesign the Built Environment

Strider Bike

Hazel Rose Marcus

Michele Gelfand

Pocket Park

The Team

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

Support the Podcast

If you like the show, please rate and review it on iTunes or wherever you subscribe, and tell a friend or family member about the show.

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I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for brain science. I love learning new things about how our brains work and how to get the most out of this amazing organ. That means I'm always scanning for my next book on the topic. And, when I find it, I'm usually placing an order before I've made it through the table of contents.

With this week's guest, I barely glanced at her book's title before I clicked "buy." That's because the author is the incredible neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman Barrett. Last time she was on the show, we talked about her mind-blowing book, How Emotions are Made. I learned how her research has led to a complete rethinking of, well, how emotions are made.

In this conversation, we talk about her newest book, Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain.

At first glance, you might think, what does this have to do with my work? The short answer is . . . everything. What you'll learn about your brain will change how you structure your day and, on an even bigger scale, how you interact with other people.

This is a book to savor. It's enlightening. Insightful. And it's downright enjoyable. In fact, you may want to read it in bite-size chunks, like one chapter at a time, because it's a book you may not want to finish too quickly. It's just too good.

Lisa Feldman Barrett is an award-winning Professor of Neuroscience at Northeastern University. She has appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

I'm thrilled to have her back on the show.

One quick ask before the interview - if you enjoy the podcast, I'd be grateful if you'd take a moment to rate and review the show on iTunes or wherever you subscribe. The team works hard to produce the podcast - and to keep it commercial free -- and it means a lot for us to know that you enjoy it. Speaking of brain science - a positive rating or review gives us the dopamine hits we need to keep on going.

This is a re-broadcast of Episode 182 with Lisa Feldman Barrett.

Episode Links

Lisa Feldman Barrett's Extended Notes for Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain

The Accidental Species by Henry Gee

The Rationality of Decisions Depends on Behavioural Context

Tuning and Pruning

Cultural Inheritance

Reverse inference problem

The Remembered Presence by Gerald Edelman

Himba people

Hadza people

Why We Want to Squeeze Cute, Little Things

Wired to Wonder by Todd Kashdan

Gray Malin

Curious Minds at Work Team

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