Curious Minds at Work

By Gayle AllenBusiness Science Social Sciences Arts Books Management

Curious Minds at Work episodes

March 25, 2018 CM 101: Idan Ravin on Rethinking Performance
Sometimes an outsider can offer a game-changing take on a tried-and-true process. When it comes to performance, that person is Idan Ravin, author of the bestselling book, The Hoops Whisperer: On the Courts and Inside the Heads of Basketball's Best Players.
Over the course of his career, Idan has worked with athletes like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Steph Curry. Though he never played for or coached a professional basketball team, his outsider status coupled with his passion for learning and performance science, have made him a one-of-a-kind teacher.
In this interview we discuss:
How some of the most impactful teachers can come from unexpected places
How his outsider status and commitment to self-teaching made him the incredible teacher he is today
Why teaching young people served him well in teaching professional basketball players
The importance of seeing people for who they can be vs who they are not
Why seeing what others never notice in performance is akin to the approach a plastic surgeon takes
How high performing athletes can lose their love of the game and why Idan works so hard to recapture it
Why he combines high intensity with sensory overload approaches to improve performance
Why learning requires the comfort of safe spaces where we can make mistakes
Why learning also requires the discomfort that comes with stretching ourselves to gain new skills
The humility and modesty that comes with being vulnerable in our learning
How rewiring our brains takes time, can be incremental, and is often far from linear
Why he wants to redefine the word selfish to include reaching for something because you have earned it through self-reliance and responsibility
Why the best teachers help us gain the skills we need and then support us in ways we express them
Why he believes dreams are a luxury while faith is something you can control and act on
The meaningful exchange that can take place when we teach and learn from those we teach
The importance of taking action to achieve our goals
How some of the most credentialed and strongly affiliated individuals can also be the least knowledgeable when it comes to learning and performance
Episode Links
Carmelo Anthony
New York Knicks
Nike commercial
Peak by Anders Ericsson
Adam Levine
The Voice
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
31 min
March 11, 2018 CM 100: Jeff Haden on How to Get Motivated
Many of us view motivation as the spark we need to achieve our goals. But Jeff Haden, author of The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win, explains that it is actually the reverse.
To feel motivated, we actually need to take action, that is, to complete at least one small task toward our goal. That is because accomplishing an initial task causes our brains to release dopamine, the reward and pleasure chemical. The good feeling we get when we do this can spur us on to accomplish more.
And who better to talk about using motivation to achieve lots of goals than Jeff Haden, the most popular columnist for Inc.com and one of most widely followed influencers for LinkedIn. Jeff is also the author or co-author of 50 nonfiction books, and his work has also appeared in Time, Fast Company, Business Insider, and Entrepreneur.
In this interview we discuss:
Why motivation is not something you get but something you create
How accomplishing tasks associated with your goal can create a virtuous flywheel of motivation, achievement, and happiness
Why successful people set a goal and then forget it
How focusing on big goals can overwhelm and even defeat us and what we should do instead
When we focus on accomplishing the daily tasks associated with our larger goal, we maintain motivation and feel happier
Why serial achievers are happier and experience less regret and why we should all aim to be them
Why, for most of us, choosing that one thing we might want to do for 40 years is unrealistic
Why we need pros rather than coaches to achieve new, challenging goals
How pros can pave the way and prevent us from reinventing the wheel
The fact that pros hold the key to our success as they have done the thing we most want to do
To gain willpower, we need less willpower, provided we structure our environment in ways that reduce our options
How maximizing our edge time can help us achieve more
The fact that doing what others around us are doing will only get us what they have gotten -- we need to work harder and smarter to achieve something different
How successful people work on big goals serially, rather than concurrently
How paying attention to the details and making small changes can improve our performance
Why the proud feelings you have in accomplishing hard things creates momentum to achieve more
How taking productive, rather than relaxing, break can help you achieve
What success means to Jeff -- and it has nothing to do with cars or houses or stuff
Episode Links
Venus Williams
Jerry Seinfeld
Tony Robbins
Friday Night Lights
Not Impossible by Mick Ebeling
Choice architecture
Jim Whitehurst and RedHat
David Brailsford
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
34 min
February 25, 2018 CM 099: Sean Young on the Science of Changing Your Life
What is the secret to changing our habits?
Too often, we are led to believe that we need to study successful people and then use our willpower to act like they do. But UCLA Medical School Professor, Sean Young, reveals that this approach mainly leads to failure. Instead, Young and his colleagues point us to seven forces that succeed in creating lasting change.
Sean is the author of the book, Stick with It: A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life - for Good. He is a Professor at UCLA Medical School, and Founder and Executive Director of the UCLA Center for Digital Behavior and the UC Institute for Prediction Technology. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Science, and CNN.
In this interview we discuss:
Why we need to shift from self-blame to a thoughtful process for change
How education alone is not enough to change behavior
The ABCs of behavior -- automatic, burning, and common
The seven tools Sean discusses to support behavior change - stepladders, community, important, easy, neurohacks, captivating, ingrained
Just how powerful stepladders or very small steps can be in changing unwanted behaviors or habits
The importance of creating the right-size steps to stay on track in reaching our goals
How success with small steps increases our self-confidence to help us stick with it
The fact that community -- the influence key others have on us -- can help us change behavior
How purposefully structured online, peer-driven communities can help drive behavior change
Why quick mental shortcuts or neurohacks can change our brains to help us change our behavior
How taking action helps us see ourselves as someone who engages in the behavior we want to have
Why it is important to pair the type of behavior with the right tool, like stepladders with common behaviors
Why one of the most game-changing tools is making it easy to engage in behavior changes
Episode Links
seanyoungphd.com
@seanyoungphd
Michelle Segar, author of No Sweat
Richard E. Petty
Yo app
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
32 min
February 11, 2018 CM 098: Jon Kolko on Igniting Creativity in Organizations
What if you are creative, but your organization is not?
Many of us have worked in places that have tried to adopt more creative practices, and we know that it doesn’t always produce the desired results. In fact, if we introduce creativity, it can even seem to backfire.
But Jon Kolko has devised a formula for injecting creativity into resistant organizations. Author of the book, Creative Clarity: A Practical Guide for Bringing Creative Thinking Into Your Company, Jon is a Partner at Modernist Studio and Founder of Austin Center for Design. He served as VP of Design at Blackboard, has worked extensively with both startups and Fortune 500 companies, and has written four additional books on design.
Jon shares insights for achieving creativity and innovation in even the most resistant organizations. In this interview we discuss:
Why attempts at introducing creativity into organizations can make things worse
The role framing plays in the creative process and how it helps with innovation
How leading with a creative strategy changes can yield more innovative solutions
Why summary problem statements are so important
How to push through complexity to arrive at simplicity
Why creative people work best a flow state of uninterrupted blocks of time
Why embracing a creative culture means embracing uncertainty
The role of feedback in a special kind of meeting called a critique
The two reactions to avoid when receiving feedback
How creative approaches differ in small versus large organizations
The three types of ownership of ideas
The one skill that every instructor needs to teach students in creative fields
What mentors are invaluable
Why teaching design thinking is inseparable from teaching of design
Episode Links
Jon Kolko
Creative Clarity
Frog Design
Ideo
Flow
The Swoop and Poop
Design Thinking
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
41 min
January 28, 2018 CM 097: Sam Walker on Creating Outstanding Teams
Do you have the seven qualities of a great leader?
As the former sports editor of the Wall Street Journal, Sam Walker chronicled the exploits of some of the most remarkable teams ever assembled. Fascinated by their success, he spent over a decade researching which teams performed best and how they did it.
Sam lays out his findings in his latest book, The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World’s Greatest Teams. Initially, he expected to find a magical combination of factors such as exceptional skill, brilliant coaching and remarkable strategy. Instead, he discovered something completely different: the 16 teams with the longest winning streaks across 37 elite sports succeeded because of a single player -- the captain of the team. These captains were not only not the best player, but also possessed all or most of seven characteristics rarely associated with great leaders.
Sam is currently deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal, where he worked as a reporter, columnist, and sports editor. He is also author of a previous book, Fantasyland.
In this interview we discuss:
How talent, coaching, money and strategy rarely result in teams stringing together years of consecutive greatness
Why a single player, the captain of the team, is the key to the enduring success of outstanding teams
Why most captains were appointed by the coach, not selected by the players
What the analogies are for this coach-captain in the workplace
How these captains excel in seven ways:
they are relentless
they are aggressive
They are willing to do thankless jobs
they shy away from the limelight
they excel at quiet communication
they are difficult to manage
they have excellent resilience and emotional control
The secrets of success of players like basketball great Tim Duncan
Why all of the little things on a team must get done
Why Pele, possibly the greatest soccer player of all time, was never a captain
Why none of these captains were inspiring speech makers
What maps of team interaction reveal about captain communication
Why shared cognition is such an important part of team communication
Why superstars can sometimes decrease great team performance
Why sacrifice for the collective good of the team is so important to winning
How we should look for the least likely candidates when searching for group leaders
Why we should not mistake the ability to take praise as a sign of a great leader
Why criticizing others is a right we earn and how to earn it
Why elite leaders are often boring
Episode Links
Sam Walker
The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World’s Greatest Teams
Fantasyland
Barcelona
Cuban Women’s Volleyball Team
Boston Celtics
San Antonio Spurs
The Pittsburgh Steeler
Tim Duncan
Richard Hackman
Brazil’s National Football Team
Pele
Carlos Alberto
Hilderaldo Bellini
Yogi Berra
Sandy Pentland
Charismatic Connectors
Shared Cognition
French National Handball Team
Jerome Fernandez
Richard Davidson
Maurice Rashad
Montreal Canadiens
Richie McCaw
Carla Overbeck
United States Women's National Soccer Team
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
44 min
January 14, 2018 CM 096: Olivia Cabane and Judah Pollack on Breakthrough Thinking
Breakthroughs can take our work to new and exciting places, yet they rarely happen as often as we’d like. Are there ways to prompt these kinds of moments, so we can create them more often?
Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack tell us how in their book, The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking.
Olivia is the former Director of Innovative Leadership for Stanford StartX and bestselling author of The Charisma Myth. She has worked with companies like, Google, MGM, and Deloitte, and she has lectured at Harvard, MIT, and Yale.
Judah Pollack is a former faculty member at Stanford StartX and a lecturer at University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business. He has worked with organizations like Airbnb, IDEO, and the U.S. Army Special Forces.
In this interview we discuss:
How breakthrough thinking requires two systems in the brain: the Executive Network (the net) and the Default Network (the butterfly)
How we need off-task time in order for the Default Network to engage and create breakthroughs
The 4 types of breakthroughs: Eureka, Metaphor, Intuitive and Paradigm
How Eureka Breakthroughs are sudden insights that are fully formed, when everything seems to fall into place
That we are predisposed to certain kinds of breakthroughs and how it helps to honor our natural style
That no one style of breakthrough is any better than another
How Metaphorical breakthroughs help us see topics in new ways
How Intuitive breakthroughs seem like just the beginning and less easy to trust, requiring us to have faith in the process
How Steve Jobs had an intuitive breakthrough that the iPhone needed to be made of glass
That our brains our physical objects that need to build new neurotransmitter receptors in order to construct new knowledge
How our practice with exploring new experiences in the brain affects our ability to make breakthroughs
How surfing the net for new things or watching new movies can help with building the brain plasticity that helps to make breakthroughs
How curiosity enlivens brain plasticity
How fear negativity affects the Default Network and works against us having breakthroughs
Why our best ideas may come to us in the shower
How our inhibitions can cause us to feel like imposters or make us overly critical, either of which can hinder breakthrough thinking
How the placebo effect can be used to our advantage
Ways we can practice failure in order to normalize our feelings about it
Three supertools that can help us achieve breakthroughs
How the journey toward topic mastery create preconditions for breakthroughs
How implementing these practices can affect us down to the gene level
How to find the balance between our fast-paced, hyper-focused work world and the slower, more diffused approach needed for breakthrough thinking
Links to Episode Topics
Olivia Fox Cabane
Judah Pollack
The Net and the Butterfly: The Art and Practice of Breakthrough Thinking
The Charisma Myth
Stanford StartX
University of California Berkeley
The Executive Mode Network of the brain
The Default Mode Network of the brain
The Arab Spring
The Revolutions of 1848
Occupy Wall Street
Steve Jobs
Think Wrong
Neuroplasticity
Impostor Syndrome
Inner Critic
Placebo Effect
Meditation
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
38 min
December 31, 2017 CM 095: Lynda Gratton On The 100-Year Life – Rebroadcast
Are you prepared to live to 100? Research shows that it is becoming the norm, but that few of us are planning for it. Many are surprised to learn that it not only requires rethinking saving and retirement, but also education, jobs, and relationships.
To guide us, London Business School Professor and future of work expert, Lynda Gratton, has written The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity. In addition to her many books, Lynda writes for Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, and Forbes. She points out the possibilities, as well as the challenges, associated with living longer lives. Lynda also encourages us to plan for what lies ahead, so that we can take full advantage of this opportunity.
In this interview, we talk about:
What learning will look like as we continue working into our 70s and 80s
Why working well with robots will decrease our odds of obsolescence
How generational markers, such as millennials, limit how we think about work and life
Why we will become age agnostic as people of all ages learn and work together
Are you building, maintaining, or depleting current skills?
The secret to increasing our adaptability and willingness to change
Three new life stages that are upending how we think about life and work
Are you spending your free time in recreation or re-creation, and why it matters?
The important role experimentation will play in our lives as we live longer
How marriage and friendships will change as we live longer lives
Why juvenescence holds the key to navigating a longer life
Why we should be worried about wealth disparity
Why living longer will push organizations to rethink work policies and expectations
Why individuals and families - not most organizations - will guide us in innovating
Selected Links to Episode Topics
@lyndagratton
www.100yearlife.com
100 Year Life Diagnostic
London Business School
World Economic Forum
Andrew Scott
Future of Work Consortium
The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here by Lynda Gratton
Stretch by Karie Willyerd and Barbara Mistick
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
36 min
December 17, 2017 CM 094: Emiliana Simon-Thomas On How To Be Happier
We have more control over our happiness than we think. And if we follow the advice of the most cutting-edge happiness researchers, we can help others achieve it, as well.
Emiliana Simon-Thomas happens to be one of those researchers. A neuroscientist and Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley, she speaks and writes about the connection between happiness, meaning, compassion and wellbeing. She also co-teaches an online course, The Science of Happiness that, to date, has been taken by over 450,000 people.
In this interview we discuss:
Just how important social relationships are to our happiness and wellbeing
How our baseline for study is social, not solitary
The fact that social deprivation leads to greater stress, lowered resilience, and less happiness
How friendships helps us reframe challenges as more achievable
The fact that an ongoing sequence of pleasurable moments does not guarantee happiness
How happiness is derived from a rich emotional life that includes negative emotions
How happiness speaks to the ease with which we experience the entire range of human emotion
The fact that happiness stems from our ability to transcend ourselves - to view our lives in relation to a bigger purpose
How the ways we spend our time, where we put our focus, and how we view others determines our happiness
How forgiving others can have a greater impact on us than the person we forgive
How mindfulness is about noticing the world beyond ourselves
How graduates of the Science of Happiness course show significant improvement when it comes to happiness, flourishing, and connections to others, along with decreased loneliness and stress
The fact that the quality of our relationships has a significant impact on our happiness
The game changing difference it makes when we express our gratitude toward others
How practicing gratitude helps us feel more optimistic, decreases our self-absorption, and increases feelings of pleasure that can create a reinforcing loop
How practicing gratitude and showing appreciation can shift workplace culture
The difference between valuing someone for who they are versus what they achieve
How our ability to express gratitude and to show compassion are culturally influenced habits, not gendered skills
How the data shows that happier employees are more productive, more engaged, more loyal and more attentive to creating a better customer experience
The importance role self-compassion plays in our ability to be happy, to show compassion to others, and to improve or maintain our wellbeing
Links to Episode Topics
Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas
@GreaterGoodSC
The Expanding Gratitude Project
Gratitude and Wellbeing at Work
The Science of Happiness course
Eric Liu
Social baseline theory - James Coan and David Sbarra
Robert Emmons
Judson Brewer
The Gratitude Diaries by Janice Kaplan
Center for Positive Organizations
Davita
Kristin Neff
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
40 min
December 04, 2017 CM 093: Tasha Eurich on the Science of Self-awareness
Ninety-five percent of us think we are self-aware, but only ten to fifteen percent of us actually are. How important is that difference to our well being and happiness? Well, according to Tasha Eurich, self-aware individuals are are better at their jobs, more satisfied with their relationships, raise more mature children, are better students, lead more profitable companies, and choose better careers.
Tasha is the author of the book, Insight: Why We’re Not as Self-aware As We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life. An organizational psychologist and researcher whose work has been featured in Entrepreneur, CNBC.com, The Huffington Post, and FoxBusiness.com.
In this interview we discuss:
Why self-awareness is the metaskill of the 21st century
How self-awareness includes how clearly we see ourselves and how well we understand how others see us
The fact that 95 percent of people think they are self-aware when the reality is closer to 10 to 15 percent
How the ways we self-reflect can work against the benefits we might gain
How reflecting on what, not why, shifts us into action and a more positive mindset
Why we should journal to figure things out rather than merely ruminate or emotion dump
How a focus on learning well helps us take on new challenges in ways that a focus on doing well may not
Ways we can mine solutions to problems by asking ourselves what it might look like if the problem were already solved
How getting feedback from others helps us gain additional perspectives on how we see ourselves
How asking for feedback allows us to show vulnerability in positive ways
Why we want to control the kinds of feedback we ask for by choosing the right people, asking the right questions, and using the right process
Why we should seek out loving critics for feedback -- people who couple honesty with care
How the ways we receive feedback are also important -- that we should give ourselves time to process feedback and to determine if we should act on it
Self-aware teams practice honesty and transparency
Leaders are the linchpins when it comes to self-aware teams
Self-aware teams need psychological safety and an ongoing awareness process
Team members can jumpstart self-awareness by taking small steps, like admitting something they do not know or something they did wrong
Why it is important to recognize when you cannot influence someone to be more self-aware
Links to Episode Topics
@tashaeurich
http://www.tashaeurich.com/
James Pennebaker
Carol Dweck
Solutions focused therapy
How Emotions are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Alan Mulally
http://www.insight-book.com/quiz.aspx
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
42 min
November 20, 2017 CM 092: Barbara Oakley on Learning How to Learn
Most of us can learn anything, if we're taught how. Yet few of us find this to be the case. Why? Because we lack the skills we need to deal with the resistance and frustration we inevitably face when learning difficult topics.
Barbara Oakley wants to change that. Author of the book, A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science, and Professor of Engineering at Oakland University, she shares techniques for mastering any subject. And these are techniques over 2 million people have experienced in her incredibly popular MOOC, Learning How to Learn.
In this interview we discuss:
How she made the leap from self-described high school math "flunky" to accomplished engineering professor
What inspired her to make the shift from Russian linguist to engineer
How offering interesting learning hooks can help people learn content more effectively
How a diffuse or relaxed mode of thinking helps us organize what we learn
The importance of toggling between focused and diffuse thinking to learn
The fact that learning difficult things is hard
How sleep helps us build the neural architecture we need to learn new things
How we can be strategic in our approach to learning
Why you actually need content knowledge to become an expert - we cannot outsource it
How repetition, practice, and seeing things from different perspectives builds important neural patterns for expertise
Why conceptual chunking -- memorizing and understanding -- help us create these neural patterns
How our prefrontal cortex relaxes when we know something, so that we can build on that knowledge to solve more complex problems
What it means to have an illusion of competence when it comes to learning
How we can check our understanding by seeing if we can explain it to a five year old
How neural reuse theory, or learning something new by attaching it to something we already know, is a powerful learning tool
Why teachers should emphasize how simple something difficult can be to learn
How interleaving helps us learn when to use one technique versus another
How transfer helps us use learning we have done in one area in a new area and how it is best learned by doing
How we can reframe procrastination by focusing on the process not the product
How breaking the work into tiny tasks helps us overcome procrastination
Links to Episode Topics
@barbaraoakley
https://barbaraoakley.com/
The Knowledge Illusion by Steven Sloman
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/
Bayes Theorem
Negative binomial
Geometric distribution
Pomodoro Technique and Francesco Cirillo
Terry Sejnowski
Lynda.com
If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes - your ratings make all the difference. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!
39 min

About Curious Minds at Work

From the publisher's feed

Want to get better at work? At managing others? Managing yourself? Gayle Allen interviews experts who take your performance to the next level. Each episode features a book with insights to help you…