May 10, 2019
Neuroscience experts, practitioners, research and methods for making brain-friendly organizations and healthy individuals. Subscribe to Mind Your Noodles!
[00:00:06]
Mind Your Noodles Podcast - Episode 5
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Dale Carnegie. . . Deeper
[00:05:07]
The Philosophy of Trust
[00:06:13]
Neuroscience - Does It Applies to Organizations?
[00:08:29]
The Argument Against
[00:11:49]
A Descriptive Analogy
[00:40:48]
Forget Neuroscience - What Should We Do?
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Women are Trusted More Than Men
[00:46:15]
Nurses Most Trusted
[00:52:00]
The Power of Story
Tripp: [00:00:06] Take care of The brains that take care of you. with the Mind Your Noodles podcast will keep you up to date on the latest neuroscience research and practices to keep your brain healthy. And strategies to help your organization be brain friendly.
Tripp: [00:00:27] Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt with Mind Your Noodles and our guest today is Charles H. GREEN He is an author who has written many books one which is one of my personal favorites which is the trusted advisor which I believe was written in around 2000 or so. So maybe we should just kind of start there Charles a little bit about you and you've written that looks like three books. You had a field book and then you also had a more recently the trust based selling book. But like I said the Trust Advisors is I'm sure one that's held by a lot of people whether they're in sales or consulting or really any field where you're you're having to deal with people on a daily basis. I'll let you take it from here. Yeah
Charles: [00:01:16] Well that's that's basically right. The whole three books share the common theme of trust in business. A trusted advisor you right came out 2001 that was the first trust they signed in 0 5 and The Trusted Advisor field book. I think about 2013 and the trusted advisor is kind of the one that you know I made my mark with. That's that's the core branding. Not that I check it frequently but as of this morning it was rated about number 7000 on Amazon which was compared to all millions of books it's up against Harry Potter and it's continued to have that level of popularity. So I'm I'm quite happy to have a book that's performed that well that's excellent.
Tripp: [00:01:58] It's it's well written and you know it's interesting I was looking actually on Amazon about you know different reviews people had on it and I thought some of some of the folks out there kind of gave it a good explanation at least for me. Hopefully you like it as a compliment to which is it's it's kind of a deeper Carnegie's Win Friends and Influence People.
Tripp: [00:02:22] There's a lot more to it.
Tripp: [00:02:23] There's a lot more that you can apply into settings maybe that's not a good explanation but I don't know that I thought when I read that I thought Well that's thoughtful and a few other people kind of jumped on that comment.
Charles: [00:02:38] Yeah I think it's fair and I take it as a as a compliment. I think another thing that people find when I am my people in my organization give workshops or keynote is a common takeaway from people is sort of. It's not like I didn't really know that. I guess I kind of knew that but I never put it all together in a coherent thread like that. So I don't claim novelty but I do think it's knitted together a whole bunch of very common themes so I think it's a good company. Thank you.
Tripp: [00:03:09] Yeah. And I have to say also you practice what you preach to as we exchanged e-mails over a few series of days not only did you spend time with thoughtful responses to some of the e-mails that we shared but also the way that you used a a compliment being very specific which is one of the things out of the book I thought was was you know it's just interesting how some people will that they write something but then they don't really live it. But I could tell that you really live the the books that you wrote.
Charles: [00:03:44] Well I've had 19 years to practice it and you know there is no upper limit to to perfection in an area like trusting or being trustworthy. So it's a constant struggle. But yeah over time you can get better at it.
Tripp: [00:03:59] Absolutely. One of the things I want to kind of interject in this conversation as you know we when we were exchanging e-mails you were talking about W. Edwards Deming and you know he's had different influence on people you know Pixar Bama companies Paula Marshall that make the apple pies for McDonald's and and different folks. And I was you were familiar with Deming which not everybody has but I have a tendency to be people at least my age and up I have a tendency to know who at least who Deming was. What your knowledge of that. Dr. Deming and his work.
Charles: [00:04:37] Gosh it's it's not deep and it's it's old I haven't looked into this material in years but what I'm left with is a tremendous amount of respect. He was obviously somebody who had a great idea somebody who was devoted to it somebody who was very good at explaining and had a great deal of impact. So you know I do not claim any in-depth concrete knowledge about it but you know the core message is brilliant and very well said from what I recall.
Tripp: [00:05:07] Yeah his his his last book The New Economics basically addressed looking at an organization as a system theory vague theory of variation theory knowledge and psychology. We're kind of the cornerstones of of his particular work and you know I remember when I. First read the trusted advisor was kind of a combination of things that it kind of brought back come some epistemology type things in my head. And it also brought in some of the psychology piece even though you don't really overtly mention that it seems to be some of that underpinning the writings of that book. Is that a fair assessment.
Charles: [00:05:50] Absolutely. It's very much there. And I think what we what we intended. I was one of three authors on that book and what we intended was to let those kinds of conclusions reveal themselves to the reader so rather than preaching you know here's how you should relate to your kids or your spouse. We said let's let let's let that one emerge to the reader. And it is pretty obvious. It's definitely there.
Tripp: [00:06:13] Ok. So I'm just going to kind of jump into one of the reasons that I came across you and your work again was there was a post that you made or a comment that you made it was very strong. And it's because we're covering off in this particular podcast about neuroscience and it's an application to organizations. One of the things that that you kind of addressed very directly was you didn't you don't necessarily see it that way and some of the people that I've already talked to like Dr. Zak different folks you know are bringing this into organizations and it gave me pause when I read your comment and I thought you know if this is going to be a podcast this podcasts really needs to be about perspective and you offer a different perspective on the usefulness of neuroscience philosophically as you mentioned in your in our emails and our communications back and forth but what kind of give me would set the foundation here for what it is that you see and why you. You have have some such strong feelings about it maybe and this is a few years ago. So to be to be fair this is maybe you've changed your mind or maybe you've dug in deeper I don't know. So I just you whenever somebody gives me a strong reaction and not just the reaction of Oh that that's baloney or something like that but more a thoughtful response I say you know like I said it gives me pause and I want to understand what it is that you see and to be fair to the audience as we start to look at you know neuroscience. Does it have application to organizations right.
Charles: [00:07:59] Well I mean good for you for seeking out you know different perspectives to answer a little question there and probably Doug and a little bit deeper. I think my background I got a graduate degree MBA Harvard Business School many years ago my undergraduate degree was in philosophy. As a matter of fact in my class at HP as eight hundred people only two of us had a philosophy degree and I was one of them. And so that's kind of a schizophrenic background.
Charles: [00:08:29] You know those two. And and in my career I think the value of a degree in philosophy early on in my career was somewhere between none and zero. It's just not what it was that even a mistake. In fact the more more my career progressed the more I began to see the applicability of it. And this subject is really a good example. Feel free to interrupt me here as we go through the tour Tripp. I guess basically I approach the issues of neuroscience as applied to leadership and business from the perspective of philosophy of science and that deals with things like what is an explanation. What is causality et cetera et cetera. Let me just say upfront I'm not an expert in neuroscience as we've already seen I'm not an expert in Deming but I do know a few things about business and I do know a few things about how to talk about the intersection of business psychology management leadership and all those things. And what has struck me about the subject of neuroscience applied to business it's not unique to that field.
Charles: [00:09:41] It happens when you get people who are deep into the let me call it hard science and I know that at the microscopic level physics is always sort of the paradigm of air quote you know good science there is a temptation among people who are really skilled deep in the hard sciences to want to apply the same kind of principles techniques perspectives into the quote softer areas I'm going to be using a lot of air quotes here.
Tripp: [00:10:09] Oh that's OK.
Charles: [00:10:11] And I think it leads to a couple of problems and I'll call them philosophic but they're they're very real. One of them is the notion of explanation. So for example and again I'm not deeply familiar with either Zen. Or Iraq. But I'll I'll sort of key off.
Charles: [00:10:30] Zak wrote an article in Harvard Business Review about a couple of years ago and you can see very much he says I'm going to describe how neuroscience causes certain factors in management behavior. Right there. Anybody who had training in philosophy when you see the word cause you should know red flag. I go back to David Hume and anybody with philosophy signs you can't prove causation in the sense of the word that we normally mean by proving that I would fault the editor HBR are they shouldn't it like that. You could have said what he intended. In a much cleaner way. So there's that little issue you can't really prove causation. Much more importantly though in casual language hard scientists tend to say things like well we can explain management behavior by delving into the neuroscience of it and I'll speak very broadly. You know the neuroscientists people in this case are measuring levels of oxytocin or they're doing brainwave scans and what they're saying is this explains people's behavior or management behavior or leadership behavior. So my problem lies right there. I would argue it doesn't really explain hardly anything in any useful way. And let me give a humble example.
Charles: [00:11:49] If I were in the room with you Tripp I would put my right hand out in front of me six inches above the table top with my fingers lightly flexed and raised my hand by one foot. So it's a foot and a half off the table. Now let me suggest there is an infinite number of ways to describe what I just did. You could say I raised my hand you could say I was acting out the toast that I gave as best man at a recent wedding. You could say I was flexing the muscles. You could say that my brain was sending certain signals via complicated biochemistry that then triggered certain muscles and so forth and sort you could say I was giving a signal. There's an infinite number of ways to describe what I just did. And it's not that one of them is more accurate or more right or more truthful it depends on the situation. If I actually were at a wedding and what I did was you know raised my hand with a glass in it in a toast. That's what you'd want to say. You know Charlie toasted the group.
Charles: [00:12:53] It's useless to describe what I just did in biochemical terms and yet I think people well schooled in the hard sciences tend to believe well the more deep we can get into the physical explanations of the better the explanation. There is a name for that is called the reductionist problem in philosophy and it's the belief that always the deeper you can get the better the explanation is.
Charles: [00:13:17] Well that makes a lot of sense in chemistry. I makes a lot of sense in physics. You know it's when I when I grew up you know the ultimate source of reality where atoms which could be broken into neutrons protons and electrons didn't know anything more you know. Science has advanced since then. Science advanced past Newton and we would now say the ultimate reality is not explained by Newtonian physics you got to get into quantum mechanics and so forth and so the fact in the daily world that's useless. And you know if I swing a bat and hit a ball Newton is just fine to describe that. If I walk into the pathway of a street I'm likely hit by a car and Newtonian physics is perfectly adequate to describe that. So it's only in certain settings where we're very careful if we want to talk about the nature of ultimate reality in the universe it's very appropriate to bring in all these other perspectives and to bring it back home here. If you're going to talk about things in management leadership and business things like recognizing excellence giving people discretion sharing information building relationships these are all sub topics that Zak wrote about in his HP article I would argue that the choice of the neuro chemical language to describe that is pretty much useless. We don't need neuroscience to talk about the notion of leadership or motivation. In fact it's it's it's beside the point it's distracting.
Charles: [00:14:48] So to me defaulting to that micro level of explanation for all explanations is a fairly low level of explaining our sorry. Description is a fairly low level of explanation and description by reducing things to the lowest physical common denominator becomes really useless and useless.
Charles: [00:15:08] So that's the essence of my concern with it we're using one language to describe phenomena which are frankly practically speaking far better described in other languages. So it's akin to saying well should this concept be better expressed in German or in French. Well when you're talking about leadership it doesn't matter. There's certain area. That might be very important but most management and leadership subjects I suggest are very well dealt with with fairly much common language and not by default to some supposedly superior notion of biochemical language. So let me stop there and see if that makes sense.
Tripp: [00:15:46] Yeah. No i i i falling as best I can. I did it not I don't have a philosophy of real depth as far as that.
Tripp: [00:15:55] I've read some of the stuff that Dr. Deming read you know where as he was going along and getting associated with the pistol melody portion of it but there's a few things that you I wrote down as as you were talking in the first one was this this kid the concept of causation versus correlation you didn't mention correlation but just just to mention it you know just because more murders in the summer doesn't mean that summer causes murders you know type of thing.
Charles: [00:16:22] Yeah correct.
Tripp: [00:16:24] And so there's a difficulty which kind of leads me to the second thing I wrote down which is anytime we're doing dealing with science we're in essence and Dr. Deming used something called PDSA which is plan do study act. We know that we're kind of in a scientific setting and just because we have one instance of something happening doesn't prove anything forever. It just means in that circumstance and that's kind of when as you were talking about you know the hand above the table I'm sitting there thinking OK you know from a scientific standpoint we can't draw conclusions about things based off of even multiple experiment experiments of metaphor. One of Dr. Deming is famous saving sayings was no theory has ever proven.
Charles: [00:17:09] Right. So it's he's philosophically exactly correct.
Tripp: [00:17:13] Okay. Okay. And so you know from that standpoint I gather that you know and I and I as I hear you talk and I'm kind of putting the pieces together and there is a third thing that you mentioned in there and I kind of remind me of you know Frederick Taylor versus what Deming taught. So you've got kind of this Taylor mystic thinking during the Industrial Revolution about you know pound whatever you can out of people pay Papa those types of things and Dr. Deming came in and redid all that and now actually was that kind of same transformation from Newtonian you know thinking to quantum physics. I mean it was a whole new level of of thinking and I guess where I get kind of stuck you know as I hear you talk and you say I have some of that logic associated with it. And again probably not the depth you have I know I don't.
Charles: [00:18:08] Believe me I've forgotten 90 OK.
Tripp: [00:18:10] I'm still working on the two percent you that you know. So the.
Tripp: [00:18:16] But logically there are certain things that I as a read them kind of makes sense and I don't know if it's a familiarity thing or what it might be. But for instance when Dr. Zak talks about the fact that you know you raise as you become an executive you know you raise up through all the levels and you get this power and the testosterone starts kicking in. And in essence you lose empathy. I find that useful from a scientific standpoint does it apply to everyone. Probably not. But. But is it something that would be useful for people to know. I think so and I've and I've heard others that are in kind of the neuroscience field kind of support kind of what Zak's saying. So you know I'm hearing that. So are you countering that type of thing or is it is it something else that that you're you're taking from an argument perspective from an art.
Charles: [00:19:15] It is something else. I don't disagree with that finding. OK. And sort of empirically obvious to me as a manage. Kids huh. But you know hey more more proof. What the heck. That's that's fine. What I'm here arguing about is an example I'm looking at Dr. Zak's article in front of me just to refresh my memory. And he in this article in Harvard Business Review he says quote I identified eight management behaviors that foster trust. These behaviors are measurable and can be managed to improve performance. Close quote. And those eight behaviors are. He calls them behaviors no one recognize excellence. Number two induce quote challenge threats unquote. Number three give people discretion in how they do their work. Number four enabled job crafting. Number five. Share information broadly. Number six intentionally build relationships. Number seven facilitate whole person growth. Number eight show vulnerability. Now those are all you know we understand in plain English we understand what those mean and what he's done what he says he's done in his research. Remind me to come back and comment on the research. OK. But what he what he suggested is that. They've been able to measure different levels of oxytocin in association with these kinds of phenomena. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I'm just saying. Who needs that to talk about. Give people discretion you know share information broadly intentionally build relationships and be vulnerable.
Charles: [00:20:44] Poets have said as much every management consultant I know would say as much people 30 40 50 years ago who were very well respected in business sent as much without any need for any benefit from oxytocin or or neuroscience.
Charles: [00:21:01] What I'm arguing about is the utility the value brought to this set of observations by the field of neuroscience it seems to me pretty minimal. It's like I knew this. This is second grade stuff. Not that it's not important. Believe me. I mean he's absolutely right and picking on these issues for example show vulnerability. That's huge. And in the work that I do and trust that's one of the leading things. My question is why did I need to know that proven through some biochemical study. I don't. And not only that it's it's worse if you actually bring it in demand. What do you do with that observation to say you know chemicals are associated with a certain vulnerability. It's akin to in my experience when some people say well can you make money with trust. You know how do I know it's going to be profitable. Never mind wonder. That's the wrong way to talk about trust. People who ask that question frankly are not going to be persuaded by however much data you could throw at it anyway. And I think the same is true here. If if somebody is questioning why should I be vulnerable citing the evidence of oxytocin levels is very unlikely to convince them. So what's the use of it. If you're a professional advisor a management consultant a financial advisor it's just not a very powerful argument. You know more powerful arguments are well so and so over here in out or think about the Oracle of Omaha you know. Here's what he did. Storytelling is more useful. Drawing on analogies is more useful surveys are more useful way down the list it is let me describe the chemical reaction that happens in people's heads when this issue comes up. So it's really an argument about utility and role and relevance.
Tripp: [00:22:46] When you say utility I think application is that.
Charles: [00:22:49] Yes.
Tripp: [00:22:49] OK. So. So in essence it's kind of like it's not showing us really anything new it may be showing us that the science says that it's something that that's there but it's not telling us anything that we didn't already know.
Charles: [00:23:06] Yes OK in a nutshell that's it. OK. Telling us anything we didn't already know. And furthermore it's not particularly useful in explaining things that even the people know. Okay. So yeah.
Tripp: [00:23:18] Okay. Yeah. I you know I sit there and as I reflect on you say I'm Deming's thinking and I'm trying to pull together some of the or you know theory of knowledge piece or philosophy piece with the only psychology piece which which you do definitely write to you don't see that neuroscience as an advancement on the psychology piece or giving us key insights about how people behave and why they behave that way.
Charles: [00:23:52] That's correct. And it is nothing to do with truth. I mean a description of a phenomenon like me raising my hand a biochemical description of that is 100 percent as accurate as a poetic description or a an argument from me understanding something in context. It's not a question of right or wrong. It is a question of relevance and impact and power.
Tripp: [00:24:13] Okay. All right. So I did so and I'm just going to kind of kind of go back through things because you're giving me a different way of looking at things this way. As your as your email did there.
Tripp: [00:24:25] There's also a gentleman by the name of Orin Clark. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He wrote a book called Pitch Anything.
Tripp: [00:24:33] So he's a guy who's a who is basically in the world of getting money for ventures basically. Right. So might be for movies some might be for business. It could be anything but he is basically that that's his common role and when it thinks he discovered and he was one of kind of first turned me on to all this is you know here are the reasons and there's a lot of it could be an interesting read for you. I'd be curious does that. Oh I don't get. Yeah. What what you're thinking is I. But he kind of pulled in you know the three parts of the brain. He talks about the crocodile brain the bad brain the neocortex and. And that when you're when you first meet somebody you know it's kind of like a fight or flight thing like that first e-mail I say to you you know do I want to write you know what I want to take this on or do I want to you know which. Which way do you want to go and how do I present. I think a lot of the strategies they had in the Trusted Advisor help mitigate some of those issues associated with that because the whole thing is about the things you've already talked about authenticity and those types of things. But he in essence took that process of pitching you know for money and different things and took parts of what I hope. I don't know that he would even say it was neuroscience but but things he learned from Malcolm Gladwell and folks like that.
Tripp: [00:25:57] And he started to say hey there's something here. When we pitch you know we need to be aware that for. For instance he talks about a lot about being the alpha versus the beta. That you get into what's called a beta trap meaning you have low status associated with it with where you are and you don't want to be there. You know how can you set up a situation where you're you don't have you know low status. So I see a lot of the strategies and maybe that's the wrong word to use that you talk about in the trusted advisor that kind of parallels some of things that that he's talking about in there but he's using the neuroscience or my words not his to kind of explain you know what's happening in the brain and why you need to be presented in a different way. And so I found that useful from my perspective because it's kind of like OK people are taking something and that's what made me start to dig deeper into this I'm reading every book I can find on neuroscience now just to you know what are people concluding. And you know interesting as I shared with you Dr. Zak and you know David Rock apparently at odds with each other. So I'm not sure of why but yeah.
Tripp: [00:27:12] So so there's I almost feel like we're in this world and where we got these kind of rough rocks if you will and they're all bouncing against each other and eventually all kind of smooth out into something and maybe it won't be. Maybe the path that you say you were not really learning thing we're new we're getting more reinforcement about kind of what we already knew anyway from interactions with people and in organizations.
Charles: [00:27:38] Yeah. Well again the I I was not aware of the conflict between Zak and David Rock. I'd be curious to find out what that is.
Charles: [00:27:48] But I'll bet you 9 to one. They both are in agreement or disagreement with what I'm talking about.
Tripp: [00:27:54] Yeah. But but again as I told you my my main thing is when people offer a perspective and you're obviously a just pick created and someone who's a een applying this for a long period time this person's got some something to say. And again that's why I wanted to have you on. You're very thoughtful in your in your approach to things and and you know I think people should hear. But you know what you have to say.
Charles: [00:28:18] I think you know just to stay on a little piece that you mentioned there you're really talking about persuasion and influence. Anybody who's interested in that. I find the most persuasive person in that area is Robert Cialdini who writes with I mean he's he's got legitimate scientific background but he writes more in the terms of pop psychology. Mm hmm. So he is first book called influence the science of persuasion lists. I think it's seven different factors that lead to human influence and some of them are pretty well-known. They're like act now supply limited or all your friends are doing it. It's telling to me and what I've taken from him and exploring the notion of trust. The first factor that he mentions and in his later life I see him mentioning more and more doesn't sound like that at all. It's the notion of reciprocity as in if I do X for you you will respond in like terms. It goes back to fight or flight. If I approach somebody in a friendly manner it improves the odds that they will react that way if I approach somebody in a an antagonistic fearful manner. You know you get back what you put out. And in fairness to Zak he actually mentioned his reciprocity yes at the front of his article as well he should. I think he's absolutely correct about that. The question I'm raising is having raised that which is the more powerful way to get that notion across to people in my own work. And again I spent 20 years in management consulting and another 20 doing this trust work. I have found it's far more important. For example are far more useful if I'm in front of a room and I'm trying to explain this notion of reciprocity a walk off the podium walk into the audience go up to some person smile at them lean over and extend my right hand in a gesture that we all know was a handshake.
Charles: [00:30:10] Well guess what. Every single time you do that that other person is going to reciprocate and they're going to shake my hand. Why. Because then it's just hard wired into the human psyche. I mean you can make a very good book on that ninety nine point nine times out of 100 that's going happen. You reciprocate now and so Zak and I agree on that. My question is who's more persuasive in standing in front of a room and explaining saying here's what's happened to the neurochemistry in your brain when I extend my hand. Or me saying let's look at a few examples. When you go into a sale and you do X or you do Y or when you're making a political speech do X or Y and when you look at this historical story that we all know from from literature what's going on here X or Y. Those are persuasive practical ways of getting a point across to human beings. And while there is nothing untruthful you can describe human beings one hundred percent in mechanical chemical ways. But depending on what you're trying to do that explanation is next to useless or it's terribly important. I mean let me be clear if we're trying to develop medicines pharmacological solutions understanding ways to improve brain surgery understanding certain psychological therapies I think the neuroscience stuff is critical. It's cutting edge. It's great. We should celebrate it and get more of it. But when you apply it to some of these other areas of inner human interactions you know and the utility is way down the list compared to things like storytelling examples engagement and so forth.
Tripp: [00:31:43] Okay. Yeah. And actually that's one of the things in pitch anything with a working class a part of the pitch is as a story to in order to ticket people's brains engage.
Tripp: [00:31:54] But I've got one thing I was gonna mention is I didn't actually read Robert's holding his Pre suasion book. I've not read the older and I have it the psychology influence of persuasion. There's a lot of great stuff in there.
Charles: [00:32:06] Oh definitely.
Tripp: [00:32:07] It's a very useful you know type type of book. There's another book I'd be curious on your thoughts about so called Decisive. And again it it it's written by Chip Heath. Oh yeah. And he talks about the fact that you know things like when you're going to make a decision.
Tripp: [00:32:30] People kind of narrow their focus in this kind of backs up some of the things Malcolm Gladwell talks about too as well especially if there's pressure on you. You have a tendency to narrow your focus and and by virtue of the fact that that your focus has narrowed narrowed that becomes kind of an either or type of condition when you're looking at making decisions as opposed to looking at multiple options. And he also then this into confirmation bias and you know he talks about you know things of that sort.
Tripp: [00:33:00] And and to me it starts to crossover and I think you know the fact I guess I guess this is what I kind of what I've concluded especially after going through some of Oren Klaff stuff. And even Danish stuff is you know the story has to be compelling. And one of the things his psychology seems to be old news and forget about philosophy philosophy is like all right.
Tripp: [00:33:28] Since the beginning a man right. You know associated with it and that's not to discount its importance in understanding although I have to say some of the philosophy books you know that are written are seem to be written for each other as far as philosophers go.
Tripp: [00:33:43] I mean I guess I can't get anything out of it.
Charles: [00:33:45] So right yes.
Tripp: [00:33:47] So it becomes very difficult and even Deming when he read Mind and the World Order you know he's he basically said started Chapter 7 and 8 it's that because there is the with. Yeah.
Tripp: [00:34:00] So because it's a little bit difficult to get something out of it I think people today and you know they're looking for that fresh thing and Oren Klaff really hits this hard.
Tripp: [00:34:12] I think even Sodini hits it hits it pretty hard is it has to be that that the newness of something gets people's attention.
Tripp: [00:34:20] And even if it's kind of the maybe not the right thing that they're looking for answers associated with Why is this happening and they're looking for fresh work even if it only supports what's actually already known right.
Tripp: [00:34:35] It hesitancy then to get people's attention.
Charles: [00:34:37] And I think that you know part of why the field of sales will never fall short. Everybody's looking for the newest band you know is like a breath short kind of reason going to be first in line. I mean what you just Yeah right is. I would call that kind of a universal attribute of people were looking for the newest shiny object.
Tripp: [00:34:55] Yeah. So it's in our nature you know like like say you like you like putting out your hand. Most people are gonna know that that's that's for a handshake.
Tripp: [00:35:03] It's kind of the same thing and so I'd say you know from one perspective because I've read you know and I've got many many more books so they want to read that you know associated with the subject neuroscience it's new. And people are saying what can I glean from this and maybe what they glean from it is the old lessons that we learned in philosophy that were then again really reinforced by psych. What did we learn anything really new there or was it just something that we conclude. I think and I don't I think it's too early to know whether neuroscience is going to have any any offering you know associated with that it's just there's too many I know for you kind of the podcast I don't know I think.
Charles: [00:35:45] I think that you know what we just said about newness and the attraction and the ability to let people discover new that's true. I don't think that's going to happen in this area. OK. I just by its nature I mean you know applying neuroscience to management and leadership is based on hope the thought the idea that if you can describe things in chemical terms it's going to lead to something you know terribly useful. I just don't see that happening much at all.
Tripp: [00:36:17] And I don't know how much of a play you know does it offer anything actually new I think is kind of where you go through its new science but does it offer anything new for the perspective that. But but if that's kind of a key that will help people.
Charles: [00:36:36] It's not it's not just new. It's also useful. Yeah I get a I'm I could I could given a new. Yeah this is you know neuroscience is new and fascinating just because of that. But is this going to be a useful again. I don't see it as any different than saying Oh maybe if we translate this into Latin IT'LL BE NO IT'S LIKE IT'S NOT GONNA BE USEFUL it's the same stuff.
Tripp: [00:36:59] Mm hmm.
Charles: [00:37:00] And I think it's it's a distraction. And by the way this is the neuroscience just through neuroscience. Let me not just pick on that. I do a lot with tech companies. You know Google LinkedIn etc..
Charles: [00:37:11] And as you can imagine the people who are adept in those areas they're super deep into analytical left brain explanatory deductive logical thinking and so forth. Those people tend to discount the more conventional wisdom soft skills stuff and so on. And in some ways that you know that the passion to describe for example I get a lot of requests.
Charles: [00:37:33] How do you measure trust. And my argument is Don't even go there. You know that then the compulsion to measure something is itself reflective of not really understanding the boundaries of usefulness. You know it's like if you had a conversation with your spouse and you said you know I want our marriage to get better why don't we set a baseline. Let's agree seventy nine point one on a scale of one hundred and then let's measure every week how I'm doing on improving our marriage if any spouse that I know of is likely to say get out of here. Don't treat this that way.
Charles: [00:38:12] And so the neuroscience is just one more in in an over inclination to reductionist thinking a little bit over belief that you know we'll discover the cures to all things if we can just get the the artificial intelligence stuff right and we can just scale. I mean look at what Zuckerberg is accused of continually thinking things are going to solve all these problems by just doing more connecting more people in more ways.
Charles: [00:38:38] Meanwhile there's issues and they come from exactly that kind of thinking well.
Tripp: [00:38:43] And you will find any argument from a Deming philosophy perspective. You know he would say the most important figures are unknown and unknowable. All right. So so so there's so yeah.
Tripp: [00:38:55] So from that from that perspective I would agree but maybe we are trained to measure something that that can't be measured can we gain new insights from neuroscience and how do we conduct or maybe a structure the way that the organizations I guess is kind of the question you're. But your response to that is you know kind of a definitive no no. That we're not going to get anything from it.
Charles: [00:39:22] Well again let's let's be clear. I would give ground I'd cede ground on whether we're gonna to learn something new and that's OK we'll say we're going to learn something new meaning in this case a different way of describing phenomena.
Charles: [00:39:33] The practical utility of that is really more of what I'm getting at. Yes. So if you can I would argue that about half of what we call trust. You can definitely measure about half a foot falls into the unmeasurable but even in the measurable. What do you do with the fact that you're going to measure it the default business response is let collect data on it. Let's break it down to the most discrete component that we can. Let's set goals and let's reward people for achieving those goals. Now if you're talking about something like reliability or credibility and you can you can somewhat do that. You can track people's performance against promises that's useful. But if you try to track people on are you achieving better vulnerability or even worse yet. are you benevolent beneficent towards your clients. Do you have your clients best interests at heart. Well if you start measuring how people have their client's best interests at heart and you start rewarding. For doing it you've just ruined everything. How do you reward people for being unselfish. It's self-contradictory. It causes people to mistake the measurement for the thing that it is supposed to be measuring and to behave in perverse ways. So I think that the ultimate question really is is it useful. And I guess that's my concern. It's not terribly useful.
Tripp: [00:40:48] So let me ask you this then Charles as far as what would be useful what's put us put neuroscience to the side here for a minute if we're to advance the thinking that's going on you know from a management perspective where would our time be best spent.
Charles: [00:41:07] Right. Well that's a great question. And let me answer it within the narrow purview of trust which is what I've focused on for 19 years now. It's a great example because trust also suffers from a lot of vagueness and lack of lack of definition.
Charles: [00:41:26] You've seen it all. All your listeners have seen hundreds of examples of headlines as saying new study shows trust in banking is down. Let's just take that kind of thing. Trust in banking is down and we all go out. I believe the study. I believe the statistical accuracy and relevance of whatever came up with. But what does that mean. It could mean one of at least two things it could mean that financial institutions like banks have become less trustworthy. You know just look at the news on Wells Fargo and. Or alternatively it could mean something very different which is that people over time and become less inclined to trust banks. That's a very different thing.
Charles: [00:42:03] The first one is a violation of trustworthiness and norms on the part of it would be trusted organization like a bank and they're in the right responses to that regulatory using the laws to prosecute hiring firing people and so forth. On the other hand if the problem is people become less inclined to trust banks that's a PR problem. That's a communications problem. Very different to go slightly analogous to that. The staff will tell you that in the United States in the last 20 years violent crime has gone down. That's a factual statement reduction in violent crime. At the same time fear of violent crime has gone up. So that's a case where it's the perception that the problem not not the crime itself. And if all you're doing is saying you know if you're a violent you know you're violent crime is up. Oh my gosh. That doesn't tell you.
Charles: [00:43:00] And I think it's like that in trust. So here's my answer you break it down it's practically humanly meaningful components and there are two there's a trustor and a trustee and the result of those two interacting is trust or lack of trust. The characteristics of a trust door to the person who initiates the trust interaction and they're taking a risk. That's the essence of of trusting the person who is trusted or wants to be trust dead is we call them trustworthy or not trustworthy. And the result of their interactions becomes a certain level of trust. So trust is a noun properly belongs to the result of the interactions. Trust is a verb properly refers to the person taking the risk and trustworthiness an adjective properly refers to those who would be trusted. Now you can actually do something. You know my little book The Trusted Advisor I think part of what made it popular was we had a simple for factor equation for describing trustworthiness. And most of our audience likes equations you know and that's their language. And we initially intended it just as a conceptual model for anybody interested it's credibility plus reliability plus intimacy all divided by self orientation. Two of those factors are kind of measurable and behavioral namely credibility reliability and the other to intimacy and low self orientation are much more interior psychological you know quote soft unquote kinds of things. It happens by the way that we have about eight years after we wrote the book it suddenly dawned on me Hey this a book a great many great self-assessment tool. So we pulled five questions together for each of those four factors. Five comes forward is 20.
Charles: [00:44:49] I don't know why I thought 20 was a good number and just seemed to forget and we put it up on the web and wait for the crowds to roll in. Well they trickled in but we've now had over a hundred thousand people take it and we can draw a couple of very clear and very interesting conclusions. I named two of them. Number one women score as more trustworthy than men. Not only that but almost all the outperformance of women on this score is due to their performance on one of those four variables. It's not credibility it's not reliability. It's not self orientation. It is intimacy. And by the way. If you sort of step back and say what would you guess. That's exactly what you guess. In fact I've given a talk about that Dana. Roughly 300 times and two hundred and ninety seven. Literally only three exceptions over the years I've been doing this. Which is about 1 percent only with only three exceptions. When I asked the group the crowd what do you think. They said women comments. And that's right up there with handshakes. Women I mean people say probably women and then asked the Guess Which factor. They're also pretty good at guessing intimacy. Now one more data point. There are lists surveys done by other you know by survey professionals Pew. Gallup Yankelovich who asked most and least trusted professions over the years and across different countries and very consistent results at the bottom of the list.
Charles: [00:46:15] You can guess politicians lawyers used car salesmen top of the list. People have a harder time guessing it's not lawyers it's not doctrines it's not teachers it is nurses nurses with with one exception in the past 20 years and then exception with the year 2002 where firemen were number one. That was the year after 9/11. Unsurprising but with every. And then the next year I went back to nurses. Nursing is an eighty nine percent female profession and if you had to pick one of those four attributes as defining the nature of successful nursing whether it's a male nurse or female nurse it's probably intimacy you know the job of a nurse is to make you feel completely comfortable sharing saying anything you know we are literally and figuratively naked in front of nurses. So it turns out when we ran a regression equation on the data that we had collected you know which of those four factors really is the most powerful describing trustworthiness it's intimacy and we you know we basically define intimacy as the ability to make other people feel secure and comfortable sharing things with you. Now is that is that scientific. Oh it's just the model that we came up with to heuristic we describe. you know what's going on.
Charles: [00:47:29] I don't argue that that has any more physical reality relevance than any other model. It just seemed to work pretty well and I still think it does. It's a common sensical definition and for what it's worth that's what the data show. And that also seems to get pretty general common sense affirmation. So what do you do with all that. That one's pretty clear. I can tell you what to do if you're an accounting firm if you're a law firm. If you're a tech support in a tech company you almost certainly need to get better at your intimacy skills. But what does that mean. That means having conversations in a certain way. It means having a certain amount of personal courage to bring up difficult subjects and to lead with it. It requires a little bit of internal development like you know get over your fight or flight take the risk of not all that bad. That's the kind of stuff you can do something with as opposed to 90 percent of what's out there on the subject of trust which is at the level of trust in banking is down or you know trust in Bolivia is slightly lower than Uruguay. Not that there's anything wrong with those descriptions but I don't think they give you a practical notion and that's kind of the same. The flip side of the argument I was having in neuroscience. What do you do with that right.
Tripp: [00:48:42] Well you know if it's history and probably so it can start to win this down a little bit. But you know in our emails back and forth you mentioned Alfie Kohn. Yeah. And you know so this gets into Debbie Deming philosophy with the four things you talked about earlier. Systems thinking theory variation theory knowledge and psychology and and one of the things that we find over and over again in organizations. No I can't say we did any at a depth of study but you know Dr. Deming worked with a number of and I've worked with many companies over the years is that reward systems drive wrong behavior.
Tripp: [00:49:20] Yes they do have an influence on an individual but right within the organization they will drive the wrong behaviors associated with it. So you know one of the things that that's coming from the neuroscience side is more what I would leverage to help support that thinking.
Tripp: [00:49:40] And that's that's kind of where I grasp on to it I think you know from a Deming perspective is you seen this stuff in there and then basically saying Yeah it does drive that. So in essence the wrong behavior. And here are the things and fundamentally you're right. I mean if I if I if I sat back and I looked at it it's not anything that people haven't written before but the fact that it is kind of new research that it gets people's attention to be able to say geez if if psychology is telling me that and philosophy is telling me that and systems thinking and telling me that in neuroscience maybe I shouldn't be doing that.
Tripp: [00:50:19] And yet even with Dan Pink's you know presentations Alfie come before him with you know can't. Contests and Punished by Rewards to books that really.
Charles: [00:50:29] Great books.
[00:50:30] Yeah. That that he wrote back in the Deming days right. Oh. When Deming was around. They still stand. And they science still stands but people just seem to ignore it. So.
[00:50:42] What does that tell you.
[00:50:43] It's in the culture. Like you said it's the handshake. You know everybody knows that it works. It does work. Nobody can refute the fact that rewards don't work. But it's how they're used and when they're used you know and associated with that. And you know Dr. Zak is a little bit familiar with Deming. So he I get a little concerned when I first started reading this book because he was with you like everybody else that I've written about neuroscience had kind of gotten into this. How do we make better a performance appraisals which is another thing. Deming railed against. Well. The answer is you don't do performance appraisals.
Charles: [00:51:17] Right.
Tripp: [00:51:17] I can give feedback without doing that. And you know so whether it's the reward systems or the performance appraisals some of the things that railed against all the science has pointed basically that we're we're doing this wrong and they talk about something that that compromises trust in an organization when bad behaviors are running. I've got to believe at least and maybe you have a different view on it is that were were designing systems or organizations in such a way that is self-defeating trust it just in the way that they're structured.
Charles: [00:51:58] Let me give you a quick story to that point.
Charles: [00:52:00] I was in first of all stories are very powerful because they help people come to conclusions without thinking they've been bamboozled into doing it. They want it allows them to put their own spin on it. I was standing I was giving a talk to the Top 40 or 50 so people at Accenture some years ago and before me was the CEO guy named Bill Green at the time.
Charles: [00:52:21] No no relation. And Bill Green had just finished outlining some huge reorganization for all of Accenture and somebody raised their hand and said Hey Bill have we lined up the incentives properly so that if I'm sitting in Australia get a call from our guy in Bulgaria I'm going to be incentive to do do the right thing and answer him. And Bill Green got visibly angry got up out of his chair on the stage. Any any leaned out any point and he said I never want to hear that question in this company again if there's ever any conflict between doing the right thing and the incentives. You do the right thing and we'll fix the incentives later.
Charles: [00:52:58] Now in that moment I mean it was a very impressive you know 40 people who were the leaders of Accenture got that message loud and clear in that moment. And that goes to how you actually do this stuff. You don't tweak the cheese for the rats in the maze. You do it by by leadership of living you know walking the talk all that stuff. You do it by repeatedly invoking a few principles and applying into very specific situations. So I think that the role of role modeling is particularly apt in and when it comes to trust. And my quick answer and then we're running out of time. My quick answer how you create this in an organization is don't do the incentives routine. This is higher level human stuff. What you do is you pick a few concepts a few principles and you relentlessly apply them. It doesn't have to be leaders who just have to be influential people who sign up by saying I think I know what we mean by transparency and right here this is an example.
Charles: [00:53:56] I think I know what you mean by collaboration and right here. This is what that means in this situation. So done right. There is room for tweaking and you know the various not nudges and all that kind of thing but the objective should be to create what I call a trust based organization which is an organization within which people individuals behave in trusting and trustworthy manners toward each other and towards all their stakeholders. It's not a characteristic of the organization. The key is not organization design. The key is certainly not metrics and rewards. It's creating an environment in which people behave in a trusting and trustworthy manner towards each other as individuals. And from that grows the culture and from that you can then say well this company is trusted.
Tripp: [00:54:42] Brilliant. Well said that's a that's not only a great example. But that's that's a probably a good way to conclude this although I do have one last question I ask everyone. It's when I people actually make fun of me for which is Is there anything that I fail to ask that you wish I would have. Or is there any clarification of anything that you've said to this point that that you'd like to take the opportunity to to shall offer.
Charles: [00:55:09] I'll offer one quick thing. The question you didn't ask is What's the one single thing people can do to increase trust and and actually as a simple answer we could spend another hour unpacking it. But it's basically listen and it's not listen to find the data it's not listen to verify your hypothesis. It is. As a sign of respect it functions just like the handshake. If you really listen to someone and something is very clear about this they will listen back. So if you want to be listened to if you want people to buy from me if you want people take your advice. The key is shut up and listen and allow the natural human response of reciprocating. And then they'll listen to you and everything gets better. So the key is listening.
Tripp: [00:55:49] Excellent. Very good. Well we certainly appreciate you sharing your time Charles. And like I said.
Charles: [00:55:56] My pleasure Tripp. Thank you.
Tripp: [00:55:57] Oh it's been I mean you've opened my mind quite a few things in this conversation. I'm sure you do that on a regular basis and people will appreciate that.
Tripp: [00:56:09] So thank you very much.
Charles: [00:56:11] Thank you.
Tripp: [00:56:18] Thank you for listening to the minor noodles podcast. We are currently offering a PDA titled Five surprising findings from neuroscience to help you understand your organization. Just go to Mind Your noodles. dot com forward slash five findings.
Tripp: [00:56:41] No spaces. Also if any listeners know of. companies or people applying neuroscience to their organization we are interested in talking to them. Just have them email me at Tripp to our IP. at minor noodles dot com.