Curious Minds at Work

Neuroscientist Tali Sharot discusses how to change minds without facts. She explores confirmation bias, seeking like-minded opinions, and how expertise influences belief acceptance. Starting with common ground can lead to successful persuasion by creating a sense of similarity and understanding others' perspectives.

We all know people who seem especially lucky or, in some cases, unlucky. Janice Kaplan wondered whether this was due to random chance or luck overlooked, so she co-authored the book, How Luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life. In writing the book, she learned how we can tilt the scales in our favor, even in cases where the odds are long. Janice is the former editor in chief of Parade magazine and author of 13 popular books, including the New York Times bestseller, The Gratitude Diaries. In this interview we discuss: How there are aspects of luck within our control How a winning combination of talent, hard work, and knowing your goals can increase your luck How optimism and a belief in making our own luck makes good things happen Why an optimistic mindset ensures we will apply the effort it takes to make our own luck Why we need to toggle between focused and wide-ranging attention to see events as opportunities What it means to choose the statistic we want to be How we can put ourselves in a position where luck can find us The fact that our weak ties have a greater chance of helping us achieve our goals Why we may need to zig versus zag or try out a different lane to be successful How revisiting what we thought of as dead ends can help us see new possibilities Why goals and knowing what we want are paramount to making our own luck How lucky breaks can actually be small events that make a big difference if we know how to take full advantage of them Why it can be helpful to navigate life with a compass, rather than a map The key role curiosity plays in helping us do things differently in order to make a lucky moment out of something that does not seem that way at first   Episode Links Barnaby Marsh Martin Seligman Doug Rauch Lara Galinsky Mike Darnell American Idol Steven Strogatz Six degrees of separation Joi Ito 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!

How do we build remarkable teams, the kind that are more than the sum of their parts? Daniel Coyle answers that question in his latest book, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. After talking to some of the greatest teams, such as the Navy Seals, IDEO, the San Antonio Spurs, and Pixar, Dan found a replicable pattern of three behaviors shared by these dynamic cultures. They each actively work to (1) Build Safety, (2) Share Vulnerability and (3) Establish Purpose. Dan shares how our teams can do this, too. Dan is also the author of The Talent Code, The Little Book of Talent, The Secret Race, and Hardball: A Season in the Projects. In this interview we discuss: Why certain groups add up to way more than the sum of their parts What kindergartners can teach us about group performance How status management undermines group performance How culture is something we do, not something we are Why culture is about moving together toward a common goal The three key skills of group performance - vulnerability, safety, and purpose How bad apples chip away at psychological safety and derail groups Why we need to be intolerant of brilliant jerks The outsized impact of warmth as a counter to negativity Key indicators of high-performing groups, like rapid speech, light physical touch, laughter, and high energy, which indicated safety and connection The incredible value of collective intelligence in groups as they share information, problem solve, and connect the dots Why belonging cues are so powerful for group performance How great coaches, like Gregg Popovich, exude curiosity and care for their teams The role emotional control can play in supporting team members How Navy Seals use the vulnerability loop to amplify team safety and boost performance How an after-action review - a discussion of what went right, what went wrong, and what will happen next time -- helps teams improve performance The value of warm candor - telling a hard truth but emphasizing connection - over brutal honesty Why cheesy catch phrases can be stronger indicators of group performance than we might think Why we should focus on the first five seconds when we interact with someone for the first time, especially when it comes to our energy level, eye contact, facial expressions, and engagement How asking our team members about one thing we should keep on doing and one thing we should stop doing can help us get better at what we do Episode Links Navy Seals IDEO San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich Pixar Peter Skillman Alexander Pentland Sociometer Collective intelligence The Captain Class by Sam Walker Draper Kauffman Gramercy Tavern Danny Meyer Laszlo Bock 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!

What sets top workplace performers apart? To answer this question, Morten Hansen, Professor at University of California, Berkeley, studied over 5,000 U.S. corporate employees for his book, Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More. Through his research, he found that top performers engage in 7 key practices that explain 66 percent of the differences in their level of performance. Co-author with Jim Collins of the highly acclaimed book, Great by Choice, Morten is also the author of the book, Collaboration, and he has been ranked one of the most influential global management thinkers by Thinkers50. In this interview we discuss: Why working longer hours is not enough to achieve high levels of performance How seven work-smart practices can explain 66 percent of the differences between top performers and their peers Why we need to do less and then obsess to produce exceptional work How an obsession with sled dogs led one explorer to reach the South Pole before his highly competitive and well-resourced peer Why Jiro, the famous sushi maker, is one of the best examples of someone who does less and obsesses his way to a Michelin star The key question employees need to ask their bosses in order to do less and obsess: which of these projects is of the highest priority for achieving our goals? How a lack of prioritization can be the linchpin to doing less and obsessing over it to provide key value How a high school principal architected a work redesign that epitomizes what it means to start with delivering value and then determining goals The value of redesigning our work without spending more or adding staff Why our goals should emerge from the value we seek to deliver How focus on fewer work projects allows you to ask deeper questions and provide more value Why a focus on passion and purpose allows us to contribute more than passion alone The fact that the goal of collaboration is better performance, not better collaboration Why we need to avoid over collaborating and under collaborating and, instead, focus on disciplined collaboration to achieve our goals How small changes can help us achieve big results, especially when it comes to focusing more, saying no to some things, setting better priorities, and collaborating more strategically Episode Links Robert Falcon Scott Roald Amundsen Jiro Dreams of Sushi Psyched Up by Dan McGinn A Flipped School and Greg Green Hartman Goertz and Tangier Terminal Berkeley Executive Education Genevieve Guay Curious George 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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!