Something You Should Know - How to Create Lasting Personal Change & The Best Way to Learn New Things

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

When I smell the scent of fresh cut grass it transports me back to my childhood. It is a great smell. It also turns out to be beneficial to most people. I begin this episode by explaining the scientific benefits of smelling a freshly mowed lawn.( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1209360/Why-mowing-lawn-relieves-stressboosts-memory.html) How do you make real change in yourself and others? That’s the topic of my discussion with Joseph Grenny, a social scientist, speaker and one of the authors of a book Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change (https://amzn.to/2XADNeJ) . Joseph explains just how you can influence and change behavior so it benefits you and lasts a long time. Have you noticed when you go to a party that the more people drink – the louder the party gets? There is actually a fascinating reason why – and it has to do with your hearing. Listen as I explain. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2031886 For your entire life, you learn. Learning is how we grow and improve and find meaning in life. Yet HOW we learn is something that is seldom discussed even though it is critical to how well we learn new skills, facts and ideas. Joining me to discuss how we can all learn anything better is Bradley Staats. He is a professor at the University of North Carolina where his teaching focuses s on how to improve individual learning. He is also author of the book Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive (https://amzn.to/2ImJYN3).  This Week's Sponsors -Lively. For $10 off your first order go to www.WearLively.com/something and use promo code: something -LinkedIn. To get $50 off your first job post, go to www.LinkedIn.com/podcast -Capterra. To find the best software solutions for your business for free, go to www.Capterra.com/something -Stroke of Genius Podcast. Subscribe to Stroke of Genius on Apple Podcasts, at www.ipoef.org, or your favorite podcast platform -Fab Fit Fun. To get $10 off your first Fab Fit Fun box go to www.FabFitFun.com and use promo code: something Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Fox Daily, wherever you get your behavior. You change it by taking control of the things that control your behavior. And there are many things that do, many things that shape it, and if you're unconscious of them, then you're out of control. Plus, have you ever noticed that cocktail parties get louder and louder the more people drink alcohol? I'll tell you why that is. And how to learn anything new in a meaningful

and lasting way. There's real value as we try to learn new things of kind of pushing ourselves past the point of knowing. In other words, it's not just barely learn the material, but keep reinforcing it, whatever that is. But this idea of practice, practice, practice. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool.

And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. You know, every month or so, I like to take a little time to read the reviews that people post about this podcast on iTunes or Apple Podcasts and some of the other platforms where people leave reviews.

And overwhelmingly, the reviews are really positive. And I just wanted to take a moment to thank you if you're one of the many people who has left a review. I think on Apple Podcasts, we're up to about 2,000 ratings and reviews. I realize it takes time to sit down and write a review, and I just want to let you know that it is very much appreciated by everyone who works hard here to produce this podcast. First up today, I have always loved the smell of freshly mowed grass. And it turns out that's a good thing. The next time you drive past someone who's mowing the lawn, you might want to slow down and open the windows. Get as much of that fresh-cut grass aroma as you can.

That scent of freshly mowed grass makes us feel better, and science knows why. The smell of cut grass stimulates the memory regions of the brain for most people Freshly mowed grass makes us feel better, and science knows why. The smell of cut grass stimulates the memory regions of the brain for most people and has a very calming effect. Research has shown that that aroma can reduce stress, improve your mood, and even help prevent memory decline in old age. If you don't have your own lawn to mow and smell, you can buy some grass aroma products that are on the market, like candles, linen, and room spray. And that is something you should know.

How do you create change in yourself and in others? Because usually if you want things to be better than the way they are now, you need to change. So understanding how change works goes a long way to helping you get what you want from yourself and from other people. Joseph Grenny is one of the authors of one of the best-selling books on this topic. The book is called Influencer, The New Science of Leading Change. Hi, Joseph. Thank you. Good to be with you, Mike. So let's begin by talking about how influence and change all work together.

Influence is about behavior change, and really that's the fundamental element of leadership. Leadership is a systematic process of helping people change how they behave so they can produce better results. So leadership fundamentally means you're helping other people change, and that's what influence is about. An influencer is somebody who competently and intentionally helps create rapid, profound, sustainable behavior change in order to improve lives, improve the world, improve organizations. And you do that by doing what in a big, broad-stroke way? What's the difference between an influencer and someone who's not? Well, someone who's not is someone who usually fails at what they're attempting in life. Most all of the important results that we want to achieve in our lives have to do with our behavior or the behavior of other people. If I want a family that's connected and close and has experiences, high degrees of happiness

and intimacy, it's about helping us to develop habits and behaviors that produce that kind of an outcome. If I have an organization or if I'm a manager where I'm trying to produce some result, usually I depend and rely on other people as well. So being able to understand two things is essential to being an influencer. Really all of social science, all of influence comes down to answering two questions. Number one is why are people doing what they're doing? And number two is how can I help them change? And so if you can't produce quality answers to those two questions then you're going to fail at

achieving most of the important goals of your life. Well, but it's conventional wisdom. A lot of people believe that, in essence, people don't change, and that expecting people to change or trying to get people to change is typically going to lead to disappointment. Yeah, anybody who says that hasn't been paying attention for the last 30 years. So if you look at our world, behavior has been changing profoundly. Social attitudes, political attitudes, technology related behaviors, addiction related behaviors. We're changing. We just aren't always changing

in the direction that you and I wish. So behavior can change. The question is, are the good guys or the bad guys winning? So we aren't changing. For example, we talk about an obesity epidemic. People are eating differently. People are not taking care of their bodies in the same way they did 30 or 40 years ago. Is that because the species changed? Well, no. It's because there are a constellation of sources of influence that are shaping new behaviors. Now, the question is, are those influences the ones that you want, or are they

not the ones that you want? Are they aligning with where you'd like to be heading in your life or not? So unless we become conscious of what's shaping our behavior, then we end up behaving in ways that we don't intend. But to that point as well, I think it's conventional wisdom, and people believe that people can't be changed by other people. Change must come from within. People can't make you quit smoking or make you lose weight or make you make the changes in your life unless you decide you want to make those changes. Yeah, that's naive because other people have already been making them change. So again, if you say, and I don't want to stay on just this negative example, there are plenty of positives as well, but let's stick

with it for a minute. If you say that 43% of people today are technically obese in the United States, well, that wasn't the case 30 years ago. So did suddenly all of the people today wake up and say, I choose to become obese? Well, no, they didn't. There are a variety of kinds of influences in our world that have evolved over the past 30 years that are inducing us to behave in ways that we don't intend. Most of what influences our behavior is outside of our awareness. Those who are the most influential are the ones that become conscious of those things that are influencing their behavior and take control of those things. So the fundamental principle, as we found in our research to human change is you have to, you don't change your behavior by taking control of your behavior.

You change it by taking control of the things that control your behavior. And there are many things that do, many things that shape it. And if you're unconscious of them, then you're out of control. So continuing with that example then, so how would you do that if you were an obese person? Well, one thing that's well shown in research is that little environmental factors will profoundly shape your eating choices. So for example, if you have a plastic Tupperware container with the leftover chocolate cake from last night in your refrigerator and that container is at the back of the refrigerator, the odds that you're going to eat it are substantially lower than if it's at the front of the refrigerator.

If it's an opaque container, the odds are a lot lower that you're going to eat that chocolate cake than if it's in a transparent container. Little tiny cues like that make an enormous difference. If you eat off a plate that's about four inches larger, you'll eat about 25% more than if you eat off the smaller plate. So many of these choices that we're not making, the size of the plate that happens to be on the table in front of me or the size of the spoon that I'm eating with, have an enormous effect on consumption. And unless we become conscious of that and then order our environment so it supports the behavior we want, we're not in control. Okay, so let's take it out of that category, which is a relatively negative one,

and talk about getting people to change in a positive way. How does that work? Yeah, certainly. So, you know, let's say, for example, I want to exercise more consistently. That's a behavior that I'd like to practice. Or I want to show up on time for meetings. Or let's say I want to procrastinate less at work. It's the same question. You've got to ask yourself, what's shaping my behavior now? We talk about six different sources of influence that shape your choices. And all of those as a set are producing the behavior that you're practicing today. Only one of those is your own conscious desires and motivations. Five of them have to do with completely other elements. So let's go back to environmental cues.

Do people procrastinate more today than they do 30 years ago because people today are lazier or more inattentive or more narcissistic. Well, no. We're the same species where we were 30 years ago, but we have technological interruptions coming at us all the time. When you're sitting in your office trying to finish a report, you have wired into your office distractions that are poking at your consciousness all of the time. And so unless you change some of that, you're probably going to succumb occasionally to the easy temptations to distract yourself. So these environmental factors are huge. Social factors are huge. Ability factors are huge.

All of these forces are shaping our choices. But what you and I tend to overly rely on is individual willpower, which is only one of the six. What are the six? So the first is values and motivation. So we call it personal motivations. It's what pleases you. It's what creates pleasure. And so I like eating chocolate, right?

And chocolate is pleasurable. I don't need any other reason to eat it other than it produces an experience, a positive experience for me. So so values is the first piece, what I value and what I find pleasure in. The second is ability. So your skills and ability are a big part of why you do what you do. Some people who fail in sales, for example, don't fail because they don't like sales. It's because they don't have the competencies, the skills to be able to do it in the way some other people might. And oftentimes when we fail, we beat ourselves up thinking that I've got a character flaw when it's really an ability flaw. So looking at ability is a real critical piece. The next two are social influences, social motivation and social ability.

So the people around you shape your behavior. One of the ways of describing this is that who you are, who you're with is who you are. If you hang around people who have a particular kind of hobby or interest, you start to acquire it over time. If you hang around people with a negative attitude in the workplace who are critical of management, you'll adopt that attitude over time. If you hang around people who are productive and trying to go places in their lives, you start to adopt that attitude as well. So the choice you make is, who do I want to be around? What you don't get to choose is whether the people you're around are going to influence you. So that number three is social motivation. Social ability number four is how the people around me enable me, whether they support me and give me the tools, information, resources I need to behave in a particular way. So if I need to get a report done on time, but my colleagues aren't getting me the inputs that I need to get that on time, then I've got a social ability barrier. It isn't about how much I want to get that report done. It's about whether or not the people around me are supporting me. The last two are structural factors. We call them structural motivation and structural ability. So structural motivation is incentives. We talk often about how we have

food deserts in certain urban areas and cities. And we might criticize people and say, well, you're practicing bad nutritional habits. Well, if the cost of produce in your particular area is three times higher than some other area, then that's a disincentive to consume healthier produce. And so you have to look at incentives to understand behavior. And then the last is the one I've given you a couple of examples of. It's the structural ability. It's your physical environment. What kinds of things are close? What are far? What's easy to do? What's hard to do? So all those six taken together, 70 years of social science has shown us that each and every one of those profoundly shapes our choices. But when you and I want to

help somebody change, what we assume is a good motivational speech will do the trick. It's naive. Doesn't willpower and desire play into this? It's one sixth. Yes, it plays into it. It's one-sixth of what shapes our choices. So if you took a Michael Phelps who has an enormous amount of willpower and you put him in an environment growing up that had all five of those other sources of influence pointing the wrong direction, he wouldn't be who he is today. So one-sixth is an important element. We need to look at every one of these six sources of influence, but we need to not overly rely on a single one. Joseph Grenny is my guest. He's co-author of the book Influencer, the new science of leading change.

Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Pantwine, first wild monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, wherever podcasts are available. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

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So, Joseph, even with all you're talking about, doesn't any change start with wanting to make a change? Oh, of course. Yeah, now there's two ways you can look at this. We started the conversation talking about influencers. And if influencers are people that understand why people do what they do and how to help them change, then there are two different directions we can take our influence. One is ourselves. And if it's me changing me, then obviously it has to begin with a desire to change. But if it's me helping others to change, again, let's go back to the broad social trends of the last 30 years. All of these major changes in public behavior and attitudes have not happened because everybody said simultaneously, I have a desire to change.

So they've come about because many of these sources of influence have changed. So, for example, nobody got up in the morning 35 years ago and said, hey, let's spend five billion person hours per month playing video games, which is about what's going on today. Nobody decided that. But what happened was people worked on helping others acquire skills at playing video games, creating more social norms around that, lowering the price of it, making it more accessible. Every one of these sources of influence have been manipulated to make that a more prominent and adoptable behavior. And so these changes have not come about because somebody decided it. It's because five of the six sources

of influence suddenly made that more accessible. People then found pleasure in doing those experiences, and off we go. Which would imply that those things, those five things that, or six things that happen, happen, and there isn't a whole lot you can do to stop them. You just have to adapt to them. Yeah, that's exactly right. So now let's go back to me influencing myself. So let's say I look at it and I say, you know what? You know, me spending 48 hours a week playing World of Warcraft is not getting me where I want to be in my life. Let's say, for example, I came to that conclusion.

How do I change this? Well, now I can look at these sources of influence. Just gritting it out and saying individual willpower will overcome it is probably not going to get there alone. I had to look at skills. Can I start acquiring skills to do other pleasurable activities that actually produce a better outcome? Can I change my social group? Instead of hanging around with people that talk about nothing but World of Warcraft all the time, can I start broadening my social group and removing a few accomplices and adding a few friends that are supportive of my goals? Can I change my physical environment? Maybe I take the game set and move it out of the most desirable, pleasurable, relaxing place in the house and put it up in an attic and little changes like that make remarkable differences.

So again, back to the thesis, if you want to take control of your behavior, you have to take control of the things that control you. And all six of these sources of influence are shaping your behavior all the time. So I get that when it when that's your own behavior. But using your example, I have a 14 year old son who would play video games 24 hours a day if I let him. I'm not so sure about all these six things you're talking about. I just set a rule. And the rule is you can only play so much. And that's just the rule.

That shapes his behavior because there are consequences if he doesn't follow it. Yeah, yeah. How's that working out? Pretty well. All right. Yeah, yeah. How's that working out? Pretty well. All right. Well, good. Well, sometimes a single powerful source of influence will get the job done. But if it provokes resentment and resistance and sneakiness, if he's not, you know, my

guess is as a parent, your goal wasn't just to reduce video game use. Your goal was also to get him engaged in other more positive sorts of activities. Sure. Now, one way you can do that is constrain the one and then hope that out of desperation that he'll go do something positive instead. But a wise parent would also look at the other side and say, all right, how do I work on the skills and the social and the incentives and all those other elements to help him get involved in sports or social connection with others or academics or other sorts of things?

Well, and I do that, but I don't do that every minute of every day. He's not playing video games, but the rule still stands. The rule is the rule. And so it's up to him to go, in some cases, to go find other things to do. That's right. And essentially what you're doing is you're manipulating incentives. You're creating an incentive, a coercive incentive, which is appropriate. You know, that's part of parenting.

That's one of the sources of influence. A coercive incentive that says you're going to get in trouble if you play more than this or that amount. Or a structural kind of manipulation that just says I've got a timer attached to this device and it's going to shut off when this occurs. And that's a barrier that's tough to surmount. Now, the challenge becomes, if he's not really bought into the goal, then does he just start hanging around at friends' houses where all they do is play video games there? And so it's wise to look both at how do you extinguish the behavior you don't want, and how do you influence positively an alternative behavior that replaces it? Well, and so I imagine that works in the workplace and in families and social groups and everywhere else.

Absolutely. Yeah, we've worked with over 300 of the Fortune 500 companies, and that's where a lot of this research on influence has come from. And that's where we've seen how these six sources of influence can create rapid, profound, sustainable behavior change. I'll just give you one example that, you know, in the healthcare world, many of our clients are very fine hospital systems that struggle just to try to get all their employees to wash their hands consistently, which, you know, you and I could go into why that's so significant in terms of infection control and all the horrible things that can happen in hospitals. In most hospitals, they have a tough time getting people to do it 40 or 50 percent of the time. That's horrible. That's absolutely horrible.

So we worked with a large hospital system, Spectrum Healthcare in West Michigan, they used these six sources of influence after literally decades of despair at trying to get people to just adopt this one simple behavior consistently. And they were within a matter of a few weeks able to get 13,000 people washing their hands

every time before and after patient contact, 98% of the time, and then sustain that change for years. And the reason they were able to do that is because they were more thoughtful about why they were doing what they were doing and how to help them change. They got past motivational speeches and started looking at all these elements that shape behavior. And so they did what specifically? So number one, they had to appeal to their personal motivations differently. They began telling stories about patients who'd been infected so that it became a more visceral, more emotional experience for them. They had to increase skills, particularly skills around holding each other accountable, speaking up when you see people that aren't washing their hands.

They had to get social influence involved. So they made it the jobs of leaders in the organization to be evangelizing about this, not just the infection control department. They had to increase access, so they made sure that they had Purell dispensers at every different access point, and that those were recharged on a regular basis. They changed incentives as well. They made it so that people were rewarded for compliance and a department that was keeping compliance high was recognized. So every one of these elements had to be addressed simultaneously. What you and I tend to do periodically is when we want to create a change, we'll manipulate one of these sources of influence. And then when change doesn't happen, we get discouraged and quit and then maybe try a different one. What the social sciences tell us is that all six are

operating on us all the time. And so if you address all six simultaneously, you're far more likely to see rapid, profound, sustainable behavior change. Right. Well, I can imagine just as you described it, someone saying, okay, well, we've now put hand sanitizers in every 10 feet, and so that should solve the problem, when what you're saying is, in fact, that's just one-sixth of solving the problem. You've summarized it perfectly. That's exactly the point. When there is a societal change like the obesity rate or something like that, it's almost hard to imagine that these six things have conspired together somehow, have all come together somehow to create this problem. Yeah, and oftentimes on the other side of it, there are incentives. So I used the video game example a little while ago.

Folks in the video game design industry are shrewd social scientists. We didn't start creating this mass adoption of video game behavior across the entire planet by accident. In fact, game designers intentionally use the phrase addiction. They want to create an addictive experience And addiction essentially means that all six of these sources of influence are lined up so that the path of least Resistance is to come home from work plop down on my couch and turn that back on again And so it's it's wired into that the question is can the rest of us Be more conscious agents in our own lives by being aware of what's being done to us lastly in our own lives by being aware of what's being done to us. Lastly, where do you begin this process?

Where do you, how do you, I mean, you've got these six things and they're all working together. And so if you want to approach a change or get someone else to change or a group of people to change, what's step one, two, and three? So the first step before you're going to take on any influence problem is just to decide why do you want to do it? And so the one thing that influencers do better than the rest of us is they're far more clear on what they want to create and how they'll know whether they've created it. You know, what is going to be evidence that I've succeeded in this? So whether it's greater fitness, it's better career success, whether it's a more productive organization or a more engaged workforce.

It's being crystal clear on what do you want to achieve and how are you how are you going to know whether you've got it? Question two is what are the vital behaviors that are going to lead you in that direction? So what are the vital behaviors that are going to change your health? They're going to change your relationships. They're going to change your career. That then opens up the rest of the toolkit. Once you're clear on the one or two behaviors, which if I practice them consistently, they'll change my relationship with my spouse, with my life partner. If you can get clear on those behaviors, then you move to the third question, which is how do I get all six of these sources of influence to support that change? Well, I certainly think it's more complicated than people think and has more steps to it than most people would like, but it is what it is. And it's important to know.

Joseph Grenny has been my guest. The book is called Influencer, The New Science of Leading Change. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, Joseph. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for including us. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed,

but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong,

which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week

with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I think everyone agrees that learning is important. That's why you go to school. It's why you read books. It's why you talk to people. So you can learn more about them and more about you and life and work and the things that matter.

And it's my perception anyway that we like to learn. We have a hunger to learn new things. But the process that we go by to learn new things sometimes seems haphazard. There isn't always a lot of thought given to how we learn. So meet Bradley Statz. Bradley is a professor at the University of North Carolina where his teaching focuses on how to improve individual learning and how to design organizations that create successful learning environments. And he's author of a book called Never Stop Learning, Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive.

Hey, Bradley, welcome. Thanks, Mike. Excited to be with you today. So what is it about learning and the process of learning that you find particularly interesting and that you think is so important for people to understand? I'm an operations professor and really interested in the processes that help us to learn and improve. And what I've come to appreciate through my research and through working with organizations and individuals is that unfortunately our behavior gets in the way.

That even if we know what we should do, we often take shortcuts. We often kind of may head in the wrong direction. So an example of this would be, I think in our minds, we know that failure is necessary to learn. We have to take risks. We have to try new things. And they're not always going to work out. But unfortunately, as an example, that fear of failure can kind of grind us to a halt. And so instead of trying those new things, we stay the same and end up preventing ourselves from innovating and learning. Well, but isn't that adaptive and protective sometimes that you don't want to fail so you don't do it because, you know, jumping off Niagara Falls could kill you. So rather than

try it and fail, I think I'll just not try. I think you're exactly right. And so there's good reasons why perhaps we have some of those triggers in place. I think the challenge becomes when it's not standing and looking down Niagara Falls and pulling ourselves back from the edge. But instead, you know, just in our day-to-day life, in our organizational life, for example, that we're afraid to try a new sales pitch, because even though we think that it has a better chance of success than the old one, we know that if we fail with the old one, nobody's going to give us any grief, right? Well, we always did it that way. It just didn't work out this time. And so those kind of, at times, even evolutionary tendencies to protect ourselves get pushed too far.

Well, I know you talk about eight different characteristics of learning that we should probably talk about, at least some of them, and one of them is failure. One of our big challenges with failure is that bad overpowers good. Before we try new things, we'll often obsess about all the ways they can go wrong, not spending enough time thinking about how they can go right and creating kind of a more accurate view of the world. And so one of the things that we can pursue as a strategy is to think going forward, not only, hey, if this doesn't work, what's wrong, but imagine it six months from now, we didn't try the new activity, where would we be? What are all the things that

could go wrong, kind of in that view of the world. And so we get a more balanced perspective, not letting kind of the bad keep us from trying anything new. The other part of it is realizing in organizational life as leaders, even if we give lip service to the idea that trying new things is rewarded, you know, we end up promoting or giving credit to those who always stay in the green. And so, you know, our don't trying anything new in the process. Really interesting study was done a few years ago now by Google where they looked at teams, what led to great team performance. And they called this Project Aristotle because now by Google, where they looked at teams, what led to great team performance. And they called this Project Aristotle, because it's Google, so it needs a grand sounding codename.

How do we make the whole greater than the sum of its parts? And as they looked at all of these potential drivers of team performance, it came back, it wasn't intellect, where you went to school, how long you'd been there, that was most important. As a leader, it was actually the behavior, and it was a particular behavior around creating an environment where people were comfortable trying those new things and willing to take those risks. And so appreciating that, you know, when we think about failure, we have a big impact on those around us and their comfort with these things. I think that people have a sense that because

we've heard, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, that when you fail, you've learned a lesson. Do we learn from failure? Are we good at learning from failure? Yeah, that's a really interesting point. You know, and unfortunately, oftentimes the answer's no. So there's a really interesting element that's been studied in how we make decisions called the fundamental attribution error. This research concept has big implications for how we live our lives. What it says is, hey, anytime you try something new, the outcome we get is going to be a mix of the individual, kind of how hard you work, how talented you are,

as well as the situation. Kind of think of it as how lucky you got. Now, the struggle is we evaluate ourselves differently than we evaluate others. So what do I mean by that? That when something goes wrong for someone else, when they fail, we tend to assume, oh, it was them. It wasn't the situation. It's not they got unlucky. It's just, hmm, Brad should have tried a little bit harder. On the other hand, when we fail ourselves, we tend to blame the situation. It's not, oh, you know, a little more preparation and I could have won the deal. It was, oh, they were always going to go with the competitor. They just liked them more. There was nothing I could do. And so that actually has a big impact on our own learning from failure. With some colleagues, I did a study looking at cardiac surgeons. So folks doing procedures on the heart. And in this data, what we saw was that the surgeons actually learned pretty well from the failures of others.

But when it came to their own failures, they didn't learn. And so one of the things we have to recognize is when things go wrong, you know, yes, we need to protect ourselves and we need to recognize that failure is a part of the process, but we also have to be willing to ask the question, hey, what could I have done differently here? What do I need to improve next time to make sure that potential learning doesn't go uncaptured? That's a really interesting point, that we learn better from the failure of others than from ourselves, because there's that self-protection mechanism of, you know, it wasn't my fault. Yeah, exactly. And so we can look at others often kind of more rationally

than ourselves when we need to protect our self-image. And so this is why for many organizations, after they run a project, they'll do a post-mortem of the project where they'll try to evaluate it. But with that post-mortem, it's not about blame. It's about frequently led by an outside person. Hey, let's just go through the things that went well, the things that we need to improve upon, so we can separate that out from kind of the self-worth aspect of the process. So let's talk about the kinds of things you choose to learn. And I know there are people who think, well, you know, it's important to learn about things that maybe you're not particularly interested in, but you should know about those things, or things you're not particularly good at.

You should learn those things because it makes you a more well-rounded person. But I've always been of the belief that it's very hard to learn things you're not interested in because how do you learn things you're not interested in? There's no motivation to do that, and that you are better off learning things that do interest you, that you are or potentially could be good at. Well, I think your kind of idea there is the right one. In most cases, there are some exceptions.

But if we look at kind of often how kind of review processes in organizations work, people will talk about the feedback sandwich. So you come in, you get a little bit of positive information, and then let me tell you all of the things that you did wrong that need improvement this year so you can perform well next year, and then I'll give you kind of a little bit of positive on the way out so you don't feel so bad about yourself. And the struggle with that is exactly what you're pointing out, that, hey, on those things that go

wrong, that kind of need to be improved, how important are they really to your longer-term success? We know that strengths are a great way for us to learn and for us to engage at work. Strengths are intrinsically motivating. They let us do what we love. And so that feeling of mastery is something that we really can engage with. Unfortunately, we often kind of fixate on those weaknesses because that's what people talk about. And what's interesting to me, at least, is organizationally, we don't tell companies, hey, find the things that you're bad at and only spend time there. The standard advice and strategy says, hey, find kind of your core competencies,

find those differentiators and really play to those differentiators. And so from a development and learning standpoint, there's a chance to sort of move the lens. Instead of just fixating on what you're wrong or what's going wrong, think about how can we further develop what's going right? How can we differentiate ourselves as an individual by really playing to our own brand? Now, the one caveat I should throw out there is that there are times that a weakness might be kind of critical to what we're trying to accomplish. And so if that's the world that we're in, then we have a decision to make. We either have to kind of look at that and say, well, I'm not going to do that, so I need to pick something else to run at, or probably more likely,

it might be a critical weakness that actually deserves a little bit of attention. But I think what's so interesting about strength and where we're starting to see organizations move is, hey, by letting people do what they love, by what they're good at, then they love coming to work, they engage with work, they perform at higher levels, and we as an organization can have greater success too. Where's the sweet spot when you're trying to learn something? That, you know, the tendency is that you just keep hammering away at it, hammering away at it. But I imagine that there is also benefit in walking away from it for a while as well. So what's the equation there?

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think it is something that it is something that we are still learning. I mean, one of the things that I love about being a scholar in this space is that it brings a lot of disciplines together, and one of which is neuroscience. As we're able to get better mappings of the brain, we can understand kind of the plasticity of the human brain. One of the things that has come out of neuroscience is that we see the brain can change all throughout life. And so kind of the perspective of you cannot teach an old dog new tricks is wrong. You can. It's just the old dog has to be willing to learn.

So recently there's been research looking at this question. And from a brain standpoint, what it seems to suggest is there's real value as we try to learn new things of kind of pushing ourselves past the point of knowing. In other words, it's not just barely learn the material, but keep reinforcing it, whatever that is, whether it's more scholarly material, whether it's learning a sales process, but this idea of practice, practice, practice. And so I think that while we equate practice to maybe a school test we took as a kid or our athletic competitions, we don't equate that nearly as much in our organizational environments. Now, with that being said, while we need to push through

that practice, you know, there is to your point, hey, it's just not working for me, right? I can't get there now. And so, you know, it would be, I wish I could write a pure equation for you of, you know, well, if you put in 13.7 hours and et cetera, and at least as best I can tell that doesn't exist yet, I do think what we've come to appreciate is taking breaks is necessary. That while eventually we need to put all that practice in I was talking about, when we're struggling with things, it's okay to pull back from it. It's okay to go out and take a walk is an incredibly useful way to take a break. This always-on, always-action orientation that many of us have and that seems to be so

common in our world today actually could be limiting our learning. So if you're trying to pick up a new task, you've done it a number of times, you're struggling with it, pull away from it, go do something else, kind of pick your spirits up, and then come back to it fresh, and you're likely to have more success. What else plays into this? What are some of the other things that people can think about when they're trying to learn something that either helps them learn better or doesn't help them learn worse? I think when we're trying to learn activities, again, whether that's at school, it's at sports, it's at work, we tend to think about the important role of doing, right? That we've got to engage in the activity again and again. But what the research shows is the incredible power of thinking, of reflecting about the task. Now, you know, we've done some research on the topic and in our early research, we gave

people a choice. We taught them a new task and then we gave them kind of a block of time. Hey, you can keep learning, doing this task, you can reflect on it. And what we found is about 80% of people would choose to keep doing, to keep practicing, right? I've got to get this right. I've got to get this right. That 20% that chose to reflect, to think about, hey, why am I doing this? How do the pieces fit together? They ended up performing at a much higher level. We then kind of maybe there were some selection issues or something complicated going on,

so we randomly assigned the two. And we again saw the reflection worked. A bunch of research by us and others kind of unpacks this. Some really interesting neuroscience research shows we activate different parts of the brain when we think versus when we do, when we act. And so kind of the combination helps us learn even more. And so I think that's one of the things is as we look at our days, I think for most of us, you know, calendars fill up.

We see kind of meeting after meeting or different activities. And so I often ask people, you know, look at your calendar. Where is the time for you to think? You know, when are you actually stepping back and putting these pieces together, not just at the 30,000-foot level, but on that activity you just did? What worked? Why did it work? How do we want to repeat it again? How do

we not? You know, those sorts of questions are incredibly important. You know, I had a mentor that really drove this home for me a number of years ago that I came in to meet with him. I had, you know, kind of a ton of material to cover. So I was trying to, you know, talk as fast as I could just to get through it all rather than having prioritized what I really needed to do with him. Until eventually, you know, he got me to stop talking and he looked me in the eye and he said, Brad, don't avoid thinking by being busy. Anything else that we haven't talked about that you think is critical or a study or some research or just some little tidbit that people would find pretty fascinating?

When it comes to learning, we often don't take the time to step back and ask questions. We feel somebody throws out their own question, and we're immediately trying to answer it and show what we know. And in an organizational context, this can be a really big deal, right? Rushing to, here's the answer, here's the answer. But a willingness to pull back and ask a thoughtful question, or if we're in a room and, you know, kind of somebody's talking to say, I don't understand, can you go through that? We tend to think we're judged constantly, and so we self-censor, and we don't ask those questions. And what the research shows is that people actually like us more when we ask questions, that engaging in that curiosity is seen as a positive.

It's turning the other person into the expert, which people appreciate. There's a really cool study that looked at speed dating, and it found that people who asked more questions were more likely to get dates as a result. And so kind of making sure why is a frequent part of your repertoire is key if we're going to be a dynamic learner. Wow. Every school kid should hear that, because how many times in school do kids, did you, did I, not ask a question for fear of looking stupid or not wanting to take up time or whatever. And what you just said blows that thinking out of the park. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. And being willing to ask that question can really spark new ideas.

I love the example of Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, the story of his daughter on vacation asking, you know, dad, why can't I see the picture immediately? And a simple childlike question there, instead of getting, you know, a dad answer, because you can't, because I said so, you know, Edwin Land, founder of, you know, a great filter company of the world, looks at this and says, huh, you know, why can't you? Why can't we invent instant photography? And then it's off to the races creating, you know, multi-billion dollar business, an entirely new way that consumers get to see the world. Well, it's really interesting when you think about, you know, why we learn, what we learn, how we learn, and that there is some real science to it that can help us learn better. Bradley Statz has been my guest. The name of his book is Never Stop Learning.

Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Bradley. Yeah, thank you much. I appreciate it as well. There's something I've noticed, and I'm sure you've noticed this too. You get a group of people together at a party and they start drinking. And the more they drink, the louder the party gets. Why is that?

Well, there's actually a scientific explanation. Studies by ear, nose, and throat experts have found that after drinking two or more alcoholic drinks, the membranes in your ears begin to constrict and interfere with your hearing. Since you can't hear as well, you talk louder. While moderate alcohol hearing loss is temporary, it can last up to 16 hours. Previous studies have found that steady or heavy drinkers can suffer permanent hearing loss due to the damage to the hearing region of the brain. And that's the podcast today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the

isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show

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