The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 481: Eric Barker - The Surprising Science About Building Excellent Relationships (Plays Well With Others)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 6-6-866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday, morning to help you start your week off right you'll also receive details about how my book the pursuit of excellence will help you become a more effective leader text hawk to 666866 now on

Starting point is 00:00:48 tonight's featured leader eric barker the author of the wall street journal bestseller barking up the wrong tree sold over half a million copies even the subject of a question on Jeopardy. He is a sought-after thinker has given talks at MIT, Yale, Google, and the Olympic Training Center. His new book is called Plays Well with Others, the surprising science behind why everything you know about relationships is mostly wrong. During this conversation we discuss the science behind why we need to schedule exciting, events with our partner as well as with our friends and not just do the standard dinner and drinks and Netflix.

Starting point is 00:01:38 And then, interesting part, how to spot a liar and more specifically why reading people's body language is overrated. And then the importance of optimism in a job candidate as well as in your friends. Ladies and gentlemen, this one will make you think. It's Eric Barker. Eric, thanks so much for coming back. It's been almost five years since the last time we talked. It's wild how fast time goes, man.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Oh, no, it's crazy. It's great to be here, man. Okay, let's dive into some profiling. You write, humans are prone to seeing meaning when there is none. There's a fundamental reason that astrologers outnumber astronomers. That was wild. right and emotionally we want a feeling of control over the world around us we desperately need the world to at least seem to make sense and for that we need a story even if it isn't true uh this this

Starting point is 00:02:42 really hit home because i mean i'm i'm a victim of this i do this myself i think probably we all do at times can you share more about why there is such a need for us to at least seem to make sense of things and that astrologers actually outnumber astronomers. I mean, the issue here is, you know, we're a storytelling species. And when we have no idea what the environment around us is like, we feel anxious. We don't know what to expect. So our brains are always trying, and we're only going to get so many facts. So we're immediately starting as soon as we're in a situation to kind of tell ourselves

Starting point is 00:03:19 a story about it. Oh, I've been here before. Oh, this is similar to this. This is analogous to this. And we do the same thing. This is from the chapter where I'm talking about reading people. And truth is, most of the research shows we're pretty bad at reading people.

Starting point is 00:03:32 You know, it's like with when we meet strangers, we only correctly read their thoughts and feelings 20% of the time. You know, with friends, we get the 30%. With spouses, we get the 35%. This is researched by Nicholas Epley at University of Chicago. So literally, whatever you think is on your spouse's mind, two thirds of the time you're wrong.

Starting point is 00:03:51 You know, but our brains need that confidence to be able to operate, to be able to move around. So we are very quickly taking information immediately, subconsciously, and telling ourselves a story about the situation. And what you see over time is that, you know, our reading skills don't necessarily get better, but our confidence goes up.

Starting point is 00:04:11 And this can be where we make some mistakes. So I talk a lot in the book about how to get better at reading people because naturally, we're telling ourselves a story, and we don't usually go into it like a scientist, hypothesis testing, you know, really kind of rigorously analyzing. We just kind of accept the stories we tell ourselves. And this is one of the biggest places we make mistakes when dealing with other people. What are some ways to get better at reading people?

Starting point is 00:04:39 First and foremost, our brains are pretty lazy in general, that kind of hum along. What the research shows is that people are actually better at reading others on first dates, you know, because all of a sudden there's states. something to win, there's something to lose. So we get focused, we get motivated. Anything we can do to improve focus, motivation, a feeling of win or loss will kind of up our game immediately a little bit. You're a little bit sharper, you know, in that meeting where you need to do the big presentation in front of the boss. You need to be sharp. Beyond that, the real thing I focus on, it seems like it's a low ceiling. All the research is pretty consistent that we're just pretty bad at reading people. So what we need to do is flip our

Starting point is 00:05:22 strategy. Instead of trying to be better at reading people, we need to work to make the other person more readable. So having them send us stronger signals can help us to account for our natural weakness. And there's a number of things we can do here. The first is by manipulating context. If you're just, you know, sitting across with somebody having a cup of coffee, they're not going to be giving you an enormous amount of information. But if you were to choose a different location, you know, if you were to be playing a sport with somebody, you'd see them make decisions in real time, you'd see how they cooperate and interact with others, you'd see if they cheat or not. That's a situation that's giving us a lot more information. So we can choose contacts ahead of time

Starting point is 00:06:07 that'll deliver us more information. Beyond that, we might want to involve other people. If you only dealt with somebody in the presence of their boss, would you think that you were seeing the full them? Probably not. Other people. can bring out different facets. Beyond that, we want to talk about more controversial topics. If you can get an emotional reaction out of somebody, that's probably more likely to be honest as far as the research goes. Talk about controversial topics makes people engage, makes them more reactive. It gives you a little better idea beyond kind of the surface face of what they're thinking, you know, and also, at least on first dates, when people talk about controversial topics,

Starting point is 00:06:48 They actually have a better time. So it's actually more fun to... Really? Yeah, it was this surprising research in terms of... Because most people on dates are playing it safe. Yeah. And they're talking about boring stuff, and so you get a boring date. Versus when people start talking about stuff that's a little bit controversial,

Starting point is 00:07:07 you know, people get engaged. Now, definitely there's a chance of people getting offended and stuff. But when you think about the most common downside of boredom or just not feeling engaged, at least talking about something it's a little spicy it brings the person out of their shell you start talking you really do increase the upside potential of them reacting you reacting somebody starts to get engaged versus kind of just tuning out well i i could see it either going really well or really bad i would i would rather that wouldn't you wouldn't you rather just like no right away like let's let because like what if you're right in line like you notice your principles are lining up and your

Starting point is 00:07:47 value system are starting to line up or they're not. You're like, all right, I'm going to get out here. You know, I think in a way, that's a lot better than just being bored the whole time. Absolutely. And I want to, in that same chapter of the book, I talk about first impressions. And what's interesting is first impressions were actually pretty accurate. Roughly 70% of the time, our first impressions are, are pretty clear.

Starting point is 00:08:08 There's a lot of research on what's called thin slicing, where if you see a video of a teacher in a classroom and with no audio, we're. Roughly 70% of the time, people can look and say whether this person is competent at their job or not. They could say it accurately. The issue is 70%, that's still a D in school. That's not perfect. So again, the issue with first impressions, you know, it's the same, it comes to the same conclusion in terms of we're a little too fast to jump on those stories, a little too fast to just think we're confident, we know everything. We need to step back, test them a little bit.

Starting point is 00:08:45 We need to, rather than just accepting what we feel is true, to just go, let me see. I think this person isn't so nice. Let me give them a second chance. Let me test to see how they respond to this. That's going to give you more accurate signals than just going with your gut. And this is in line, too, I think, with lying. Okay. So you write a lot about lying.

Starting point is 00:09:08 And I think one of the question of how to spot a liar, we all want to get better at this. And I found, I read these amazing stats that you write about. The average college student lies in about a third of conversations for adults. It's one in five. Actually, not that bad. One in five. I thought it might be higher. 81% of profiles in online dating are apps deviate from the truth.

Starting point is 00:09:35 81% that's a lot. And you write that we're terrible at detecting lies, averaging a 54% success rate. So what are some of the ways that we can get better or we could increase that rate from 54% knowing it's going to happen from time to time? Lying, I mean. Absolutely. The fundamental issue here is that most of what we see about lie detection is based on

Starting point is 00:10:05 the idea that stressing someone or detecting anxiety is going to tell you whether they're lying or not. and that doesn't hold up at all. Basically, the polygraph does not work. The issue is that we don't, it's lying doesn't make it necessarily emotionally stressful and other things do. What does indicate lying is what's called cognitive load.

Starting point is 00:10:30 Basically, line takes a fair amount of brain power, doing it well at least, because you have to think about the truth. You have to think about your lie. You have to monitor the other person to see if they're catching on. You have to update what you're saying in real time, as they ask you questions and you keep making stuff up.

Starting point is 00:10:46 This can take a lot of brain power. So what we want to do is up that even further, up the cognitive load. Because all of a sudden, much like your computer kind of chewing on a tough problem, if they have to, they're going to slow down. Their computer is going to slow down. And that's going to be much more detectable. In the research, one of the ways that is most shown to increase cognitive load that's relatively easy to do is to ask unanticipated questions.

Starting point is 00:11:14 A liar can't prepare for everything you could possibly ask them. So, for instance, if you were a bartender, somebody walks into the bar, and they're obviously underage. Now, if you were to ask them, how old are you? They're going to say 21. But if you were to ask them, what year were you born? That's a very easy question to answer, if you're telling the truth. But now, the underage person probably didn't think about that,

Starting point is 00:11:41 probably didn't prepare. They're going to have to do a little bit of math and that's going to give you a strong signal that they're not telling the truth. Anything that is unanticipated is going to give you an edge. This is something that is used for airport screeners. And when they taught them to first start looking for asking unanticipated questions and beyond that, to instead of asking themselves, does this person seem like they're lying to start asking themselves, does it seem like this person's thinking? hard, their ability to detect lies shot up. So if somebody says, oh, yeah, I was at that meeting yesterday, you can say, oh, was Carol there? Was she wearing that scarf she always wears? That's something you can verify, and that's something they know you can verify.

Starting point is 00:12:27 And that's going to put them in a difficult situation. So unanticipated questions is a very powerful way to detect lies. And it's like when I feel this as apparent when you're trying to stress kind of the importance of telling the truth. Here's what we say, and I'm sure you've talked to people about this. It's so much nicer to tell the truth because then you don't have to remember anything. Exactly. If you lie, you've got to remember the whole thing, and it's terrible, it's awful, it eats at you, it kills you, and that's why it's like, I just can't do this.

Starting point is 00:13:00 But if you tell the truth, you don't have to really remember anything. You just, they ask you to retell the story, then you just tell it because it's all true. And I think that's something to think about as well. And I'm not a cynic. I like to believe that everybody tells the truth all the time and lead with trust. But I do think that's something to think about as one, what type of leader we want to be, the one who's honest and tells a truth. So we don't have to remember the lie. But every once in a while, yeah, we're going to run into that.

Starting point is 00:13:28 And here are some ways to detect that, I think is important. I think what you're saying is that cuts to the heart of this, is that it is easier to tell the truth. And the best way to detect lies is often to emphasize that issue of it's more difficult to tell a lot. And the more difficult we can make it, the easier liars will be able to detect them. You also write another part that I just love. I quoted the science overwhelmingly recommend a nuanced and sophisticated method. Humans have never tried in the past 5,000 years when attempting to detect, I'm sorry, when attempting to detect lies being nice never don't be the bad cop good cop just be a friendly

Starting point is 00:14:16 journalist get them to like you to open up to talk right because this is when you talk about the cognitive load like getting people to talk and share and share this is why you write lawyers they just tell you to be quiet they tell you to stop talking because they know if they get you talking you're probably going to mess up I mean anything that's why lawyers you You know, say to a, to a criminal lawyers, say, just don't talk. You know, you know, plead the fifth. Because, you know, even if they say something, this is something true, they say something untrue that everything can be, can and will be used against you in a court of law.

Starting point is 00:14:51 So the issue in trying to detect lies is when you're aggressive, when you're negative, when you're skeptical, people shut down. And what you need is more information. You need people talking as much as possible. So I say, I call it the friendly journalist. method because you want to collect as much information as possible and you do that by being friendly, being supported, not being, not making accusations. You want to get the person talking because, number one, it gets you as much information to test as possible to raise those unanticipated questions.

Starting point is 00:15:26 But also, number two, the critical factor, which is if you don't know this person well, If you haven't tried to detect lies with them before, you don't have a baseline. You don't know, you know, oh, he's drumming his fingers. That means he's nervous. Well, no, that might just be a habit he always does. Is shivering. Oh, is he cold or is he or is he anxious? I don't know. But when I have you talk a little bit in advance. I'm going to get a read. I'm going to get a baseline. And I ask you easy questions. I'm going to hear how quickly do you reply. And then, I have you. When I hit you with the unanticipated questions, I can measure the difference, you know, back of the envelope. He was answering those other questions very quickly, very smoothly. Now I'm asking the unanticipated questions, and there's a big slowdown. There's a big shift. There's a lot of ums and azz. That shift is going to be the biggest indicator you're going to be able to use as to whether to tell them the truth or not.

Starting point is 00:16:28 I think of playing poker. I'm not a very good poker player, but I used to play more. I'll tell you from like my own self-scouting when I think about how I feel when I'm either running a bluff or I've got a monster hand. I think this is true based on my own kind of reflection. I am so nervous when I've got a huge hand because I so badly want to put off the perception of like, please call, please call, please call when I put out a big bet. I feel like I am way more nervous. My heart is beating through my chest when I have a monster hand that I want to get paid. off versus a time when I'm running a bluff.

Starting point is 00:17:05 So it's just like some people say, well, I could see he looks so nervous. He's like, you know, he's moving around a little bit. That tell is just completely wrong in this case because I'm trying to not be that excited, but I can't help it. I'm excited and you can see it. I feel like in a way this is another reason why people sometimes can mess up reading people. Well, you've got that, again, there's that difference between your bluffing and when you're not and that's why you see with with some of the better poker players sometimes

Starting point is 00:17:37 you'll see they're wearing sunglasses you know or they're just always calm all the time and again that's kind of like what we're talking about earlier where they don't want to give any information at all because even if they're trying to bluff you have to ask are they this confident in general are they less confident more confident does this seem silly you know last time he had a great hand and he act like this, even if you're giving a good performance, you've still got the issue of how you're behaving contradicting your prior behavior. So much like the advice, you know, that lawyers give say nothing that, you know, poker players are trying to say,

Starting point is 00:18:21 I want my body to give off nothing. When I've got a bad hand, good hand, I want it to be consistent and indistinguishable. If you're a fantastic, you know, Oscar level, actually, great, maybe you can manipulate that in real time, but it's probably much safer to say, I'm going to look the same no matter what hand I had and I'm just going to give the other person nothing because this is somebody who is often in a poker game trying to lot. So I'm going to go to something that you've written on your blog, but the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think it plays well with your book plays well with others. And I think when building relationships, I know at least for me, and I'm sure probably most people, this is big.

Starting point is 00:19:06 And that is optimism. Okay. Sean Acores, TED Talk, which you write a big post about. And I'm so glad that you, because I haven't watched that thing in a long time. I think it came out in 2011. Wow, is that TED Talk good and so funny. I actually emailed Sean this morning after rewatching it from your post because I'm just blown away by how good that is. and I haven't watched it in years.

Starting point is 00:19:31 I encourage people to watch Sean Acorn's TED Talk. But anyway, there's so much research behind this. And just one example, I'll pull out. Then I'll ask you to share more about the benefits of optimism. MetLife saw such great results among happy salespeople that they tried an experiment. They started hiring people based primarily on optimism, regardless of the other things that you need to come into this sales job. It turns out that the optimistic group outsold their more pessimistic counterparts by 19% in year one and 57% in year two. When you're thinking about relationships and playing well with others, I feel like optimism is a massive quality in order to play well with others.

Starting point is 00:20:18 What do you think? I mean, in terms of in the business context for sales, there's other research showing that just with that show that betting on optimism, alone, you know, predict sales success. You know, and a lot of it comes down to one of optimism's even more fundamental benefits, which is resilience. You know, basically, if you always feel like things are going to turn out well, you persist. When you feel like things are not going to work out, why would you continue doing it? And so optimism is really key in terms of having this resilient,

Starting point is 00:20:59 towards the world, there's also research on what makes Navy SEALs persist through training and optimism again because of that resilience factor. When you think that it's going to work out in the end, you don't give up. And with sales, you know, it's that's such a critical issue because they face a lot of rejection, enormous amounts of rejection. So being optimistic, being able to persist in the face of that turns out to be much more powerful than any other little minor trick. And not only that, in general, optimism is correlated with a score of health benefits.

Starting point is 00:21:35 You know, in general, it's a really good perspective for people in general, but for sales in the workforce, it's super powerful to be able to persist, to keep going, to keep seeing the positive, even when things don't look so hot. Well, you, there's also an excerpt I wrote. I think it was part of it was cut from the book. But there is this, I'm going to mispronounce it, Framingham study showed, and I'm going to bring this to optimism too, because I'll relate it a little bit, showed that drinking, smoking, and obesity are all contagious. If someone you consider a friend becomes obese, your likelihood of obesity increases by 53%. And if that friendship is mutual, the number rises to 171%.

Starting point is 00:22:22 more broadly, I think amazing stats, by the way, I mean, scary. But it just shows the power of your who, as Jim Collins said on this podcast, the importance of that. And I've noticed in my life growing up in a home with a dad who is overwhelmingly, I mean, just wildly optimistic about everything, sets the tone for our whole family and how all of us growing up. In fact, my wife, I think the number one thing that attracted me to her through the courting process is that she reminds me of my dad when it comes to how optimistic she is and he is. And so because I think I become a better person being around them. I think they're more

Starting point is 00:23:09 optimistic than I am, but being around them makes me a better person. And so this is, I know I'm kind of bouncing off two things, but the importance of you or who, the people you surround yourself with and optimism. I feel like this is life-changing, your trajectory literally of your career, your social life, your personal life changes based on surrounding yourself with these types of people. And that's exactly what the research shows. The Framingham Heart study, you know, is this huge study that looked at heart disease, but it revealed so much in terms of basically how the people we spend time with affect us. us in so many ways that we don't even expect.

Starting point is 00:23:52 We like to think that we're autonomous, that we're making our own decisions. And if there's been any lesson, one lesson to pull away from the past few decades of social science research, it's that context matters. And one of the biggest forms of context is the people you surround yourself with. We just, you know, the thing you're referring to, I just talk about how in so many ways, you know, the people who are around you, in influence you and the thing is we usually don't even realize to what degree is that they did research on college students and and drinking and You know what they found was it had a lot to do with how much a college student thought other college students were drinking they were influenced by their peers and the more the the more amusing lesson was that there was a danger of the researchers realized if you told the

Starting point is 00:24:48 college students who didn't drink that much. Oh, you actually drink less than average. This actually caused their drinking to increase. So you have to be very careful. One of the things that most increased women's rights around the world and feminism was cable TV. Because women in developing nations saw women in other countries and said, oh, look what she's doing. Maybe I can do that too. And this is, this caused a spread. And what was great is they could test it because you could see in what districts and areas cable TV was available versus wasn't available and you could measure changes so it has profound effects on smoking drinking obesity and people might think with obesity oh well you know

Starting point is 00:25:33 it's it might just be genetics or it might just be you know like like is similar to like and it's like no because they studied military professionals who when they were moved to another base with a higher obesity rate, boom, it went up. You moved somebody to a military base, not their choice. With a lower obesity rate, it went down. So we are very much influenced by our contacts. It sounds like you've chosen well. Your dad's very optimistic and then you chose a wife who was very optimistic. So for us to think about a really simple, I think I called this blog post kind of like a lazy way to an awesome life. And the reason for that is because spend more time

Starting point is 00:26:15 with the people that you want to be like because we we say you know birds of a feather stick together it's like actually you become the people that you spend time with so it's really something to think about and if we spend more time with the people we want to be we could end up being better people pretty passively you have written about you being kind of on your own at times and it feels like this research has impacted you this this i think this part is is everything i've just explained you why. How is, how is this research impacted your life and how you behave and who you surround yourself

Starting point is 00:26:51 and how intentional you're being in regards to this? Well, basically the second section of the book is all about friendship. And it was, you know, impressive to me to see Nobel Prize winner Daniel Connman found the friends make us happier than any other relationship. Sorry, spouses. You know, it's friends make us happier. And even within a marriage,

Starting point is 00:27:11 The most happiness inducing part of the marriage is the friendship between the two people because friendship is always voluntary You have a you have a contract of sorts with your employer with your spouse your kids are your blood You're always kind of friends are only there because you want them to be so that's a really high standard But that fragility of friendship proves its purity Friendships are so powerful and what I realized I looked at the work at Dale Carnegie most of which not all has been validated by research, but I looked at how do we make deeper friendships? Dale Carnegie is really good with the first initial steps, but how do we deepen friendships?

Starting point is 00:27:51 Aristotle said that a friend is another self, and the research has basically validated that. Deepening friendships comes down to sending costly signals. And for me, personally, especially through the pandemic when I was writing this book, I started to think more about those costly signals. The first one is time, because time is the thing that studies, show friends argue about the most and time is a very powerful signal you spend a lot of time with somebody times a scarce resource that says they mean something

Starting point is 00:28:21 to you so now I schedule I'm more deliberate I don't just schedule like work appointments I also schedule time with friends routinely the second policy signal is vulnerability something I have not been good at but trying to open up talk about your fears your concerns your weaknesses we get so worried sometimes understandably that that information could be used against us, but showing your weaknesses, tell someone you trust them, that they won't hurt you.

Starting point is 00:28:50 It is a costly signal because you're handing somebody a weapon they could use against you. And when you display that level of trust in others, very often, they reciprocate. Those are the powerful ways to deepen friendships. So I think a lot more, post-pandemic, post-book, I think a lot more about how much time my friends are getting deliberately,

Starting point is 00:29:11 and about how open and vulnerable I'm being. I love that. I think of ways that, especially you work really hard at work, and that sometimes can provide economic security for yourself. And so the question I think we like to ask on our walks regularly with our dog is, how can we turn that hard work, which has then earned some money into amazing moments with people we love? And that is just a regular question.

Starting point is 00:29:41 because if you're not intentional about that, you'll just kind of go to work every day and keep at it and not kind of reap some of the rewards for that hard work. And so that's like a regular prompt to say, what can we do to turn this into some magical moments? Whether like getting into the next session on love, like I love live music, for example.

Starting point is 00:30:04 So it was terrible during the pandemic where you couldn't go and see live shows. And I went back the second they started doing them and I'm doing even more coming up here soon, that I think both in a romantic relationship, the science proves us from what you've written as well, as I think in friendships of finding these exciting things to go and do together deepen relationships

Starting point is 00:30:27 as opposed to doing kind of the more boring things, whether it's just kind of eating dinner or whatever may be. Can you share more about the science around love and deepening relationships and doing exciting things together? Yeah. I mean, they studied having couples, two cohorts. One group of couples went on pleasant dates and another group went on exciting dates. And exciting one.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Because the issue is when love happens, it's pretty passive. It just hits us. And we think the other person is fantastic. We think about them all the time. The issue is these feelings often die down. And it's problematic because it's so easy and fast in the beginning. that we have a natural assumption that it's going to continue to be that easy. And the issue is we need to be more proactive.

Starting point is 00:31:17 When you're in a long-term relationship, the feelings can die down a little bit, and we can take each other for granted. The issue here is how can you boost those feelings? How can you keep the ball in the air? And it sounds tricky because there's no switch you can flip to feel more thrilled about your partner. But what we can do is leverage the psychological principle of emotional contagion,

Starting point is 00:31:39 And what that is, is that whatever environment we're in, we're going to associate those feelings with who we're with. So I think right from there, people can start to surmise another evening of Netflix and pizza. But like you're saying, going out the concerts, you know, this is great. You're going to feel vibrant, you know, excited, alive. It's like you go on roller coasters, you know, go do fun stuff. and you are going to associate those feelings with your partner. This is a powerful way over the course of a long-term relationship to maintain those positive feelings.

Starting point is 00:32:15 And kind of like you were saying before that, you know, spending your money to make your life better. It's like you're going to go on dates. You're going to have date night. What is the way to leverage that time, that money, that energy that is really going to sustain a relationship over the long haul is to think about what is going to develop the two of you. When people feel like their energy,

Starting point is 00:32:36 When people feel like they're growing together, they're learning together. This not only is fun in the moment, but this predicts future good things in any relationship when people feel like they're starting to become a better person, a better version of themselves, and it sustains those emotional feelings. So it's really powerful to do exactly what you're doing, go out the concerts and exciting dates. And it also creates what Bill Perkins would call memory dividends. So you can draw from those moving forward if you keep looking to intentionally create these awesome moments and takes work. It takes you got to be intentional or if not the days will just go by.

Starting point is 00:33:18 But then afterwards you can look back like we still talk about these vacations and these big moments, concerts, right? Things like that food experiences that are different than the norm. Like a lot of times other people that we got to meet and learn like I love when you mentioned you have to grow. and learn together to me when I meet a person or sometimes a couple and they have this kind of deep curiosity about about about not only about me like I know people I talked with themselves but I mean about the world they're curious about topics and ideas and they're asking questions and they don't just talk about themselves a whole time those people I'm like I'm kind of addicted I'm like hey we go let's go out with them again like let's hang out with them again like that

Starting point is 00:33:59 was really cool you know versus versus some of the others that were you know you hear that's That's the opposite of that. So I think curiosity was also a big part of playing well with others that I read throughout your book. Can you share the power and the importance of curiosity? I mean, feeling that issue of growing is so critical. There's two parts of the book there where, you know, opening up, you know, looking for new vistas together can be really critical. John Gottman, who's the leading researcher on marriage and relationships, he's able to detect. whether a couple will divorce in five years or not with over 90% accuracy.

Starting point is 00:34:40 And he can generally do it in a few minutes. And the craziest thing about that already crazy fact is the fact that how he does it is so simple. And that is he has the couple to tell their story. And if the couple tells this story of basically dealing with challenges, overcoming them, being happy, that's a great sign, celebrating the difficulties. And kind of like you're saying, moments for that story. There's a whole line of research that says this storytelling that underlies how you see your

Starting point is 00:35:12 relationship. You can't remember every single thing that happens in a relationship. That's not how we evaluate them. It's much more like an executive summary type perspective, that little story we tell ourselves. But just like you were saying, to have those big moments, those cool things you did, that really highlights stuff rather than everyday hum drum. It gives you more scenes for the story of your relationship together and as John Gottman found that story is critical. It actually predicts divorce The other thing I talk about is many people try to improve their partners and

Starting point is 00:35:48 The big mistake people make is there's usually a little bit of selfishness in there you want your partner to improve But you want them to improve in the way that benefits you how you'd like them to be But the the research and relationships shows that you can leverage something that's called the Michelangelo effect, which is people actually are more compliant with efforts to change and happier and it benefits to relationship. It can actually work. The issue is we have to think who do they want to be, who is their ideal self, and support that, reward that. When we get an idea of talk to a partner, who did they want to be, and then we push them in that direction. We know, hey, you said you want to be a better friend.

Starting point is 00:36:33 Why don't you go see your best friend tonight? When we push them in that direction, they become the person they want to be. They become happier. The relationship becomes stronger. And typically, typically in relationships, there is a strong overlap between who they would like to be and who you would like them to be. And by helping people move in the direction, they want to go towards their ideal self. This is a fantastic way to improve relationships. And so it has to do with those opening up, that curious.

Starting point is 00:37:03 curiosity, new experiences, pushing people in a different direction. But first and foremost, it has to do with getting to know your partner. And we don't communicate enough. So that's another big lesson. Casanova said love is three quarters curiosity, which you write in your book. And that curiosity can create deep knowledge. And you mentioned John Gottman. John Gottman then calls this a love map.

Starting point is 00:37:30 And you write, everyone asks how you got together. nobody ask how you stayed together and it's the latter that is often the real achievement to be proud of and i that really made me think especially of curiosity and i think curiosity and i think curiosity and judgment are on the opposite ends of the spectrum when you think about two opposing things and to me always like striving hard to be towards this curiosity and unless judgey of people again will help you play play well with others will help you play well with a partner will help you play well with people in general of approaching them with curiosity versus judgment and that seems to be one of the universal qualities that just goes beyond when it comes to playing well with others it's a huge huge issue

Starting point is 00:38:20 i think you made a great point there in kind of curiosity and judgment being opposite polls because what gotman found in that research on love max which is basically his term for just getting to know your in our world is when we when our partner does something that upsets us you know often we rush to judgment and often we kind of we can rush to think that oh they're inconsiderate they're bad to judging them versus being curious and realizing hey they leave the light on the bathroom at night because of a childhood fear of the dark like they're not an awful person that it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a thing they picked up as a little

Starting point is 00:39:02 kid, it's totally sympathetic. But you wouldn't find that out if you didn't ask. You wouldn't find that out if you weren't curious. And I think first and foremost, just asking people about themselves is often very flattering. Wanting to understand is a powerful signal that you care. And then beyond that, in terms of the long haul, you know, it's so much easier to get through the difficult times, the arguments, when you have that love map. This is what got me found. is that you can do what's called preemptive repair. When you know, hey, we're having this argument, you know, my partner's getting really stressed out

Starting point is 00:39:41 and I know when they get stressed out, this happens and it's not. Once I know, hey, this is gonna happen and I predict it, I understand, I can account for it, I can accept it versus if you think it's totally unreasonable. By learning, constantly asking. And one of the biggest things is to ask

Starting point is 00:40:01 about those vague words, what does happiness mean to you? What does love mean to you? What does marriage mean to you? When you understand that your partner sees household chores as an expression of caring, now you understand why they're getting, they're kind of flipping out that you didn't take out the trash. Because that's not immediately known to everyone, but you understand this really means a lot to him or her, it's like, oh, okay, I understand idiosyncratically, this is really critical. This other thing, not so much. But when we ask those big questions, what does love mean, what does happiness mean? Now we're kind of getting answers to the test ahead of time. We can say, these are what's really important. Let me do that and let me avoid this. You're

Starting point is 00:40:48 customizing it. It's a tailored suit. You're finding out just how they like their coffee is nice, but when you find out what a happy marriage means to them, you just got a checklist. So it's really powerful to ask those questions. Do you subscribe to the love language assessment where, you know, acts of service or quality time, right? The affirmative words, gifts. Do you subscribe to that? What do you think of the science behind that?

Starting point is 00:41:16 Or is there enough science behind it? I mean, I try to go to the more fundamental level where I think, you know, certainly different people appreciate it. But rather than like looking at this predefined set, I think is to have that conversation with your partner. Like I said, asking can be flattering. And it's a good conversation to have. And you know, whenever you try to get to know somebody, people are going to be thrilled. And their answer might not be on that list. So to see, you know, what do they want? What are they that specific to them? They've learned lessons throughout their prior relationships, you know, and you can realize, hey, we don't want to be. You know, we don't want to be specific to them. They've learned lessons throughout their prior relationships, you know, and you can realize, hey, we don't want to be. You know, we don't want to do. You know, make that same mistake that happened to them before, you really want to get to those big questions rather than focusing on, like I said, things that might be a little too narrow or concrete like acts of service or this to say, what does a happy marriage mean to you? What does a good husband or wife mean to you? This is something that can not only, like I said, give the answers to the test, but it can be an ongoing conversation because then both of you can get on the same page.

Starting point is 00:42:20 And then it ties in with the story aspect with when they say, say a good marriage mean this, you say a good marriage mean this. It's almost like writing your vowels. Both of you are aligning. Okay, well we both see these things. We both want these things. You're really starting to, rather than this stuff being kind of like vague, you're all of a sudden you're starting to like get specific about it.

Starting point is 00:42:43 And then you can make a plan. You know, it's like you can really start to do things that encourage that instead of just kind of throwing a dart at the dart the darkboard and hoping it lands yeah uh i know you may shy away from this question but i'm going to ask i'm going to push you on it anyway and that is let's say there's someone who's a bit earlier in their career maybe they just graduated college and they write you an email eric i love your blog i love your books i've been following it for years what are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give for me if I'm the type of person who wants to do good, leave a positive

Starting point is 00:43:24 debt in the world, hopefully help people in some way, shape, or form. What are some general pieces of life advice for that person? There's so many. I mean, you know, first and foremost, as I talked about my first, my first book was stress testing, the maxims of success. And one of the things I talk about there is that issue of work-life balance. You know, having a great career is super important. We all want it. But we also have to think about what's going to bring us happiness in our overall life. So I always say you have to set a personal definition of success because we the world these days, the office doesn't close at 5 p.m. The emails don't stop coming. Phone calls often don't stop coming. You can work constantly. So to have a happy life,

Starting point is 00:44:14 you know, and you can also always want more, which might be. a good prescription often for success at least until you burn out but you know you want to be able to say this is enough so to set that for yourself what level of the ambition do you have and what are you willing to trade for it because nobody can answer that question except for you to be able to say this is good I could do more but if I do more I'm gonna be taking time away from my family now again this doesn't have to say you know consistent throughout your life. When you're younger, you want to focus more in your career.

Starting point is 00:44:52 That's great. You're happy to make that trade off. All I'm saying is make that trade off explicit and deliberate and conscious to think about it and make a decision. Because again, nobody can make that decision for you. The world is always going to tell you, work harder, do more. They don't have an incentive not to. So for you to say, here's where I want to be by here, here's where I'm willing to trade for it. You can alter it. You can change that. That's fine. But I don't think most people are deliberate enough about that.

Starting point is 00:45:24 They kind of passively wait for the signal to come from outside. And in our current 24-7-Go-go world, that's never going to happen. You can be super ambitious. Set the limit really high. Great. But the point is, think about it because you're the only one that can answer it. Great point. Thanks so much, Eric.

Starting point is 00:45:43 I really appreciate being, especially on such a quick turnaround. The book. This is great, man. Yeah, man, I love it. It was called Plays Well with Others. The surprising science behind why everything you know about relationships is mostly wrong. It's really good. I got it last night and just tearing through it still currently in the midst of it.

Starting point is 00:46:05 So I really appreciate it. I encourage people to get the book and read it. And Eric, I certainly would love for us to continue our dialogue. By the way, we have the same book agent, Jim Levine. So I saw you read about Jim too. You interviewed Jim. I did interview Jim, a big Jim Levine fan. So I love that dude.

Starting point is 00:46:24 He's been a huge help for me from my first Jim books. So again, would I love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, ma'am. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. I look forward to continuing as well. Thanks, man. Eric is definitely the type of thinker and writer and speaker who makes you think, the combination of the stories as well as.

Starting point is 00:46:48 the scientific research to back them up. It's a pretty deadly combo. A few takeaways from my notes. Optimism. It turns out that the optimistic group, which was hired at MetLife, outsold their more pessimistic counterparts by 19% in year one and 57% in year two. I think surrounding yourself with optimistic people, increases your odds of accomplishing what you want to accomplish, whether it's hiring people in a sales role or lifting you up.

Starting point is 00:47:27 That resilience that Eric talked about is so important, which comes along with being optimistic. And then love. Casanova said love is three quarters curiosity. That curiosity creates deep knowledge. And that helps you build what researcher John Gottman calls a, love map. Everyone ask how you got together. Nobody asked how you stayed together. And it's the latter that is often the real achievement to be proud of. So instead of approaching people with judgment, approach them with curiosity. And then your who? Take your health, for example. The Framingham

Starting point is 00:48:09 studies showed that drinking, smoking, and obesity are all very contagious. If someone you consider a friend becomes obese, your likelihood of obesity increases by 53%. And if the friendship is mutual, the number rises to 171%. Amazing numbers. It's just another reminder that you become what you surround yourself with. Whether it's the content you take, right? As Paulina, Pompliano said on this podcast earlier, update and increase and have higher quality content diet. The same is true for the people that you surround yourself with.

Starting point is 00:48:53 You become them. So be intentional about surrounding yourself with the type of people that you want to become. I hope you found this episode useful and enjoyed it as much as I did. I would love it if you would tell a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Eric Barker. I think he'll help you become a more effective. leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast, you continue to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a

Starting point is 00:49:30 daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you too. Can't wait.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 481: Eric Barker - The Surprising Science About Building Excellent Relationships (Plays Well With Others)

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