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is body language really that important yes for example when you change the posture of people who are depressed it
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reduces their symptoms tiny tweaks lead to big changes Dr Amy Cuddy expert on
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the Behavioral Science of power Harvard Professor coined the term power pose the second most watched Ted Talk of all time
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now posture can affect some of the biggest moments of Our Lives your body language is betraying you fifty percent
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of our first impression is based around body language so the way that we carry ourselves really affects your life
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because if people feel utterly powerless they see challenges as threats instead of opportunities they are less creative
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less authentic so that's my mission to help people feel more powerful and
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become more socially Brave and there's all kinds of ways in which we can fix it is there a relationship there as well
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between our body language and attractiveness yeah there's research showing that if you
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that body language and in dating situations how we tell our
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stories to ourselves matters as I've read through your story there was bullying in your life
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it's the worst thing that ever happened to me I had to leave my job after I'd worked so hard to get there I almost
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decided to die like I'm so afraid of them still
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um I think this is fascinating I looked at
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the back end of our YouTube channel and it says that since this channel started 69.9 percent of you that watch it
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frequently haven't yet hit the Subscribe button so I have a favor to ask you if you've ever watched this Channel and
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enjoyed the content if you're enjoying this episode right now please could I ask a small favor please hit the Subscribe button helps this channel more
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this show better and better and better and better and better that's the promise I'm willing to make you if you hit the
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Subscribe button do we have a deal [Music]
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Amy [Music] there's lots of um myths around body
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language and how important it is and you hear all these phrases about oh 80 of our communication is non-verbal or 90 I
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can't remember the numbers but you hear all of this stuff is body language really that important yes it is important absolutely and and
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it it is it probably affects you know about about half of our impression of
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others our first impression is based around body language
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I'm not maybe it's higher than that but I would say it's at least 50 body
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language isn't just us speaking to others we're also speaking to ourselves the way that we carry ourselves is
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sending messages back to our our brain about whether we're safe or unsafe are
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we threatened or not threatened are we you know confident or not confident and
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so how do we know that well the the sort of earliest studies looking at this idea
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about um Body Mind feedback we're focused on facial expressions
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and so we know that there are some mostly universal expressions of emotion
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that are facial and when I say mostly there is some debate about um you know whether they're entirely
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Universal to every single culture and exactly which emotions they are but you
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have things like happiness and smiling sadness and crying um you know widened eyes and surprise
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those things are Universal regardless of where you grew up and what
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you were exposed to so if they're Universal that indicates that they are hardwired that we're born with some
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Association in our brains so if they're hardwired can you reverse the direction of that wiring can you can
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you tell people to smile and will it make them happier and so the facial feedback studies showed that yes indeed
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you can uh that you you know and the first ones were were smiling and and
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mood uh so you know they had people some people hold a pencil between their teeth
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in a way that made them smile and others hold a pencil between their teeth in a way that didn't make them smile the
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people who were in this forced smile which did cause the contraction of the
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muscles around the eyes which which is a real smile even though it was a fake smile it's not just your mouth it's your
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mouth and your eyes they were in a better mood their mood lifted they liked
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the experimenter better they liked anything put in front of them better they felt happier than the people who
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were not in this forced smile it was then expanded to look at some of these other Universal facial expressions like
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crying and sadness and then people started to look at things like
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movement posture I would say the earliest work really was on breathing
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um you know when we get anxious we breathe quickly and shallowly and if you think about
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and I'm not sure that you ever had this experience but if you know you were called on in class say in high school
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and you weren't prepared or you had the first time you had to give a speech in front of class you know a lot of students speak very quickly and you can
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tell that their their breathing is shallow and they're they're breathing quickly that's that's a fight or flight
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response and so you know can you turn that around
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um and and so the the people who started studying this called this the relaxation response where they got people to change
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their breathing and I'm gonna I'm oversimplifying this but in essence you're breathing more slowly and deeply
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and that triggers a nervous system response that makes people feel much
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more relaxed and more confident and safe which impacts performance of their speech whatever they're doing yes or the
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context in which it was first studied was medicine and trying to get patients to feel calmer before stressful
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procedures her Benson at Harvard Medical School did some of that early work I think you know
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going back to the 60s and 70s so you know that was but it wasn't sort of
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linked quite to psychology because it was coming from medicine when you have a person who is suffering from major
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depressive disorder uh open up open their posture just for a couple of minutes
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and then have them fill out a depression scale afterwards they are less depressed
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when you treat people with PTSD by teaching them you know yoga poses
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that open them up it it reduces their PTSD symptoms so you
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know this is coming from all different fields of study not just from social
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psychology so there's a clear two-way relationship between my posture and how
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I'm feeling and then also how I'm feeling in my posture which communicates outwardly to the world about who I am
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and exactly I don't know if you know the answer to this question but it made me wonder as you were talking do you know
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how old language is I actually don't know the answer I don't know it's like how old is language
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between 150 to 200 000 years old and how old are humans
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okay so we have about 50 000 years of people not having
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sophisticated language and having to read each other's body language which a lot of non-human animals are doing all
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the time yeah exactly I mean you know it's it's funny we have these squirrels
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in our front yard um and they're really active and there are all kinds of body language signals
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but also these different kinds of chirps that they make and of course I was
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curious I looked this up you know is are they do these different chirps mean different things like certain bird calls
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really clearly mean certain things and the ethologists the animal behavior
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Specialists say that in with squirrels they don't mean specific things but it's
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it's still it's it's a body language signal so even it's not formal language
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but but they they still get the sense that there's something threatening
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happening or not or you know sometimes it's mating related but they're not as specific as
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bird calls which are closer to our language than say these squirrel chirps
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when you did that Ted Talk some 10 years ago I think from what I read it became the most viewed Ted Talk of all time in
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its moment it's it became second most viewed
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um and it has remained there for a long time so it it was never it was never the most
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viewed but it certainly went viral quickly why why do you think people care so much
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about this subject matter it's funny because you know it still gets five or ten thousand views a day
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and it that's it's 10 years old and I still get
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10 emails a day from strangers who've just seen it for the first time thanking me
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saying they felt that I was speaking to them and so there must be something Timeless
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about it that I that I didn't know I was tapping into but I think there was some universal
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truth that resonated across people across cultures and a lot of it was
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about feeling like an imposter I mean that you know I talked about imposter syndrome
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and the feeling like you don't belong there and it turns out almost everyone
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has this imposter experience and in fact the women who who originally studied
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imposter syndrome says she wishes she had called it the Imposter experience
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because syndrome indicates that it's pathological and it's not it's just it's
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so common so what I found you know I I was getting emails from first generation
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you know um um uh black college students I was
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getting emails from white males literally Swiss Bankers all
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of these different people retired people um uh 12 year old kids who felt that
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they didn't belong there what I think resonated was first it's okay you're not
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the only one who feels that way it's normal but also there are some things that you can do to to to get out of
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feeling that way and so it very much is about to me
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um people feeling understood I feel like it's when you you know you love a song it speaks to
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you it it it evokes a certain emotional response because something about that
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song makes you feel connected and I think something about the talk did the
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same thing it made people feel understood um and not alone in their feelings of
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powerlessness and not belonging and it gave them a blueprint as such to
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to be more to feel more powerful yes and something
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that was you know didn't require technology that didn't really require much of anything
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um to to change the way they felt yes and what is that blueprint
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I feel like there's we know so much more now than we knew then
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then we we were having people adopt these expansive you know what we call power poses for a couple of minutes and
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looking at how it changed the way they felt um you know standing with their hands on their hips for example or in the victory
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pose with their arms up as if they had just crossed the finish line and won you know Usain Bolt for example and it
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changed the way they felt so that was the blueprint was was before you go into this stressful situation you know find a
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private space it's funny I said a bathroom stall I had not scripted that that's just what came out and so many
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people say I stood in a bathroom stall and um Power pose before the job
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interview or before pitching an idea or something like that uh and and it changed the way I felt
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and so that was the blueprint but I I feel like the idea of being expansive is so much more expansive than that
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um it's it's the way we walk it's taking longer strides um swinging our arms more it's uh it's
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talking more slowly it is which is taking up temporal space it's that
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breathing breathing more deeply and more slowly it's all there are all kinds of
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ways in which we can expand that will change our feeling of agency
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of power not power over others but power over ourselves or power too
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and when that happens it activates what psychologists call the behavioral
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approach system and the approach system causes us to see challenges not as
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threats but as opportunities it causes us to see other people not as potential
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Predators or competitors but as possible allies and Friends
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it makes us more creative because we're not feeling cognitively limited we have
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more of an abundance mindset than a scarcity mindset we don't feel as defensive we're more able to trust and I
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think maybe most important we're more likely to act so when we feel powerful
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we are more likely to take action not just on behalf of ourselves but also on behalf of others so when you look at
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research on say bystander intervention you know when do people step in and help in emergencies one of the best
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predictors is personal feeling personally powerful when people feel personally powerful they step in and
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help they go hey something's wrong they don't second guess themselves and think well maybe I'm not the right person to
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help they just do it they step in and help so you know it it has it has so that
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that feeling of power is linked to so many other uh feelings and and sort of aspects of
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our mindset that change how we approach life so as we expand
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and step forward the world expands so many people listening to this now
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will be unaware that they've been going through their lives signaling to themselves and
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to others a sense of they're in powerlessness yes um which is one of the first things that
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I I was thinking about when I had was reading through your work and watching the videos was that most people don't even know these are all unknown unknowns
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so they're feeling a certain way they're showing up in a certain way they're on stage hiding behind the lectern in a
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certain way and they have no idea the profundity of that signal that they're sending to themselves and others right
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what is how do I know that I'm signaling that to myself and to others what are
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the signs I think I ask people to do a kind of audit of their body of how
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they're holding themselves and it's funny when I when I'm giving a talk and speaking to a big group of people and I
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say you know now check your posture I can hear everyone immediately moving in their chairs even if the lights are low
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but I say no don't move yet check your posture because what you think you think that when you're not the one performing
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it your body language doesn't matter because you again we're thinking we think of body language as Just One
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Direction what we're saying to others but our body language is always speaking to us as well so I ask them to think to
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pay attention to what is their default even just seated position are they
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holding their shoulders up and forward collapsing their chest are they wrapping
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their hands or arms around their torso or powerlessness so like what's the it
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really is you know your your limbs are pulled in your shoulders are pulled
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forward your chest is collapsed um legs might be crossed and ankles
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wrapped I think the wrapping of the ankles matters more than the crossing of the legs if you watch sports and watch
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what's happening what what is the winning team doing versus the losing team you really see it I mean you see
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you know these big basketball players who are holding their heads in their hands and you know leaning forward and
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and they they look absolutely defeated um even though they're they're just as
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physically strong as they were five minutes earlier when things were going well so watching the body language of
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like athletes for example and then paying attention to what you're doing yourself I think helps us to become much
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more aware of how we're carrying ourselves but you can do little things like just when you get up in the morning
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you know if you wake up all curled up in the fetal position which is the most
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common sleeping position 40 of people sleep in the fetal position and we know that when people wake up in
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the fetal position they are more anxious than people who don't that is obviously correlational we
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don't know the the causal Direction because it might be that you're anxious and that's why you're sleeping in the
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fetal position nonetheless say you wake up in the fetal position stretch out you
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know into a starfish pose you know be Usain bold in bed before you put your
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feet on the ground on the ground one of my research assistants said that he would uh hold one of his hands on his
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hip while he brushed his teeth like little things that like that that sort of
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forced him to spend a little bit of time expanding really helped and I hear so many stories
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like this people rearrange their desks so that they have to stretch out a bit more when they're working instead of you
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know working like this over their phone you know how are you sitting in your car are you you know really close to the
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steering wheel and kind of collapsed or more open little things like that can really change the way you feel so I
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think it starts with just noticing how we carry ourselves how we carry
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ourselves physically how we speak how we breathe it's so interesting because I've got a
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a guy friend of mine who is um would be the first to say that he's very
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low self-esteem he's very disparaging of himself so when he walks into a room he'll
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insult himself so he'll say sorry I smile or sorry he'll apologize for himself take up very little room sit on
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the floor um all the time and all of these things which um
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we've always kind of noticed it but when you say all of these these things about people can Contracting when they're they
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feel powerless and taking up less space and being sort of self-disparaging I've always looked at that behavior in him
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and thought I I don't I don't know it's something deeper I don't know I don't know what we can do to or he can do to
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help himself what would you say to someone like that who's feels like a you know I mean like I was saying if you
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look at the clinical studies the research is pretty clear that you know sort of Body Mind feedback
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has significant benefits to people who are feeling because that sounds like
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sort of unusually low self-esteem right I would say that's several standard deviations
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below the mean if if that's how he carries himself and speaks about himself yes so everything you described was I
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just saw him I would say you know and again I'm not a clinical psychologist but if you look at
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the Clinical Psychology literature it very clearly shows that if you get people to change the way they carry
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themselves they feel better they feel different um I think you know I think to me some
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of the most compelling work is the work on combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder who feel utterly broken
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and often feel that they their bodies betrayed them
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and you know are living at home are unable
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to keep a job or you know keep a relationship going
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and the research you know there are researchers who have worked with them and taught them these you know expansive
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yoga poses and the effects are dramatic it it just makes it restores their sense
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of personal power their sense of agency and you know these are self-reports when
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I talk about the behaviors they're self-reports but the researcher who did a lot of these studies Emma sepula who's
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at Yale says that she would hear from these people a year later saying I no
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longer live at home I have a job I'm so much happier I'm dating and it's because of this because of the
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expansive yoga poses yeah breathing the expansive breathing expensive yoga poses but getting into the practice of doing
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that changes their lives you know I feel strongly that
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encouraging people to open up even if it's when they're alone you know because
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sometimes people close up in social situations because they have you know complex PTSD they have experienced
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trauma and they've or they've been assaulted they've been harassed um and they feel that they're protecting
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themselves so I think you start at home alone you start in PRI the privacy of
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your own home where you don't feel threatened um and then maybe you build it into these more social situations so instead
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of worrying about the impression you're making on others you think about the impression you're making on yourself first that's what matters how we tell
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our stories to ourselves matters 100 agree
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I've been really compelled by this idea of what I've been calling the self story which is kind of what you're describing there which is
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um we all have this kind of story about who we are and how valuable we are and what we're good at and what we're capable of that governs Our Lives yes
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and it's written in every small thing we do that I sat here with um it's a bit of a different example but I
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sat here within a championship boxer and he was telling me that when he's on the treadmill at home it's a very different
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example when he's on the treadmill at home if he's told himself he's going to do seven miles and he gets to six and a
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half miles and gets cramped in his leg he will limp the remaining half a mile because he doesn't want to want to let
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in his own words the demons in and what he what he's really saying there is this idea that even though I'm alone and I'm
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No One's Gonna know or see I'm gonna know and I'm gonna write him to myself story just a new paragraph about who I
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am when things get tough yeah and that and I I thought so much about this because um lying kind of links to this in many
00:23:29
ways because lying is this kind of decay of trust but also lying to yourself so like making a commitment to yourself
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that I'm going to do something and continually breaking the commitment to yourself even if nobody knows I think is just so detrimental to our our
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perception of ourselves like it's a downward spiral of the perception of ourselves absolutely I I I you know we
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we own our narratives and you know there's research even on
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looking at older people um and physical health outcomes I mean
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mortality and and the researchers found that older people who had more positive
00:24:06
personal narratives about how they got to where they are in life lived significantly longer than people who had
00:24:12
these negative narratives even if they had the same job the same kind of sort
00:24:18
of on the surface they look the same they controlled for all those differences and still found that these
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the older people with these more positive personal narratives live longer again that's correlational but uh it's
00:24:31
you know it's powerful and one of the things that happens when people feel powerless is uh that they are less able
00:24:37
to be authentic right so when they when they present themselves say they are in a job interview they
00:24:44
don't come across as authentic as somebody who feels more powerful and
00:24:49
what's interesting is that the body language associated with sort of lower
00:24:55
authenticity is sort of on the same Spectrum with the body language that's associated with
00:25:01
outright deception right so when people are lying to
00:25:07
somebody else I mean knowingly lying the body language that matters the most
00:25:13
is not eye contact that's what people focus that they think eye contact is the most important signal it's not because
00:25:19
people learn very different things in different households and cultures personality differences that change how
00:25:26
people choose to make eye contact in different situations what matters is the asynchrony between
00:25:35
the emotions conveyed with the words and the emotions conveyed with the body language so if you're telling a happy
00:25:43
story but you do not look happy your body language doesn't look happy you know you don't come across as authentic
00:25:49
if you think about you know being a kid and maybe you lied to get out of going to school and you told your parents that
00:25:56
you were sick and you really weren't you're telling a story that's not true that's you know supposed to be sad so
00:26:04
you're trying to get the the emotions right with your words but your body language is probably betraying you
00:26:11
um you know because you're actually excited that you're going to sit at home on the couch and eat chips and watch reruns or at night rerun is probably a
00:26:19
word that nobody uses anymore but TV um uh YouTube Tick Tock whatever so
00:26:26
that that those asynchranies are the same as the asynchronies that you see
00:26:31
when people aren't able to be authentic and of course in those cases that's not that the intention is not bad they're
00:26:38
not in any way trying to lie to the other person in a way they're kind of lying to themselves
00:26:45
um and then that spills over into not being able to show an honest expression
00:26:52
of themselves to the other and people and and the funny thing is that people
00:26:59
don't can't quite articulate so if you're an interviewer say in that situation
00:27:05
it's very hard to articulate what was off but they know something was off and
00:27:11
they'll say the person didn't seem authentic but they're not going to say oh well their words didn't match their
00:27:16
body language yeah they would no because we you know when people are lying they
00:27:22
can choreograph they can script the words but it's very hard to choreograph all the body language to go along with
00:27:27
it it takes up too much cognitive bandwidth so but it does come across to other people I think one of the fun
00:27:33
places to watch for this is on Shark Tank um is to to watch the the sort of the
00:27:40
body language of these people pitching and sometimes you have people who come across at first as like super confident
00:27:46
but the something about the way they tell their story does not match their
00:27:52
body language and and the Sharks feel that you see them you see them almost
00:27:58
cringe there's something off and they don't get the money and then you might have somebody who is
00:28:05
you know let's say uh doesn't have a business school education uh doesn't
00:28:11
have as much experience but really believes in what they're doing and and
00:28:17
knows what they're doing you know yes I'm not saying that you can be incompetent you have to be at a certain
00:28:23
level of confidence but they're able to convey their authentic conviction and passion about
00:28:29
this project about what they're doing and the Sharks warm toward them you see
00:28:35
them lean in toward those people and those people are more likely to be to to
00:28:41
to to to find investors and the thing is those those signals aren't just
00:28:46
short-term signals those people are also more likely to stick with it to inspire
00:28:53
other people to uh to be promoted to to be successful in the long run it's a
00:29:00
real signal that you're picking up on that you just can't fake and it really starts with how you tell your story to
00:29:06
yourself is there a relationship there as well between our body language and our attractiveness I does my is there a
00:29:14
certain body language that's associated with me being attractive if I'm single and I'm like you know I wanna
00:29:20
I want to increase my chances of finding a mate yeah it's well it's interesting because you know people I think there
00:29:27
were skepticism about whether women would be punished for
00:29:33
um using more dominant body language and which I thought was kind of sad because
00:29:38
it just reinforces The Stereotype but but there's Recent research showing that first of all they're not they're not and
00:29:46
I'm not talking about super Alpha body language I'm talking about body language that's confident and warm right that
00:29:53
that shows I feel good about myself and I want to be here and I'm interested in you that body language is is more more
00:30:01
effective both in the workplace and in dating situations so people there was a study that looked at dating
00:30:08
profile pictures on dating apps and both men and women with more open body
00:30:13
language more confident body language were seen as more attractive so I I thought that was that that was
00:30:20
very reassuring and also suggested to me that we're making some progress if that was true for for for you know across
00:30:28
genders so yeah people want to be with somebody who is confident but not arrogant who is
00:30:37
comfortable in their skin and your body language conveys that even in a still
00:30:42
picture it conveys that wow if I am the type of person that is
00:30:49
feels powerless inside of myself I'm suffering with a variety of a variety of different reasons
00:30:54
um I know I know that there's as you've described there's there's things that I can do to tell a different story to
00:31:02
myself publicly and privately is this is this a form of practice that one has to do is this like a yes is there a CIS
00:31:10
like a like I go to the gym and I do some of my favorite work in social psychology is on what's called
00:31:16
self-affirmation Theory when people think of self-affirmation they think of someone looking in a mirror saying I'm
00:31:23
awesome I'm you know I'm the best I'm gonna win I'm a winner we kind of know
00:31:29
that when we feel bad about ourselves saying I'm great doesn't help because
00:31:34
now we just feel like we're lying to ourselves so we feel bad already and now we're like well I feel bad and I'm a
00:31:39
liar sounds exactly so so self-affirmation is not that
00:31:46
self-affirmation is this what what these experiments and there are hundreds of
00:31:52
experiments now in self-affirmation they have people list the top two or three
00:31:58
values or qualities that make them who they are like if I took that value or
00:32:05
quality away from you you would say I'm just no longer myself like you are just taking a piece of me away
00:32:12
they then have them kind of rank them and then take the top one and write a
00:32:17
couple of paragraphs one paragraph about um you know a time when they expressed
00:32:22
it and another maybe about how it felt to express it that is it that's the
00:32:28
exercise they then have them do do difficult things like take a difficult
00:32:34
math test for example or do a debate you know do it be in a debate competition or
00:32:40
or um whatever something challenging that's unrelated right so if say I said
00:32:48
um I value music you know I if if you took
00:32:53
the experience of of Music away from me I just would not feel like myself and
00:32:59
then I I did a math test I would do better on the math test
00:33:04
after doing that self-affirmation exercise I likely I would be likely to on average people perform better
00:33:12
they also even show decreases in levels of stress hormones like epinephrine so
00:33:19
the idea is that you're anchoring yourself in who you are and what you're doing is reminding yourself that no
00:33:24
matter what happens on that math test you're still going to be that person when you walk out and so it that math
00:33:31
test becomes less important which ironically or paradoxically makes you do better on it and so I think that's a
00:33:39
really good start is to just spend time you know kind of journaling about who are you what do you value but really
00:33:46
what are those qualities that make you who you are to you not to others not how
00:33:52
would others describe you what removes you like what really moves you
00:33:59
it's not so interesting I've never heard that before because a lot of the time you kind of have to have the two camps where one campus says look in the mirror
00:34:05
and tell yourself a bunch of lies and there's a whole industry about yeah I don't like it yeah and then there's
00:34:12
the other cam which is Maybe uh I don't know if this is the other Camp necessarily but it's probably the school of thought I've always lived in
00:34:18
which is you need to go and build evidence somehow new evidence about yourself right like counteracting the
00:34:24
evidence that the limiting evidence or the limiting beliefs that are standing in your way yeah it's like self-perception Theory right if you see
00:34:31
yourself doing it you you become it yeah and that's just a reflection on the areas in my life where I was like very
00:34:36
low confidence and how I got from that place to being higher confidence came from
00:34:43
straying outside of my comfort zone and going and doing nothing more um building evidence that I wasn't going
00:34:48
to die I feel and I that works too I'm not saying that that self-affirmation is the only way to do it I I'm much more by
00:34:56
the way in Europe I'm in your Camp I I get really frustrated with
00:35:02
um it's all your mindset and you just got to tell yourself that you you you can create your life you know like how
00:35:09
yeah you know I just there's so much of that and I feel like it's so confusing
00:35:15
and discouraging for people because they watch people who they think are doing that
00:35:22
in short clips and they're like well there they did it why can't I do it but
00:35:28
but a lot of those people didn't get to where they are by doing that lots of
00:35:33
people helped them get to where they are yeah um or you know they did other work but
00:35:39
it's it's just or or maybe they're not where they aren't even where you believe
00:35:44
they are they're actually really unhappy and just putting on this Brave face because simple cells right simple cells
00:35:52
simple cells and you know um simple inspiration cells so just just just to close off that
00:35:59
point about because I feel like there's going to be people listening right now um that identify with feeling powerless
00:36:05
in their everyday lives and their working lives and relationships they uh they can spot all the symptoms you described of that sort of like
00:36:11
contracted posture the self-affirmation piece loved it never heard that before
00:36:17
um what else to get me out of that situation I'm thinking in terms of things that I can like either practice
00:36:24
or you know how do I get from there to there well it's funny because I I talk a lot
00:36:30
about how tiny tweaks lead to big changes and I I called you know there was a whole
00:36:36
sort of nudge movement like how do you change people's behavior through these little nudges and I I talk about self-nudging you I'm
00:36:45
not a I'm not a big believer in New Year's resolutions because they're two they're grandiose they require a million
00:36:50
steps you're going to fail somewhere along the way and then quit I believe in
00:36:56
just doing a little bit better the next time okay so the next time you go into
00:37:02
uh give a talk for example to anyone if
00:37:07
somebody's afraid of public speaking but has to to do to lead team meetings for example
00:37:12
I want you to focus on changing one thing maybe it's your breathing you
00:37:17
breathe more slowly and deeply maybe you make sure that you're not wrapping your hands around your body by holding a
00:37:24
bottle of water or a slide advance or something something that forces you to
00:37:30
keep your hands away from your body each time you get a little bit better and
00:37:36
eventually you find that you're there and my advisor my grad school advisor Susan Fisk who I just adore
00:37:43
taught me that because I almost quit grad school the night before my first year talk
00:37:48
which is where you present the first year of research you've done just to the people in your department I was so
00:37:54
scared that I called her and I said I'm I can't do this I'm going to quit and she said
00:38:01
you're not quitting she said you're going to do it and even if it doesn't go perfectly which it
00:38:07
won't you will have done it and learned something and gotten a little better and
00:38:13
each time it's going to get better she said and I want you to give every talk you're asked to give take every
00:38:18
opportunity that you're that that's given to you to improve and eventually
00:38:24
you won't notice the moment when you know suddenly you've gotten there you'll
00:38:30
just look back and go oh my gosh I'm here how did I get here through these tiny nudges so go easy on yourself focus
00:38:38
on only one change in that next challenge focus on the situations that
00:38:45
you approached with Dread that you execute with anxiety and distraction and
00:38:50
that you tend to leave with a sense of regret each those challenges vary for different across people you know for some people
00:38:56
it's public speaking for some people it's giving negative feedback for some people it's
00:39:02
um having a difficult discussion with a family member whatever that challenge is for you
00:39:07
I want you to do change one little thing each time you go into it
00:39:13
so that you can in the end approach it with confidence execute with this calm
00:39:19
confidence and leave it with a sense of satisfaction that you showed up that you
00:39:24
did what you could do a lot of things that you can't control but it's much easier to accept a
00:39:30
negative outcome if you controlled the things you could right if you know how
00:39:36
often do people walk away from those situations and go I feel like they didn't see who I am
00:39:41
you want to walk away and say they saw who I am and now they get to make the decision and I can't control whether
00:39:48
they you know how how they evaluate me Beyond this I did I did my best that's
00:39:54
where you want to get to I always think of um confidence and self-esteem and now powerlessness or powerfulness the
00:40:01
feeling of it as an upward or a downward spiral that we're all kind of on like a self-reinforcing upward or downward
00:40:07
spiral if that kind of I think it is so if I just to kind of I think that
00:40:13
say something I'm confident at public speaking on stage for example I will show up better which means I'm likely to
00:40:19
get a better reaction I'm likely to feel better after which means next time I show up better which means and the Spiral goes up or conversely it can go
00:40:25
the opposite way downwards and the people that are on that downward so there's many areas of my life that I think come on and up would spiral I'm
00:40:31
like I'm building positive evidence it's all going well and everyone's black and then there's some areas of my life that I might be on a downward spiral um I
00:40:38
know I've got some good friends that I think are so far down that downward spiral that even telling them
00:40:45
what your lovely professor she was a my advice my yeah she was a professor my my
00:40:50
graduate school advisor they're so far down the bottom of that spiral that they would have quit yeah a lot of people are
00:40:57
living in a state of survival which I actually think of like self-preservation or defense yes they're like just remove all chance of threat from my life
00:41:05
and in that situation you never do get to go upwards on that spiral no oh God I just so many people are at the bottom of
00:41:11
that spiral in their lives I know and I don't know what to do about it I I it's you know it's my responsibility but I
00:41:18
just think no responsibility no it's not but but also I I do think that more
00:41:23
people are in that state now than they than that compared to three and a half years ago how come I do I think the
00:41:29
pandemic really took a toll on people's mental sort of
00:41:35
um stability their their sense of self and I think we're going to be grappling
00:41:41
with that for quite a while I mean people who we why did it why did it have that impact because we are wired to deal
00:41:51
with a crisis that lasts like a couple months not one that lasts
00:41:57
three years and not one that is yanking us around back and forth like oh we're
00:42:04
emerging oh Delta we're emerging Omicron you know like it was just this
00:42:10
constant back and forth and we so we were living in this liminal state where we had one foot on the safe side and one
00:42:18
foot on the threatened side we get through crises using what's called surge capacity which is you know it's called a
00:42:24
network of physical and and Psychological Resources that help us survive but that runs out pretty quickly
00:42:31
and a lot of people say for the first two months of the pandemic they felt very productive that was Surge capacity
00:42:37
and it's studied in the context often of um of of combat soldiers so like the
00:42:44
first battle it's it's the emergency phase and they they are focused the goal
00:42:50
is clear it's shared teams operate at their best good leaders operated their best then they go into this regression
00:42:57
in between where they don't know what's going to happen next they lose a sense of purpose they become disconnected from
00:43:04
each other they withdraw then they're back in battle in that's how this is gone it's going to take a little while
00:43:11
to put the pieces back together again but I think I think that we we have to have some Grace
00:43:17
and I mean toward each other with each other with ourselves
00:43:23
I don't think it's going to be fixed by if we're too hard ourselves I think we
00:43:29
do have to let ourselves off the hook a bit and go oh we've never lived through something like this earlier and we were
00:43:34
talking about the things that make you feel powerless in your body language and the way you conduct yourselves and all these things the things that make
00:43:40
someone look and feel powerful um I imagine it's the opposite in many
00:43:46
respects but specifically if I if I want to and I want to because I really want
00:43:51
to leave people with actionable things that they can they can do in their lives if I want to
00:43:56
um become a better speaker present myself better show up better for my employees
00:44:04
um or be a better podcast host and I think about this people I've never said this before people I spend so long
00:44:09
thinking about how I'm sitting when I'm speaking to someone really yeah because because when I'm not thinking I might like fall into a certain posture I was
00:44:16
I've even been thinking about these bloody arms on this chair sometimes I'm like this and this is my
00:44:21
favorite situation to be in so like my body's open right and then sometimes I go like this and sometimes I crunch over
00:44:28
into a ball and stuff yeah and when I'm having these kind of conversations with people I think that the best approach to take is to be open with my body language
00:44:34
yes and then hopefully they'll open up with me yeah you know that's exactly right so I think
00:44:40
to really simplify it and again as I said I don't love like choreographing
00:44:45
but the body language that is I think the the most uh effective is to be open
00:44:53
to be kind of leaning forward you know Palms up not wrapping yourself up not
00:44:58
the whole time yeah but what what you want to be showing is I'm comfortable and relaxed with you I'm interested in
00:45:04
you yeah and so I think that's that's the posture that you want to take on and people will mirror that one thing that
00:45:11
people in general people mirror each other's body language right that's a way that we sync up but there's one
00:45:19
exception and that's when there's a power differential so if a powerful person is interacting with somebody
00:45:24
that's clearly less powerful the powerful person tends to become more
00:45:30
dominant in their body language and the powerless person becomes more powerless and we call that complementarity so I
00:45:38
think it's very important for people in leadership positions to be aware that when one of their you know employees
00:45:45
comes to talk to them they're probably a little nervous and
00:45:50
to be very mindful of their body language because you don't you don't want them to shut down you want them to
00:45:55
feel comfortable and tell you what's going on share their interests or their problem or their challenge
00:46:02
penguin arms I never had that expression until chapter nine of your book what's penguin arms it's when people people
00:46:09
don't know what to do with their head a lot of people don't know what to do with their hands when they're speaking and so
00:46:15
they kind of like pin they pin their wrist to their like around their hips and their hands kind
00:46:22
of stick out oh okay you're gonna look like a penguin yeah it's it's really common for people
00:46:28
who are afraid of public speaking you'll like they're like kind of moving their hands but they're afraid to move their
00:46:35
arms away from their body besides penguin arms let me just get I've got this correctly is this penguin arms you
00:46:41
mean this yeah but you're talking I'm like yeah exactly that's penguin arms okay
00:46:47
and it's again because I'm I'm I mean one of the this correlation between how much space you take up and
00:46:52
how powerful you feel right again that's me trying to take up less as little as space as possible right and I'm
00:46:57
signaling so I'm speaking to you by doing that even though regardless of what my mouth is saying and if I'm like
00:47:03
this yes I'm saying you're sending a completely different message exactly and people are remember the audience like
00:47:09
even a whole audience is responding to you so if there's this whole self-reinforce there's reinforcement
00:47:16
between you and the audience and within the self so if you're acting that way
00:47:22
they might be mirroring you or feeling kind of uncomfortable because you're feeling anxious but you can make the
00:47:28
audience feel uncomfortable because you're so uncomfortable for sure and then and then you read that and you feel
00:47:34
more uncomfortable so it becomes you know kind of re reinforced through the
00:47:39
interaction this is this interesting thing that happens to me once in a while where I'll be speaking
00:47:45
to someone and it's usually someone I'm gonna be honest right so it's usually someone where there's a lot of things about them but I
00:47:52
haven't told them and I find it hard to hold eye contact with them and I notice this about myself to
00:47:57
certain people in my life where there's like unaddressed things that haven't fully spoken about and when I speak to
00:48:02
them I tend to not look at them and I tend to just like be looking away or looking down and I I will occasionally
00:48:08
glance over and look at them but this broader point about eye contact and you mentioned it briefly earlier on
00:48:14
what significance does it have in our Communications and because I I find it the hardest thing I can kind of I think
00:48:20
I can feign the body language I wish I could make that I I can't give you a
00:48:25
simple answer and I that because there are so many cultural differences oh really in in when you make eye contact
00:48:33
so kids learn such different rules about making eye contact
00:48:38
UM you know a lot of kids are taught you don't make eye contact with an authority figure right so and then they're seen as
00:48:45
lying because they're not making eye contact uh you know um but but but seeing it as rude to make eye contact it
00:48:53
means you know in a lot of East Asian cultures eye contact you you don't hold eye contact for as long it's seen this
00:48:59
very aggressive um in the U.S you can hold eye contact for quite a while before people feel
00:49:05
uncomfortable but it's you know it so yeah it's I think it's one of the more culturally
00:49:11
constrained Expressions what am I in primates I mean if I've watched all these primate documentaries and it's
00:49:18
often the case that when primates kind of look at each other for too long it can it's often aggressive aggressive
00:49:23
yeah I I don't I and again I I would have to defer to something like Bob sapolski on that one but I think um I I
00:49:30
think that in non-human primates it you know great apes it is it is a sign of
00:49:36
aggression it is like bring it on yeah and in certain contexts
00:49:42
yeah again it's so contextual and cultural because as we were saying before we start recording in the US if
00:49:48
someone stares at me in a lift I would imagine that they're about to say hello whereas in I don't know a rough part of
00:49:55
the UK if someone stares at me I would check where my wallet and my keys are and
00:50:00
assume that we had there's going to be a problem yeah so yeah yeah I mean and
00:50:06
there are differences cultural differences within the U.S too is it possible to learn how to read people
00:50:11
better in terms of their body language is that also something you can play oh for sure I just think there's some really great books like I I love Joe
00:50:19
Navarro's work he's a former FBI agent he has a lot of images he really he's
00:50:24
not a researcher but grounds in the research and has a lot of personal experience the book that I love is is
00:50:31
what everybody is saying um by Joe Navarro so I would recommend
00:50:36
that as a great way to start I think there are some that are sort of like more like
00:50:41
how to pick up women yeah yeah and I don't like those this is just really understanding people and what's
00:50:48
happening in an interaction I'm gonna confess that when I was 18 I read one such book about pickup artistry
00:50:55
and um it actually it actually was very useful had this conversation with my husband
00:51:01
it's so funny and it's like the one thing he was like I did read that oh yeah I mean yeah so it
00:51:07
was it was useful because I love psychology I studied psychology at in in school as well and um I chose that for
00:51:14
one of my a levels and it was useful from that perspective I mean it's probably why I do this now I was so
00:51:19
compelled to understand why humans do what they do then I read this book which I didn't intend to buy I'm gonna be honest okay I've told the truth the
00:51:25
whole time so believe me when I say I didn't intend to buy this book about pickup Artistry my older brother ordered
00:51:31
it for home in the southwest of the UK when he'd gone he put the wrong address in when he was at University so it came
00:51:36
home and he goes I'll just keep it so I open it and I opened up my bedroom floor and I did not move until I'd finished the entire book the first book where
00:51:43
from the first page till the last I didn't move and it fascinated me because it was just it was like someone turned
00:51:48
the lights on to this whole other language that I'd been communicating my whole life without knowing someone one
00:51:54
of the really things I always talk about with my friends is this idea of pecking which is this kind of invasion of personal space that happens when you're
00:52:01
when you meet someone you're attracted to yeah the music style out you lean into their personal space
00:52:08
and how that signals like low value then they lean out um but all those things I found oh geez
00:52:13
I am the worst if I'm in a restaurant and I see it a first date yeah
00:52:19
it is it can be so I want to slip a napkin to the woman sometimes and like
00:52:26
like the guy will get up to go to the bathroom and she is like you I'm I feel like slipping a napkin and saying run
00:52:33
you know like it's just you can it's so clear so quickly how it's going what are
00:52:40
the signs they are talking too much and not asking questions oh my god um I mean that that's I would say the most common
00:52:47
and and believing that they're very very interesting they are yeah so interesting
00:52:54
um and and it is leaning in and taking into too much taking up too much space
00:53:00
and you can see the and I'm sorry I'm talking about straight couples and so because I I don't know enough about
00:53:08
um other dyads but I mean in this in the context of body language but
00:53:14
you see the woman clearly tensing up she's making herself smaller to get away
00:53:22
she may not be literally leaning away she's closing herself up and she women
00:53:29
were people in that situation when they want to get away they often do these lip presses like this
00:53:36
um and so you start to see the lip presses and then making themselves smaller and
00:53:43
you know and and leaning right in fact um we were watching a TV show last night
00:53:48
that might be called The Bachelorette this happened and the the guy was holding her The Bachelorette like
00:53:55
hugging her and like she wasn't forcefully lean away but I was like oh
00:54:03
it's too close she really does not like that but she was being very polite it was like painful to watch so in real
00:54:10
life well I've had to bite my tongue at times what's the opposite of that then when you look over in a restaurant
00:54:16
because me and my girlfriend do this I think everybody does this well not everybody clearly but just weirdos like
00:54:21
us that are into psychology who look over another couple and go they're getting on really really great they're into each other this is not because me
00:54:28
and my girlfriend we go to restaurants we always think like is this a first date how long have they been together are they married are they into each
00:54:33
other obviously the really bad examples is when they're both leaning out on their phones yes and I'm like oh my God
00:54:39
yeah so not picking up their phones leaning in toward each other yeah um
00:54:45
yeah good eye contact about balance and in conversation expressions of genuine
00:54:52
curiosity where you can kind of see their face light up when they hear the person the other person say something
00:54:57
like they're really intrigued the other one always one of them gets up to go to
00:55:03
the bathroom yeah and to me the the tell is what does the other person do when
00:55:10
that person this makes me look like I'm not watching you all on your dates I swear you learn so am I
00:55:17
we both are and that's fine but
00:55:22
when the other person goes to the bathroom if the ones that at the table is like you can tell their smile like
00:55:28
they can't stop smiling um and maybe they're texting somebody and they're but their cheeks like almost
00:55:34
you can tell her cheeks almost hurt from smiling they're it's like they're letting the they're so excited they
00:55:40
don't want to act over the top with the person but when the person steps away they allow themselves to feel that joy
00:55:47
that to me is the talent that's exciting you're like oh that's so nice Something Beautiful is happening and the little
00:55:53
grooming signals as well like when you know they you know they might yeah that they smell well and things like right
00:56:00
I guess the I guess the last piece is about being able to fake body language
00:56:08
can people do that can we fake it I mean you can try is it effective I usually
00:56:14
not it because you get those asynchranies right so it's too much
00:56:20
think think about all of the non-verbal challenge channels you've got vocal cue
00:56:26
they call it the paralinguistic cues like tone of voice range of voice how quickly or slowly you speak you've got
00:56:33
your your fingers your hands your arms there's too much
00:56:38
to do to fake it for you know uh
00:56:44
and and to make it consistent with what you're saying probably you know the greatest actors can
00:56:51
pretty well but I mean to me it's just it's it's so
00:56:56
likely to fail that it's not even worth trying and I I don't think it's honest I
00:57:01
super interesting for me because between the age of I'm gonna say 14 and
00:57:07
let's go for 21. I was in my view I think I was kind of rejected by every
00:57:13
um woman that I pursued and I think I was inherently low value and didn't realize it so when I read
00:57:18
these books about pickup Artistry and all this stuff I read all this work I tried to do what the book said and it
00:57:24
was unsuccessful like fundamentally unsuccessful my life changed when I actually changed like when my actual
00:57:31
opinion of myself changed and I was saying this to my friend the other day who's who's going through a bit of a process where
00:57:37
um they're struggling with that same thing I said you know what I wasn't able to lie to myself I tried waiting longer
00:57:42
to text back I tried this I tried all of these things and my conclusion from that chapter of my life is there's a thousand
00:57:49
little things that ways we communicate it's exactly what you just said I said to my friend the other day there's a thousand ways we can communicate and you
00:57:55
might think you can control three or four of them but as humans that have evolved over those 200 000 years were so
00:58:01
good at knowing what someone really thinks and feels and so I guess my question here is like
00:58:06
I came to the conclusion and then this was when I was giving my friends some advice through the days you can't fake it you have to actually go and change
00:58:12
yourself story like you can know the tips and tricks but that wasn't enough for me to actually get the you know
00:58:19
and it was honestly the thing that changed in my life was when my opinion of myself changed right and it's and I
00:58:25
it sounds so weird to say but I'm sure nobody's listening um the profunda the profundity of the
00:58:31
change I just can't I can't describe it not not even in the relationship being
00:58:36
able to attract people but just in every context like I don't know what changed I don't know what I did all I know is that
00:58:42
something deep within me my story of who I am changed and that means that when I show up in places I stand differently
00:58:48
yeah your non-verbal sort of experts talk about Inside Out change yeah right
00:58:54
as opposed to outside in yeah um because people have clicked this video right now click this podcast because they went outside in chain I
00:59:01
know they do I know and it's like I always feel like look I'm a body language person but that doesn't mean I'm going to give you a hat full of
00:59:07
tricks it just doesn't because it's not going to work that wouldn't be right and it's funny too because the quote that I'm
00:59:14
best known for is fake it till you become it and what I mean by that it is fake it till
00:59:22
you make it to me has always meant pretend that you know things you don't
00:59:28
know for pretend that you are a person that you're not until you get the job but what do you do then you keep faking
00:59:36
it so fake it till you make it is fooling other people fake it till you become it is expand
00:59:43
allow yourself to feel powerful enough to really understand who you are to know
00:59:49
what your story is to be to be more focused on the impression you're making on yourself than on others
00:59:56
um to grow to be less afraid of these challenges and eventually
01:00:02
you know maybe you know standing in those big positions alone feels a little awkward at first
01:00:09
and you're faking it but eventually you become that person and you know that's
01:00:14
what happened with my student who I talk about in the Ted Talk who had not participated at all the whole semester
01:00:21
and I I was gonna have to fail her and I said you have to participate
01:00:26
and she finally raised her hand on the last class I said I'll call on you and first of all her comment was amazing and
01:00:32
people's head spun like they hadn't noticed her but she continued to use these ideas and she came back to me
01:00:38
later like six months or a year later and she said she said to me I want you
01:00:45
to know I'm so happy now because she had come into my office and said I feel like an imposter I don't belong here I'm from
01:00:51
this small town I was like so am I if I belong here you do she came back to me after graduating and
01:00:58
finding and actually getting into education and not business and she said
01:01:04
those things that we talked about I did and I realized I wasn't faking it till I
01:01:09
made it I was faking it till I became it and now I'm the person that I wanted to be
01:01:16
that makes so much sense so expand yourself
01:01:21
so that you can get the evidence you need to become the thing that you exactly our parents and grandparents
01:01:27
told us to sit up straight as a show of respect to others and kids hate that
01:01:32
it's kids you know to teach kids to sit up straight as a show of respect to
01:01:38
themselves and that allows you to be more open to
01:01:44
to be less defensive to allow the truth of who you are in
01:01:51
it's hard to confront ourselves it takes courage so by adopting those powerful postures
01:02:00
by feeling personally powerful you are generating the courage to confront
01:02:05
yourself to know yourself to introduce yourself to yourself ladies and gentlemen today is a very big
01:02:13
day for me because the Diary of a CEO book is finally out it's been published today the 33 laws of business and life
01:02:21
I've spent many years writing this book but I've spent even longer about a decade and a half compiling the
01:02:27
information that exists in this book if you are somebody that has any intent at some point in your life of building
01:02:34
something whether it's building a great team at work whether it's a football team a netball team a business an
01:02:40
organization a charity anything at all that you want to build that's going to require you to understand people
01:02:45
understand how to tell great stories and maybe most importantly of all understand yourself then I believe this book is a
01:02:53
must read and you know what I've written a book before this is my second book but this is the
01:02:59
one this is the book that will give you the most value there's a link right now in the description below and for 30
01:03:04
people that order the book and post it on their social media and tag me you'll be getting a very special
01:03:10
Gold version of the book please read it then please message me on
01:03:15
every social media platform and let me know what you think thank you a quick word on huel as you
01:03:21
know they're a sponsor of this podcast and I'm an investor in the company one of the things I've never really explained is how I came to have a
01:03:27
relationship with huel one day in the office many years ago a guy walked past called Michael and he was wearing a
01:03:32
heeled t-shirt and I was really compelled by the logo I just thought from a design aesthetic point of view it was really interesting and I asked him
01:03:39
what that word meant and why he was wearing that T-shirt and he said it's this brand called heal and they make
01:03:44
food that is nutritionally complete and very very convenient and has the planet in mind and he the next day dropped off
01:03:51
a little bottle of fuel on my desk and from that day onwards I completely got it because I'm someone that cares
01:03:57
tremendously about having a nutritionally complete diet but sometimes because of the way my life is
01:04:02
that falls by the wayside so if there was a really convenient reliable trustworthy way for me to be
01:04:08
nutritionally complete in an affordable way I was all ears especially if it's a way that is conscious of the planet give
01:04:14
it a chance give it a shot let me know what you think as I've read through your story I came across this moment where there was some
01:04:22
academic bullying in your life and this appeared to me to be the a real pivotal
01:04:30
um hurtful chapter of your life it's now the basis for some of the work that you're doing and
01:04:36
some of the things you're writing about what what do I need to know about what
01:04:42
happened there to understand the lessons that you've taken from that um chapter
01:04:49
I I would rather endure any physical pain than go through that and I have
01:04:55
interviewed I mean it went on for years I became
01:05:00
just fair game it was because the bullies had been so successfully
01:05:08
diminished demeaned stigmatized me that anyone else who felt the need to
01:05:14
act out could act out against me it was okay so
01:05:20
the mountain of you know social media
01:05:25
um uh evidence of of this bullying is overwhelming and I can't even look
01:05:30
through it I have to have someone else sort through that I am not talking about Anonymous trolls this was other
01:05:38
academics this was about me it was personal they they they're they were not
01:05:45
hiding behind anonymity every person I've interviewed for this book has been been bullied every adult has said
01:05:53
it's the worst thing that ever happened to me and I felt like I was dying or I wanted to
01:06:00
die for a long time because it is social death it is social death and without
01:06:06
community we we are we are in a bad place I mean we we do need each other
01:06:13
the facts of my life were stolen from me my story was Rewritten so much so that I
01:06:21
could not do an interview without having to correct all kinds of disinformation about me
01:06:28
right so the whole you know telling the way you tell your story to yourself matters peace wow that was hard I had to
01:06:36
keep doing that to survive it because other people were telling a story that
01:06:42
was a lie and that was deeply hurting me I mean emotionally professionally
01:06:50
um hurting my family I mean it was terrible I was
01:06:55
I I almost died I almost decided to die and
01:07:02
um and that's very common for people who are bullied
01:07:08
and I'm not through it it's those I mean I'm
01:07:16
I'm through the worst of it but it still it still comes up and and and there are
01:07:21
there are there's disinformation in news articles that that these bullies sort of
01:07:27
got out there that will always circulate I can never I can't get rid of all of that right it
01:07:33
will pop up every once in a while and people go but yeah but I heard you did this and you're like no
01:07:40
that's incorrect um and so every time that pops up
01:07:45
it's it's just like a dagger again it it is an absolute theft of your life it is
01:07:52
it is absolutely
01:07:58
it is absolutely devastating and in the workplace it's remarkably
01:08:04
common and the estimates by people who study
01:08:10
workplace bullying are that oh more than 90 of people who become
01:08:16
targets of workplace bullying dis disappear from that job and when I
01:08:22
say disappear I mean they're either fired because the bully flips it around and they're seen as the difficult person
01:08:30
or their move to a different department or they quit because they can't endure it
01:08:35
or they die of a stress related illness or they take their own lives
01:08:40
um suicide rates are very high for for adults for children and adult bullying
01:08:45
targets if I was in your household around that time what would I have seen and I asked
01:08:51
that question because people never get to see that right they get to see either silence or they might
01:08:57
get to see a statement but
01:09:08
um
01:09:13
you know what I'm thinking right now is that my boys are going to hear this and they're gonna be laughing and they're
01:09:19
gonna be they're gonna be saying that I'm exaggerating you know like but who
01:09:24
cares why if they say that but I it's still like I'm so afraid of them still
01:09:31
um I was you know Raising a Son who is just
01:09:40
a lovely remarkable person I'm like
01:09:47
I can't believe that he grew up to be such a wonderful person
01:09:53
because for so much of his teenage life I was going through this and it was
01:09:59
so hard to be present but I had to be
01:10:04
like I need there was this constant conflict that I had how much do I tell him about
01:10:13
um how much do I Shield him from it can I
01:10:18
Shield him from it because you know my God my husband who
01:10:27
was just like wanted so desperately to fix it for me and he he's a scientist
01:10:34
and he understood very well the statistical arguments as better than than most people in my field do and he
01:10:41
would engage with these bullies and that would escalate he was he was for sure traumatized by it
01:10:48
um I was just curled up in a ball and then
01:10:54
amazingly I was still able to go out and speak and for that hour
01:10:59
I was safe and and then I would I would hide again
01:11:05
and I was just so afraid
01:11:10
uh I just felt like I was dying I would just I think almost every day I said I
01:11:15
feel like I'm dying uh it was it was I
01:11:22
it just the darkest of dark um
01:11:28
they like I'm grieving still the loss
01:11:34
of again the facts of my life and a future that I thought I was going
01:11:40
to have even though I and this is that whole Silver Lining thing I'm actually happier now
01:11:48
in the life that I'm in I had to leave my job I wasn't forced
01:11:54
out at all and in fact I want to be clear because this isn't the bullies love to say that I was denied tenure I
01:12:00
was not denied tenure I chose to leave my Dean was incredibly supportive of me
01:12:05
I could not live in that toxic house anymore it was filled with fumes it was
01:12:11
I I I would have died if I had stayed so in Academia period you left your job yes
01:12:19
my my full-time you know tenure track position and that's after I had been
01:12:25
promoted twice like I had worked so hard to get there I had an excellent record of research
01:12:34
um I wanted to stay there I I wanted to
01:12:40
continue to do work around sexism and racism I I thought maybe I would eventually get
01:12:45
into the administration I wanted to like that was the life that I thought I
01:12:52
hadn't and they made it impossible for me to stay
01:12:59
yes it was my choice and no it wasn't my choice um they sold my future
01:13:06
now I have a different one maybe that's maybe that's better but it doesn't take away the pain of that loss it's sort of
01:13:13
like it's like losing a spouse a spouse dying Young
01:13:22
and then you get remarried a few years later and you're happy in your new marriage and maybe you're even happier
01:13:28
but you'll never stop grieving the loss of that first person right it's
01:13:33
that's how this feels um and that's why it's taking me like four
01:13:41
years to write this book because it's a lot it's a it's a lot to tell my own story I'm scared and it's a
01:13:49
lot to hold other people's stories because I know how they feel I know how hard it is
01:13:55
I mean I've interviewed people whose adult children have taken their own lives
01:14:01
because they were so badly bullied in the workplace
01:14:07
it was it was just torture
01:14:13
my collaborators were tortured
01:14:19
and lost so much
01:14:25
fighting this disinformation and just this this
01:14:30
meanness my son in the last six months has had two friends who were taking psychology
01:14:37
courses learn this disinformation about me in
01:14:43
their psychology courses because again it just sort of lives on and so now he's
01:14:48
coming going I don't understand can I ask you everyone's question here because I
01:14:54
did lots of research on you didn't really come across any of that it's amazing I didn't so I don't know
01:15:01
the details of it um what I what I've have inferred from what you're saying is that people try to discredit you yes and
01:15:06
your intentions yes is that accurate yes okay so they try to discredit you me my
01:15:12
intentions my my actions um and to prevent me from
01:15:19
doing more work doing more work right makes sense yes
01:15:26
what do you think their motivations were I can tell you that
01:15:33
a small percentage of people I believe are what I call primary bullies like
01:15:38
they are the ones who get the ball rolling if they're alone and I you know we
01:15:44
chatted about this earlier but if they're alone they're just yeah
01:15:49
but when they recruit people then they become bullies and
01:15:55
they tend to be repeat offenders what they want is status and recognition
01:16:03
they feel that they have not gotten as much as they deserve
01:16:10
and they resent people who they perceive as getting more than they deserved
01:16:16
and so when they perceive that they'll start to go after that person in
01:16:23
little ways and I call that the bully test the bullies testing to see if
01:16:28
people will allow that to happen and if people don't push back and this is where bystanders
01:16:36
could get involved right away and say that's not okay I so wish more people had done that in
01:16:42
my case then they escalate very quickly and they
01:16:47
are basically they are gaining status by taking away your status it's I don't think it's about
01:16:54
power as much as it is about status there are people who are very powerful but still feel like they're not getting
01:17:02
the recognition and status that they deserve and their bullies it is motivated I believe in general again I
01:17:10
don't know what motivated my bullies by a need for status and
01:17:16
one of the commonalities across bullies is that they tend to have a scarcity
01:17:22
mindset they see the world as everything is zero sum everything's affixed buy and that
01:17:31
means if if somebody else is getting status or success it's somehow taking
01:17:37
away from their from them you know Einstein once said the most important question that you'll answer
01:17:43
for yourself is sort of is the universe fundamentally hostile or friendly
01:17:50
because the way you answer that will affect the way you do your work and how you interact with people and
01:17:58
what what you aspire to these are people who would say the world
01:18:04
is fundamentally hostile the bullies are yes and that's the commonality across
01:18:12
bullies I think there are some myths about bullies like the idea that bullied people become bullies
01:18:18
some do and most don't in fact a lot of the
01:18:24
people who I call bravehearts who stand up against bullies were bullied so it's it's not that bullied people
01:18:31
become bullies it's not that you know you know it's not that they're they have
01:18:37
such low self-esteem and they can't sleep at night they actually they can sleep at night they're okay with what
01:18:43
they're doing they think they're right um yeah
01:18:49
but we there are way there's so many ways and I I this is maybe another conversation for next year
01:18:55
there's so many opportunities for bystanders to get involved early so that
01:19:01
it doesn't escalate to this full-blown bullying campaign because once you're there the person is is is is is is
01:19:08
socially killed do you think this is an inevitable byproduct of being successful
01:19:14
because you talk those primary bullies they see status as the the game so you
01:19:21
become really successful in your industry you get a TED Talk which becomes one of the most watched ever you know your podcast becomes big those
01:19:27
Primary people are going to say he or she is getting too much credit what can I do to tear them down give me
01:19:35
a little bit of credit take back some of that zero some status um so you know so is it a inevitable
01:19:42
what do they call it um occupational hazardous yeah so I don't think I think
01:19:47
it's common for you for successful people to have haters
01:19:53
that doesn't always turn into bullying also the people who tend to be targets
01:20:01
tend to be people who have okay so if you if you think about the kind of the
01:20:07
workplace or the profession and then the rest of the world
01:20:13
they have lower status in their profession than they do with the rest of the world and so I was a junior researcher I
01:20:22
wasn't you know supposed to get this much attention and
01:20:28
I just gave a TED talk like that you know I I wasn't going out looking for status
01:20:33
that's what happened it happened to go viral but the targets tend to be people
01:20:40
who are below the average on status in with with the in-group and then cross
01:20:48
what some researchers have called the line of resentment and then they become targets or they're viable targets they
01:20:55
don't necessarily become targets but they're viable targets so people who have very high status in inside and get
01:21:02
high status outside they're much less likely to be bullied interesting so to sort of clarify that
01:21:09
in words that I just make sure I understand if I am in a school yeah and I am maybe in the
01:21:18
lower quartile of popularity I'm not so popular but then something happens which
01:21:25
means outside of school I become super famous yes you know I blow up in the news outside of school and everyone's
01:21:30
talking about me and they love me the people in school yeah there's going to be a group of people in school that go we need to Reign this guy back in
01:21:36
there's going to be a couple of people and you hear those stories and you've interviewed a lot of celebrities and you
01:21:43
know when you talk to celebrities like people who who got famous as kids
01:21:48
a lot of them were bullied and people are shocked they're like but you but everyone else loved you yeah yeah but
01:21:54
that's exactly why they got bullied in their schools yeah because they weren't supposed to
01:22:00
succeed I I've heard this story many times on this podcast Amy I
01:22:05
you know like as in this someone doing well um a group of people thinking that they've punched too far above their way
01:22:11
yep and then exactly trying to tear them back down with disinformation misinformation whatever it's so common
01:22:18
um are you optimistic that it can change honestly really yes I think it's human
01:22:25
well I would like to see it change but I part of me goes I think this is just humans yeah but but this is you know
01:22:31
what we if so if we said that about racism and misogyny and ageism it's just
01:22:37
human nature people would go that's not okay like a lot of people would object on that statement and say yes we can do
01:22:44
better but no I absolutely believe that if people can understand the anatomy of
01:22:50
bullying how it works and what it looks like in the beginning what are the early signs what are the little things they
01:22:57
can do to be socially Brave and collectively turn things around
01:23:02
I think that that that we will see change in in workplaces first the
01:23:09
psychological research shows that we can turn this around
01:23:16
I think you're right actually thank you no I do think you're right just because because when you make the
01:23:21
similarity between things like racism and sexism it's it's really really about cultural acceptance isn't it whether we whether we someone performs that
01:23:28
behavior whether we go that's that's fine whether we clap whether we go you know we're going to reject you if you do that again exactly
01:23:34
um and we're all governed by incentives in this Society aren't we so it's just about an incentive disincentive yes
01:23:40
interesting what's the most important thing that we haven't talked about that maybe we should have
01:23:46
yeah I mean we've talked a lot about trust but I guess so so I guess I just want to summarize
01:23:52
sort of all of that talk about trust it just that you know a lot of people in the business
01:24:00
World make the mistake of thinking that they gotta go in and be the smartest person in the room
01:24:05
so they've got to show confidence and they do that at the expense of
01:24:10
demonstrating their trustworthiness and and if you do not establish earn
01:24:16
trust build trust you you have no medium through which your ideas can travel so trust is the
01:24:23
conduit of influence it's not a soft idea it's a true idea this is just the
01:24:29
way people are if you come in and and you start talking at them and you
01:24:35
haven't listened to them you don't know what they're about they don't feel like you care it doesn't matter if you have
01:24:41
the best idea in the world you're throwing it against a brick wall you know you have got to earn an established
01:24:47
trust in order to influence people and how do you establish trust not
01:24:53
thinking that you have to take the floor first so a lot of people feel that especially in business settings they
01:24:59
like a negotiation they feel like they've got to drop the anchor they have to talk first
01:25:04
when in reality it's often much more effective to ask
01:25:12
questions and learn about the other person you're showing first that I you're interested that you understand
01:25:18
them and you're actually gaining information right so so that you when
01:25:23
you respond you're not giving up power at all you're building trust and learning and and then you when you when
01:25:32
you respond they trust that your response is based on
01:25:38
you actually knowing them right so they feel seen they they've been seen so
01:25:43
that's I think you know there are so many things but I I that that's one that I think is is really effective
01:25:50
we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the Alaska leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're going to leave the question for
01:25:55
and the question left for you is if we discovered a cure for sadness
01:26:03
such that we would never need ex need experience it again
01:26:09
would you support the development of that cure
01:26:18
I'm on the oh geez I I feel like I'm gonna get
01:26:25
myself in trouble but you know I referred to Susan Kane earlier her book quiet her new book is
01:26:31
called Bittersweet and it is about allowing ourselves to feel sadness to
01:26:38
grieve that it is in many ways healing I mean why do we listen to sad songs it we
01:26:44
get some pleasure from it we heal from it so I I'm gonna have to say I I'm
01:26:49
going for the Bittersweet and not the No No sadness imagine a world without sadness I don't
01:26:55
think that would be a nice world I think sadness is like hot and cold and sad and happy I don't think you have one without
01:27:01
the other unfortunately I don't think so either and it's in a signal right it's a human signal that our bodies send us to
01:27:06
tell us it's information yeah process loss and things like that yes I
01:27:12
completely agree with you and to feel empathy and compassion and want to help others so
01:27:17
thank you so much thank you thank you so much it was delightful really really delightful I like so much and um in the
01:27:23
process of reading your work and watching your videos I learned an incredible amount and um
01:27:29
you've really helped me I've had so many little personal epiphanies as we've been speaking so many of them and I'm actually really
01:27:35
really excited about your upcoming book about bullying and bystanders because there's not really a big conversation happening but if there was ever a time
01:27:42
for this conversation in the world we live in in these like pants or culture mobs and the Twitter
01:27:48
sphere and all of this stuff it's a big conversation in the UK at this exact moment for a variety of reasons there's
01:27:54
been a big couple of big moments in the UK um it's it's it's it's now is the time to have a really like professional
01:28:00
nuanced conversation about it yes and to see if there is a way yes to have a language so we can actually talk about
01:28:07
it yeah I would love to speak to you again when that become when that book comes out wonderful to do but thank you
01:28:14
so much for all of your time today it's been really really fascinating really opening conversation and you know what I
01:28:19
I think you're a wonderful human being I think you're a warm competent which is
01:28:25
what I aspire to be one day thank you I think you're wonderful too thank you so
01:28:30
much Amy means a lot to me thank you thank you [Music]
01:28:39
oh [Music]
01:28:49
foreign [Music]
01:28:55
you got to the end of this podcast whenever someone gets to the end of this podcast I feel like I owe them a greater debt of gratitude because that means you
01:29:01
listen to the whole thing and hopefully that suggests that you enjoyed it if you are at the end and you enjoyed this
01:29:07
podcast could you do me a little bit of a favor and hit that subscribe button that's one of the clearest indicators we
01:29:13
have that this episode was a good episode and we look at that on all of the episodes to see which episodes generated the most subscribers
01:29:19
thank you so much and I'll see you again next time