Feeling overwhelmed? You’re not the only one. With the rate of organizational change at an all time high, you’re having to work with more information than ever and under more pressure to perform. It’s nearly impossible to be effective in this type of cognitive overwhelm. On this episode of Your Brain at Work, Dr. David Rock and Dr. Emma Sarro will share how building habits of self regulation can be the key to navigating the challenges of overwhelm in today’s complex world. They’ll dive into the underlying neuroscience of our threat system and how to effectively dampen its response with emotional regulation strategies that both individuals and teams can build. Learn the tangible strategies that can help you and your team regain focus.
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Erin Wickham: Hello, everyone! We'll take a couple seconds to get. Make sure that everyone is out of the waiting room and into the webinar. But thank you for being here.
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Erin Wickham: This is our your brain at work. Live episode, the science of self-regulation in a complex world super excited for today's conversation. As I said. I'll give us all a couple seconds to get out of the waiting room and into the session. But while you're waiting, if you've not met me. I'm Erin. I'll be your host. Today. I'm our senior Director of Insight design at the Neuro Leadership Institute and for our regulars we're happy to have you back, and for our newcomers. Welcome. Thank you for being here.
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Erin Wickham: In today's episode. We'll explore what everyone is somewhat feeling divisiveness and overwhelm understanding what this means from a neural perspective helps us build strategies that effectively dampen the brain's reaction and are key to navigating the challenges that overwhelm us today in our complex world, as I quickly share some housekeeping notes, feel free to drop into the chat, some where you're calling in from. I already see some people from Victoria, BC. San Francisco, doing that already. Thank you for being here.
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Erin Wickham: But we do suggest that you put your phone on. Do not disturb and quit any apps or emails or messages that you have open. So you can fully focus and get the most out of today's conversation. We do love interaction, and we'll be pausing throughout to look at. See what's happening in the chat. So share your questions, comments your big Aha moments, and we'll respond to them as we go through
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Erin Wickham: to introduce today's speakers our 1st guest today. You know him well coined the term neural leadership when he was co-found. No, sorry I had a typo in my script when he co-founded Nli over 2 decades ago with a professional doctorate for successful books under his name, and a multitude of bylines ranging from the Harvard Business Review to the New York Times, and many more a warm welcome to co-founder and CEO of the Neuro Leadership Institute, Dr. David Rock, hey, David.
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David Rock: Thanks, Aaron, thanks for being here. I see we have lots of folks joining us today. Lots of people wanting to make sense of the world look forward to doing that together.
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Erin Wickham: Perfect. And our moderator today holds a Phd in neuroscience from New York University. She leads the research team at the Neuro Leadership Institute, where she focuses on translating cognitive and social neuroscience into actionable solutions for organizations. A warm welcome to our senior director of Research, Dr. Emma Saro, Hi, Emma.
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Emma Sarro: Hi, thanks, erin, hey? David! Happy Friday.
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David Rock: Happy. Friday. Good to be here with you, and I was thinking we often schedule these things as conversations that we want to have like you. And I want to have to like unpack things like what's going on. And this one's no different like, we want to really understand this as much as everyone else, and kind of dig into our research, and understand and and sort of know how to manage ourselves best. So it should be a really interesting session. I see we've got a strong audience joining us today as well.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, it definitely impacts all of us, no matter where you're coming in from and how you're feeling right now. And I think ultimately, we love diving back into our core research and having it like, help us understand what's going on, make sense of it, and then really, importantly build build strategies to help us work better together, communicate better. I mean ultimately, the goal is to perform better in the workplace right and be
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Emma Sarro: cognitively healthy. So how do we do that? And what's going on right now? I mean, what? What is it? Where do we begin.
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David Rock: I feel like it's kind of pandemic. Mark 2 like it's like the intensity of the emotions of that, you know, like March, April May in particular, we're not quite there because that was super super shut down, overwhelming for just about everyone. And in this situation you've got, you know, a percentage of people actually, you know, excited about things happening in the world, a percentage of people completely horrified about things in the world and
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David Rock: the dynamic between those 2. So it's not exactly the same, but the strength of emotions that we're experiencing now, you know, feel similar to the kind of intensity at the start of the pandemic where you had
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David Rock: such a big drop in certainty and autonomy and relatedness kind of all at once. So I think you know what's I think we have to sort of say that what's going on right now for people is sort of this this divide. Right? You've got people with really strong, positive emotions who
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David Rock: have a certain belief system that has them feel excited about what's happening. You know, they may believe that
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David Rock: that, you know big changes are necessary, and big changes require, you know, scary big things, and you know they're leaning into that. And there's another set of people with different belief system that you know, we have really strong negative emotions about this. So there's 2 things here that we'll focus a little bit on that latter group and kind of the challenges they're experiencing. But then, also the challenges of running an organization with both of those groups
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David Rock: involved. Right? So let's let's start with the 1st thing, you know, like what's going on in the minds of people who are who are definitely experiencing a lot of stress at the moment. And
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David Rock: the 1st thing to understand is, it's it's, you know, it's it's nudging up to what we call a level. 3 threat response, which is a sense of danger that says this. This, you know, this is very, very critical. There's these different alarm systems and alert systems in the brain. There's a there's a system for kind of alerting you to like focus on something. There's a system for basically kind of
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David Rock: getting into action. It's an alarm system different to an alert system.
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David Rock: The alarm system raises your heart rate kind of increases your cortisol gets you like really moving, wanting to move
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David Rock: and what's happening is that it's that stronger threat state. It's that level 3.
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David Rock: You're like, call to action. You're you're angry or frustrated, or something, but but it's taking a lot of resources away from a normal executive function. And your executive function in the prefrontal is.
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David Rock: you know, understanding information, making decisions, controlling impulses, understanding other people. And you know, doing deeper thinking. So like all those things are reduced in a in a stronger level, 2 or a level 3 threat. And I think that's a lot of what's going on. And
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David Rock: the the challenge is, when you're in that state. One of the things that you want is you want to increase.
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David Rock: and and we'll talk in a minute about kind of what's happening through a scarf lens. But you're wanting to increase your sense of kind of certainty. And so you end up reading a lot of media. But the media has got you like in a loop of and keep trying to keep in the loop. So the one people that you know one of the groups of people that are super happy right now is the media because media is way up
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David Rock: and everyone across the whole planet is reading the news a lot more. And it's activating the threat response even more in those situations. So it's this really challenging spiral. And you know we said this, the start of the pandemic that like, Yeah, get your news. But get it, you know, towards the end of the day when you've done your work, and
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David Rock: it's not going to affect your whole day, and you can check in if you want to check in, but constantly monitoring what's happening is keeping you at a state where you just can't work, and you can't think. And it'll negatively affect your health. So there's sort of this interesting dynamic
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David Rock: happening with a strong threat and trying to reduce that threat and actually feeding it more. For you know, for the people who who are definitely challenged by what's going on.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, it's such a great point and interesting kind of like how to compare back to what we've all experienced and where, you know, a few years ago, 4, 5 years ago, we were kind of all on the same boat. In this we were all experiencing the same thing now that, like the threats that we're experiencing. Maybe on either side are a bit different. And those individuals who might be kind of motivated and driven by the changes they still have to
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Emma Sarro: show up at work and be on the same team with individuals that they might not agree with. So there's this like very strong
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Emma Sarro: divide. That's interesting, and but also gets in the way of what we need to do in the workplace.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah. And it's. And it's it's not just an American thing that I've you know, family and friends in Australia, obviously, and other countries and people, you know, people globally have had their threat level raised right now, there's a global threat level rise.
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David Rock: although again, it's a little bit sort of close minded to say that because there's a group of people who are not having a threat level increase, they're actually excited by what's happening. Right? So so there's a divide level increase right? There's a threat level increase on one side, a reward level increase on another. But a divide level increase right? A division. And that's that is very, very true. Looking at it from a scarf lens. You know the people who challenged the the you know it's it's
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David Rock: it's a bit well for everyone experiencing a lot more uncertainty. But in particular, if people are feeling a lot less control, there's a big drop, in a sense of autonomy. There's a big drop, in a sense of relatedness. There's there's more, you know, division, less togetherness. And there's a you know, big sense of unfairness right now as well happening. So there's a there's a lot of scarf threats going on that are really really challenging and and and but the the biggest one, I think is that is, that is the divide that's there.
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David Rock: Divide that's happening. We could certainly talk for hours about kind of the what's driving our emotions right now. I think it's probably more helpful to talk about how we
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David Rock: balance them out, what we can do. But definitely the divide is there? Let's talk a bit more about the divide. I know you've been doing some work on this, Emma, and kind of people's different values. Talk to us about kind of how people react with folks with completely different values. So you talk to us about the divide a bit.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. The interesting thing about our value systems is they generally are aligning with what behaviors we end up choosing. And we? We tend to search for information that agrees with those value systems. So you mentioned individuals going into media and searching for information that kind of like aligns with their sense of what they believe and their value they associate with individuals who kind of that's
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Emma Sarro: sense of safety right? But then, having to actually work together with individuals with different value systems. There's almost an immediate sense of outgroup. It's just. It's difficult. You don't have a sense of empathy for those individuals. It's hard to build that sense of empathy or pro-social behavior. It's just much more difficult to navigate those social interactions.
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David Rock: Yeah, let's.
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Emma Sarro: Persuade others of an idea, or it's you're instantly closed off to their perspective. So it's much harder for someone to actually convince of an idea, form an agreement. Anything like that.
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David Rock: Right? So yeah, let's come back to that and spend a couple of minutes on that. I think the trying to collaborate with outgroup members, but one of the sort of frames that helped me sort of isolate a foundational difference. And this is, I'm going to make a lot of generalizations. I apologize. But I think this generalization is a little bit helpful. There are people who believe that.
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David Rock: That letting you know basically that democracy is a bad idea that letting you know individuals on mass, you know, make rules is a bad idea, and you end up with you know you end up with, you know, dysfunctional systems. Basically, there are people who think that the average population isn't very intelligent and shouldn't be, you know, in charge. And there are people who think that
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David Rock: people should be in charge, that democracy is by the people for the people. So you know, very simply put, you know, people shouldn't be in charge. People should be in charge or the masses right? And it's a very deep. It's a very deep belief, you know, that folks have, and the people who believe that the countries should be run by. You know, a small group of you know, basically Ceos, right? The company should be run by
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David Rock: a CEO who just makes the hard decisions and do all that. That's more functional and that's better. Their belief system is very strong that it's practically impossible to nudge from that belief system.
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David Rock: And when you try to sort of
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David Rock: talk to them about it, you you come across as saying, Well, look, you're just crazy, mean, stupid or lazy. And what's wrong with you? Right? And so you create a big status threat trying to convince them. But it's a it's a very strongly held belief
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David Rock: that you know countries should be run by some, some powerful individuals, not by everyone voting, but you know. And then there are, of course, other people with more of a you know democratic focus that believe that that other idea is absolutely terrible idea. And the challenge is, you can find a tremendous amount of evidence for both perspectives
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David Rock: like, if you look right and I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm not going to talk about my personal politics here. But I'm Australian. I'm not allowed to vote in America, right? I clearly have a big shout out for human values more than anything. But what I'll say is, it's the challenge is. It's very, very easy to find
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David Rock: what seems like really solid evidence for both points of view. And you know further and further, build that and then be in the Echo Chamber in that. And so what you get is people with very different perspectives that won't listen to each other won't change. Perspectives have lots of evidence that they're right and that the other people are crazy, mean, stupid, and lazy. And so now you have this friction. So I think that's kind of a fundamental thing of what's going on. What do you think, Emma?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Because when you're speaking about this, it makes me think of all of the research on how do you influence others, and like, what are the different strategies? If you were to try to form some kind of agreement, how would you influence others? And it's, you know in some cases, with such deep
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Emma Sarro: differences in belief systems is using evidence and using facts doesn't always work to convince. And so there are other ways, you know, emotional heartstrings, things like that that you can use influencers, people, social influence, because
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Emma Sarro: because sharing facts isn't going to. Necessarily, they won't necessarily understand that information because they don't believe in it. It doesn't align with their belief system.
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David Rock: And so it's.
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Emma Sarro: Very difficult to cross that bridge on either side by using fax.
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David Rock: Facts. Yeah, yeah, I was looking at. I was looking at this one study that really tells the story about in group and out group. Because this is what's going on right? There's this division that's happening. And that division was there. Divisions getting stronger now, as things get more contentious right? And the division is fundamentally creating this this sense of in group with the people with similar perspectives and out group with people with different perspectives, right? And
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David Rock: that that you know, that create causes conflict. Of course all sorts of things. But
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David Rock: really interesting in the research is that when you are interacting with an out group member. You're actually even more excited when they fail
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David Rock: than when you win.
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David Rock: Like, you want your out group member to fail. You want the person on an opposing team to lose. You actually get really excited by that, even more excited than when you win. It's really weird how that works right. And when you see the out group member win, that's even more painful
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David Rock: than you losing
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David Rock: right? So there's studies directly measuring the the reward response and the threat response within group members and out group members. And all these different conditions. And we're really wired to like be motivated to see the other team lose and to see our team win. So that, of course, colors our perspective. There's all these other research on in-group and out group that
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David Rock: basically, we process everything from an out group member differently. And they they even took this down to
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David Rock: physical movement when they they took the people out the gender everything. It was just dots on a page. So they found that when when you tell someone that this person has different goals to you, and you're just looking at like the points of light on a page. So it's not even a stick person. It's just a person representative points of light. You don't know their age. Gender nothing
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David Rock: that your brain processes, the you know, the representation of a human moving across the screen, your brain processes even that completely, differently based on in group and out group, right? That basic level kind of processing is different. And then when it comes to words and information
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David Rock: in group members is basically like thinking your own thoughts out. Group members are, you know, completely different. So at a very, very basic level, when you have this out group in group experience. You know, motivation is really problematic. We're trying to help the other group lose all the time.
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David Rock: And just basic processing is is problematic. There's all these really interesting challenges. Yeah, what you know. What do you? What do you want to add? There, Emma.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean, this was all of this is so. The research is so interesting. And I think that that, like instantaneous separation of who is in your in group and who is in your out group. It's an immediate.
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Emma Sarro: It's an immediate shift. So you can just be told. This person, you know, voted for this person, or, you know, agreed with this, or watches this type of news, and you immediately associate this person with either in your in group or out group, and that changes how you, how you communicate with them, whether you listen to their point of view. They could be saying the same thing as someone who is part of your in group.
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Emma Sarro: and you will understand the in group member and agree with the In group member, but not the out group member. And that just that really speaks to how your brain is just processing that information. And it's and like you said, it's an immediate. It's an immediate association, which is a bit scary, right when you bring it back to the workplace, and you have a team of individuals that need to be on the same page and understand each other and be open, and their perspectives.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I mean, a lot of folks here run teams run Hr functions, run organizations, you know, small, medium and large. And and the question is, how do you, you know, keep people working? How do you keep people focused? In this time? And the the golden rule is is shared goals is, you know, bringing people back to shared goals in this time. It's really critical that that people have the
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David Rock: you know that that common thing to focus. Really interesting thing happens when you when you have a shared goal with someone, essentially, they become part of your planning network like you've got this planning network in the brain called the premotor cortex for imagining a task and kind of putting the steps in line and kind of working out what you're going to do. And when you have a shared goal with someone, you basically put them in that network, they're like, Oh, I need them for that step. So they're on my team now.
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David Rock: And suddenly they're in group just because you have this shared goal. It's really interesting mechanism and shared experiences. Do it a little bit. There's sort of a ladder like shared experiences. Get you a little bit of the way there.
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David Rock: but shared goals really get you all the way there in terms of turning an out group member into an In group member. But the interesting thing is that shared goal has to be something that you're going to do.
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David Rock: You know, reasonable timeline? Not something in a year or 10 years, or something lofty like, you know. Well, we both want world peace. You know, we both want to bring up kids. No, it's got to be something like, well, we've we've both got to build this dam this month. You know, we've both got to like deliver this project. We've both got to do this thing, and and so it's got to be something fairly tactical that you've got to get done. No one's really studied the timeline. If I had to guess, my sense would be. It's something that you're doing, you know, this
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David Rock: quarter, maybe this half no further out. So there's a bit of a distance bias. It feels important because it's close
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David Rock: and and this this person is necessary. Right? So it's like, Oh, this is necessary. I collaborate with this person. So now they're in my in group. So that's that's something that we need to like keep coming back to in organizations. You know, you've got your politics. You've got this. You've got these things going on. But what are we here to do together, and just continue to, you know, anchor on that over and over.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah. And it's true. There are so many complexities to to how all of our experiences are brought into this. But there there really is at its core, and it is incredibly fascinating. The research that's gone into understanding what happens when individuals do have shared goals, and how individuals who are against each other, and some of the classic research of opposing teams having to do something very tactical together.
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Emma Sarro: and that changes the mindset and motivation to actually collaborating and working together. It is really fascinating and and very core
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Emma Sarro: research. But yes, obviously, there are so many other complexities and individual experiences that come into it, but leaders can set up shared goals and and enable their teams to work towards something common. Make it very tactical, and, you know, enable them to work together.
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David Rock: Yeah. And I do want to. I do want to make a point. And just, you know, just scanning over the comments here briefly that the comments and questions, you know, I do want to make a point like anything that increases people's threat responses is irresponsible, like for a leader to increase people's threat. Response beyond.
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David Rock: you know, the sort of natural things that come from from change is just is really unacceptable. And now there are people who are going to say, well, this is an acceptable threat response, because systems need to change. But when you're taking large numbers of people and
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David Rock: and and taking actions that have
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David Rock: people scared for their life. People, you know, feeling incredibly threatened. That's not leadership. That's something else. And so I think that it's really hard to know how to pull apart what you're reading from what's really happening. It's incredibly difficult to get to the truth. I had experiences where I've seen with my own eyes just terrifyingly
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David Rock: how the majority of news is press release based from just all sorts of different agencies. And it's very, you know, you see that very clearly. If you spend half an hour watching a Republican news source and half an hour watching a Democrat news source, and you'll see the same stories, just framed completely and utterly differently, with completely different rationales and explanations. And all this. So it's very, very hard to know what's really.
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David Rock: you know, happening in things. But what definitely is happening. And we know this for sure. We can see it from our experience, from our data is, people are unnecessarily anxious and unnecessarily frightened, and that there's no good that comes from that. It's a dangerous thing.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, right? And in thinking about how can we? How can we help build ways, individual strategies or strategies that leaders can help their team build
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Emma Sarro: in the workplace that they can then bring home. Because this stuff and one of the areas of research that we often talk about is just this contagion effect. Right is, the individuals are experiencing something, and it spreads throughout an organization. And then it spreads home, too. So we need to build some strategies that individuals can use in the moment to dampen some of that limbic engagement to help them
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Emma Sarro: work with others right.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, no. There's there's definitely an increase in fear. And it's it's not okay. There's no question about that. Like, whatever your politics, increasing people's
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David Rock: fear response. Whether it's it's real or imagined. And a lot of it's real like increasing people's fear. Response is not good leadership. And it's it's not acceptable thing. There's there's some things we can control. There's some things we can't control. And generally, when we focus on things, we can't control our own threat response gets worse and worse and worse. So you know, let's talk about what we can control. Let's talk about what we can focus on.
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David Rock: So I think the
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David Rock: is is, I think, is important here, and that's what we want to talk about today is, is, how do we manage our you know how we manage our own emotions through this. And you know I see some people in the chat have some strong emotions and some strong reactions. And I'm I'm I'm trying to focus on not normalizing either side or, you know, saying anything's acceptable, just that. People have perceptions that they feel are valid.
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David Rock: The way humans work is that people have, you know, perceptions that they feel are valid until they don't. And and it's very, very hard to nudge those. It's practically impossible. There's a whole field of research called sacred values. And people's politics is often not always, but offered a sacred value, and it's very hard to nudge a sacred value. And if you're trying to kind of shift those.
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David Rock: it's practically impossible to shift that. But what I will say, and I've said it twice. I'll say it for the 3rd time, like creating an unnecessary threat. Response in large numbers of people is not good leadership. It's not okay. And now the question is, what can we do about it individually, in our teams and in our organizations and what we, you know. One thing to do is these are scarf threats right? These are a sense of unfairness.
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David Rock: These are a sense of your status is being threatened. Maybe your whole, your whole, you know, religion status is being threatened. These are threats to certainty, obviously to a sense of control or autonomy, to relate all these things. So what can we do so personally, what we can do is try to buffer ourselves, and this is called scarf buffers.
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David Rock: And a scarf buffer is essentially turning down the threat response in your environment. Not so that you become, you know, oblivious to the world and and all that, but so that you're at a manageable threat level, not an overwhelming threat. Level.
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David Rock: The trouble with an overwhelming threat level is while it might feel engaging and activating. You make bad decisions.
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David Rock: You're certainly your ability to create and innovate is out the window. But even just basic decisions are poor. And you even make incorrect perceptual decisions. So so you make perceptual errors in a strong threat response. So you mistake things that are happening around you for other things, you can't, you know, make good decisions. And you, you make you know, you basically get, you know, it's sort of worked up right in that state.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah.
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David Rock: In that worked up state.
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David Rock: You are also
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David Rock: reducing your immune system more likely to get sick. You know all those things. So it's it's not a healthy thing to be worked up unless you're, you know. If you're an activist, you're planning to go out in March you're planning to go out and do things. That's probably a healthy state. It's probably an adaptive state to be extremely worked up to be extremely anxious, you know, if you're
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David Rock: trying to keep your family. You know, meant your family's mental health matters to you. You probably don't want to be in that worked up state because your family will read your mental state, and it will add to theirs
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David Rock: right? So if you're really anxious and worked up, your family's like, Okay, you'll actually make them anxious and worked up. But if they're a little anxious and worked up, you'll make them really anxious and worked up so as the leader of any unit, social unit, a family, a team, a whole organization.
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David Rock: Your threat level is additive to your groups. Right? So you know, if you're planning to like, you know. Take political action things. Then getting to a level. 3 threat getting to a strong threat will be adaptive. It'll help you do all sorts of things, but for people who are not in that state. And they're trying to, you know, run an organization, you know, focus a team, get work done, take care of their family those kinds of things. There's really no good that comes from a strong threat response.
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David Rock: So so scarf buffers. So what are some examples of buffers. Let's hear from folks in the chat some of the things that you're doing to kind of calm the threat response in yourself. So maybe it's creating a greater sense of of autonomy by, you know, focusing back on your exercise schedule. Or maybe it's it's creating greater sense of certainty by getting in and reorganizing your garage again, or whatever it is. But what are you doing?
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David Rock: Tanya's got one so less news media. That's a buffer, right? Physical movement. It's a buffer. So yeah, what are some of the scarf buffers that you're putting in place increasing meditation.
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David Rock: focusing on the things you can control? It's a really important one that's increasing autonomy. Pet love, that's just increases everything. It's a wonderful thing practicing emotional regulation audio books. Yeah, listening to positive things, listening to positive input studying new areas that give you, you know, more levels of dopamine and more levels of kind of interesting things. So keeping your brain focused on interesting things.
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David Rock: relatedness, right? So creating connectedness with others. So these are all things that buffer yourself right? And, as I said, if you know you live in the in the woods, and you don't influence anyone. By the way you feel in any way. You don't go on camera. You don't talk to anyone, you might say, who cares what threat level you're at? Maybe it doesn't matter, but it will make you unhealthy.
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David Rock: But if, again, if you're managing people, you're interacting with people. We have, we, we definitely interact, or our threat state interacts really deeply. Getting out of the Us for a period of time. There's 1
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David Rock: possibly been doing that myself. You do get some perspective. That's that's interesting. So, so those are buffers. Right? Yeah. And Emily, what are you? What are you doing? What? What's helping you personally to to kind of keep that? Keep that balance.
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Emma Sarro: Great question. Yeah, I think I think connecting with my team always helps, you know. And we're we're completely virtual. So we can we do that so well here at Nli, too. And it's just like the daily connection, I think, just seeing like just chatting about normal things outside of work, things, even work, things shared goals. Things like that that immediately dampens any of that uncertainty. And one thing that just
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Emma Sarro: came up for me as we're talking through. This is is that that sense of threat is a real biological, damaging thing, for, as you mentioned your health, and it's not just cognitive health, it's overall health, too. So we do want to find ways to help ourselves in the moment and help help our team. I mean, there's plenty of research showing that this long term
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Emma Sarro: stressors just so damaging the hormones are released in response to that. So it's really useful to have some of these tools to pull out, you know. Build that sense of relatedness. Give yourself a sense of certainty if you can, you know, like buffer yourself away from those things that like make you feel angry or uncertain.
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David Rock: So a buffer essentially turns down the external threats that you, that you might have like less news right? So a buffer is turning that down, or it's adding some positive like, more time with loved ones. Right? So it's adding more positive experiences, or it's taking away negative experiences. So you can think of buffers like that right taking away negative or adding positive, so that you're overall in more of a positive state, right? Whether it's the
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David Rock: the music, or the fireplace, or the friends, or the the exercise or the meditation. Right? It's either removing a negative or adding a positive ideally. Do both
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David Rock: right, remove some negative and add positive. And these things, these tasks are going to help you to think well and move forward, and and certainly in the workplace. One of the things to do is just, you know, everyone getting focused on what there is to do and getting productive and getting your mind focused on the things that matter day to day, right? That can certainly be really helpful. What about for stronger threats? So let's let's look for outside buffers like
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David Rock: labeling is helpful. So let's talk briefly about the research of labeling, labeling works for kind of moderate to, you know, sort of low to moderate threat responses. So maybe your buffer didn't work. And now you're anxious. How do you manage? Do you want to talk a little bit about labeling and some of the research we know.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like for for, like, maybe like rough interactions. Or you just kind of feel like you're on like what just happened in that meeting, or you feel like pretty distracted after coming out of a conversation. Labeling is incredibly simple. It's easy to pull up. Oh, you know this was this was a status threat, or I feel like this person, you know, didn't recognize my work, or something like that. It's putting like an immediate label name on it, and that effect
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Emma Sarro: just dampens the limbic system and brings all the resources back to the prefrontal cortex. It essentially breaks
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Emma Sarro: that limbic system or breaks the emotion which is what the research suggests, and it allows you to have regain control almost immediately of that situation. And so it's a really nice tool to bring in when you just need to put kind of like a name on something quickly and dampen that that bit of emotion and allow yourself to refocus on what you're working on. So it's a really powerful research. And what the research shows is that the
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Emma Sarro: the more words that we learn over our life. We get better at this, as we as we age, we learn more words. And that's 1 of the newer research is kind of showing that like, as we get better terminology around our emotions and around what's happening, we're actually better at using this
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Emma Sarro: using this kind of tool. So so it's it's great way to kind of like. Bring that strategy in, and just like, pull yourself out of that distracting moment.
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David Rock: Yeah, absolutely. So the interesting thing with labeling, it's 2 interesting points. One is actually, maybe 3 interesting points. One is, don't do it for positive emotions. So if you're having a great day, don't try to like label. Why, you're having a great day. It turns down the positive emotions, too. Right? The second thing is, people predict that it will make their feelings worse when they label. So there's been a study on this, that when you poll people and say, You know, if you were going to summarize your emotions in a few words, will that make you feel better or worse? And they say worse actually makes people better.
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David Rock: The 3rd point that's important here is that you don't want to go into the detail of it or the true, or it's true.
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David Rock: You actually want to
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David Rock: summarize. So the labeling has to be like a summary, like a label on a box, not opening the box and talking about it. Right? So so it's not like, Hey, how are you feeling? And then venting all about it? It's like, Hey, how are you feeling on a scale of one to 10 with 10 is fabulous, and 5 is okay. And one is a disaster like, give me a number, right? That's labeling. So so labeling is a summary
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David Rock: in a symbolic way. And there's a lot of research on this. We actually published this way back in our very 1st journal in 2,008. We've done a lot of research on this. But there are many, many studies showing that summarizing your emotions activates the brain's breaking system, which is the right, left, temporal, and in a similar way turns down the threat response. There's some very, very solid research on this. There's a lot about this in my book, your brain at work.
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David Rock: And it's a really solid, solid area of research. As long as you're as I said, not venting, you're not shifting into venting. You're actually labeling. It's a very, very, very effective tool for low to medium threat responses. And the classic example I use a lot like it's Wednesday. It's lunchtime. You're feeling really unfocused. You're getting anxious about why you can't focus, and then you go. Oh, it's just lunchtime. I'm hungry. I should eat right.
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David Rock: And in that moment you actually get all these resources back because you've increased your sense of certainty and autonomy. And you just you've put words onto what's going on, and it's reversed that limbic and prefrontal seesaw. So that's that's labeling. So that's 1 thing. So the 1st thing is buffer yourself to reduce the negative inputs increase the positive inputs overall. Second thing is labeling.
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David Rock: labeling emotions when they matter. The second one is the 3rd one is reappraisal, and such a like fascinating phenomena of reappraisal. The person that I think has done the most interesting research on this, and a lot of scientists have studied reappraisal is James Gross.
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David Rock: He's really the founding father of emotional regulation. He features in my book, your brain at work. He's come to our summits quite a few times and spoken, and he's kind of did the original framing of just how to think about managing emotions and done some phenomenal research on reappraisal. So what's reappraisal reappraisal basically is altering your interpretation.
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David Rock: Of a situation. And as a result, your emotions change. Right? So this there's negative reappraisal. So a negative reappraisal is like rumination, or, you know, panicking. It's kind of looking on the downside of things and and getting more and more anxious. Right? But positive reappraisal is like changing your interpretation of the situation in a more nuanced way. And I'm coming up. So you know you're looking at
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David Rock: at you know, a lot of change happening in your organization. And you're saying, Well, this is a great opportunity to make things much, much better, you know. Don't let a crisis. Go away. So so reappraisal.
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David Rock: I just want to tell you about James's study. It's such a. It's such a fascinating study. And I think, yeah, it's in your brain at work, but it's it's he, he basically was able to segment people into 2 categories, those who reappraised often when a strong emotion came along, and those who didn't.
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David Rock: and what he found was that there was a huge difference in the 2 groups on really everything that matters like
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David Rock: mental health, physical health, relationship, health, overall well-being. Like every dimension. He looked at the people who were better at reappraising, and who did that as their strategy compared to the people who didn't we? Just it was. It was huge. And the people who did have these positive benefits, and the people who didn't have these negative costs. And there was this big gap between. So reappraisal is a superpower, and
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David Rock: it's the only thing you can really do for stronger threats, because labeling often won't work. So we've done a lot of research on it. We've written a lot of papers on it. It's a really interesting one, and someone's asking about humor. Humor is cheap reappraisal. And I don't mean cheap, as in denigrating it in fact, we have a podcast coming out about humor in the workplace. When's that coming out.
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Emma Sarro: Soon. I think we have a blog that we're writing about it, too. So that's.
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David Rock: I actually did an interview with a famous comedian, Ben Glebe. He's got a bunch of Netflix specials and TV shows and all this stuff. So we became friends. Recently, we did a webinar to get a podcast together, we talked about humor in the workplace and humor is a type of reappraisal. When I say it's cheap, it's that you don't need to go through all the steps of reappraisal so normally like. Let's say you're having a you're about to go into a meeting. You're super anxious about the meeting
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David Rock: to reappraise. Well, you've got to like label first.st Identify? Why, you're feeling, you know the way you are, and then think of multiple different interpretations of the meeting. Maybe maybe it's a chance to really shine. Maybe it's a chance to show off your talents. Maybe it's a chance to meet new people. But you got to think of multiple different interpretations and then pick one that's going to be really the most helpful to you, and then really focus on. So all these steps right? Whereas with humor you jump all those you just look at the funny side.
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David Rock: And so right? It's it's just easier. It's just easier. So so anyway, that's reappraisal, you know. Tell us a bit more about the research and reappraisal. What do you want to add in.
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Emma Sarro: I mean, I love the work on reappraisal. And it's really interesting, because, as you were talking about negative and positive reappraisal, what it really suggests is that we have the ability to control a lot of the outcomes, our emotional experience. And if we develop strategies of positively reappraising some of these moments we're able to move past them in kind of like an open growth mindset
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Emma Sarro: framing. It's really interesting. Some of the research shows that you can even just. You can reappraise an image in either a positive or a negative way, and it has dramatic effects on your emotional experience, and you can even reappraise situations after the fact. And what it suggests about like our emotional memory is that we can pull it back up and change it
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Emma Sarro: in a way that makes that is more constructive for us as well. So you can look back and reappraise a previous situation, a previous experience that was that was negative in some way reappraise it to one that's more positive. You know, I'm going to use this to this is actually a learning experience. This is one way that I can grow in my career. And I think what's really interesting and important is for leaders to be able to help their teams through these reappraisals.
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David Rock: And.
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Emma Sarro: They can suggest and help their team through a reappraisal or a direct report. This is how you can look at this challenge. This is a room.
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David Rock: You know.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah moment for growth or whatever. So I think, as leaders, leaders can go in and help develop those reappraisal strategies.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah. And that's about sending scarf signals, right? So we talked about scarf buffers. So when you're doing this with others, you're sending scarf signals. I love Liz Guthridge. Example of a reappraisal, she said. She set up a neighbor, set up a video camera looking into a window years ago, while she was doing courses, and she reappraised the camera as an accountability partner to make sure she was keeping her daily goals. The camera kept me accountable for months, and the neighbor realized they couldn't get me angry and took down the camera. So
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David Rock: such a such a clever one! So it's it's it's really, you know, it's it's a challenging thing. A lot of people like
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David Rock: don't like the idea of reappraisal. They're like, well, that's just looking at the world through rose colored glasses. That's just like not dealing with reality. Those people suffer more depression, worse mental health. They don't have the benefits that I'm talking about like there. There are certain, you know, experiences in life where it's actually positive to be a little bit diluted, so to speak. It's positive to your mental health, your well-being not to be looking at. You know everything that could possibly go wrong.
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David Rock: but to keep moving forward. And I'm not saying this is necessarily that time. But reappraisal is a healthy strategy. In a lot of instances there'll be times where it's not healthy. It'll be maladaptive, right? If you're not dealing with reality, and you should be so. You shouldn't reappraise everything. Don't reappraise a, you know, extremely intense pain in your leg. It might be a broken leg. Go to the doctor.
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David Rock: So what do you think.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I know just what's coming up for me is that is, when you're talking about like, what are the extremes of reappraisal that actually don't help you get through a situation. It brings me to this idea of the Stockdale paradox. Right? As a leader. You can help your your team reappraise in a very specific way. That's honest, but also allows you to kind of address challenges isn't just like, you know, on the extreme of optimism, right? Which doesn't always necessarily help. So can you talk a bit about that?
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I mean the Stockdale paradox. We talked a lot about that at the start
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David Rock: of the pandemic, because we were sensing a lot of people trying to make themselves feel better with
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David Rock: like imagining this to be over soon. And we kept we kept seeing like in February, March, April 2020, all these people being like, oh, it's going to be fine. It's gonna be fine soon. It's going to finish by, you know. By May, June. We're just going to have. And I could sense that was just not correct, and that it reminded me of the Stockdale story, which was someone in the army, who was who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was the most senior
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David Rock: officer in the camp. There's a lot of people that were that were, you know, that were captured. And there was this whole story of sort of how he helped people survive
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David Rock: and what he found. And Jim Collins wrote about this in good to great in the 1st time, just to acknowledge Jim Collins book. But what Stockdale found was that people who were optimistic in that environment actually fell apart.
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David Rock: and the reason they fell apart is because they would be sort of hopeful that you know they'd be home by Christmas right? And then Christmas would come, and they just they wouldn't be home. And then another Christmas. They just couldn't maintain the optimism. And it was a really maladaptive situation. And they just did, because they're optimistic. They wouldn't take steps to improve their situation. And so it just they would fall apart. Then there are the people who are really pessimistic, and the sky was falling, and they they didn't survive, either. They really didn't do well. The people who were really like
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David Rock: worked up and freaked out about everything all the time, and the people who survived and and, you know, did best through the situation. Had this
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David Rock: kind of a little bit of of cognitive gymnastics which was accepting, that things are actually going to be bad
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David Rock: but believing that eventually they turn out okay. And so so it's a sort of quiet hope
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David Rock: that eventually things would be fine or maybe not fine, but eventually things would work themselves out. But it was going to be rough until that point, and those people really managed their mental health, but they also then took action day to day to make things better, and one of the things those people did. They worked out a tapping system of communicating so that everyone could communicate secretly with each other, and they they took little steps that increased their sense of autonomy, which helped, and sense of certainty which helped, and all
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David Rock: all of this, so so that, you know you can read a lot about the stock paradox. We wrote about it. Maybe my team can put it in there in the chat.
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David Rock: and it's it's such an interesting phenomenon, I think, to some degree that can be helpful in this time. That that, you know. I posted something in Twitter recently that was showing, like all the sort of markers of human health over the last 100 years.
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David Rock: including amounts of violence and well-being and length of life and health outcomes. And you know all the markets across all the countries are gradually going up over the last 100 years. Of course they go back at different times a little bit, but when you kind of lift out, you see the world getting a healthier, more connected, more adaptive place, and certainly some steps backwards. But as you pull out over time. You, you know, you see a different. You certainly see a different story. So that's an example of a
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David Rock: have a reappraisal as well.
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Emma Sarro: That's so interesting. It's kind of like a mix of like, what is the reality? How can we? How can we prepare for this reality, which is, we talk a lot about this. And we talked about, how do you kind of like set your team up for success is, how can you anticipate some of the challenges and prepare yourself for this, but also be open minded, or growth, mindset, oriented, to imagine yourself getting through this and not fixed in. I won't get through this, or I absolutely will get through this without
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Emma Sarro: putting any effort in. So it's kind of getting yourself ready for those challenges and kind of pulling the buffers where you can. Where can I buffer? I can pull a buffer with my teammate, the one I have a strong connection with, or my family, or my pet, or whatever it is. So there's there are moments where you can kind of buffer yourself in the ways you can control, and then set yourself up for the challenges. How will I deal with this difficult interaction, or this difficult meeting, or, you know, watching the news, or anything like that.
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David Rock: Yeah, it's a wonderful reappraisal from Gretchen. Will will you let the current situation steal all of your joy? That's a reappraisal. It's a big reappraisal, isn't it? And it's a question, you know, what's adaptive in the moment. Lots of things to say there. So you know another person's comment. I think you can use AI, particularly if you're using Niles, our AI get your company to to put Niles in place because it's it's basically the best of Chat Gpt. Trained on all of our research, so trained on
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David Rock: like literally scarf and scarf buffers and scarf signals and growth mindset and buy. So you know all the work, and we actually put our whole approach to coaching in there as well. So it'll actually coach you through these things, including these self regulation strategies, and more so if anyone's interested in getting their company to to put in Niles, just put Niles and your company name in the chat. Someone to reach out when we don't have that available for individuals at the moment.
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David Rock: But we're putting that into companies at the moment. So just put Niles and company name, but so you absolutely could use, and it would be really fun to use a thoughtful AI to help you reappraise and help you refocus. Let's go to the last kind of chapter here we talked about, you know, buffers for you, and labeling and reappraisal. There's 1 more thing for kind of managing yourself, and then maybe we'll shift
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David Rock: signals. But the other thing is, when the threat's really strong, you know, when you are at that strong level, 2 or level. 3 threat. What can you do? Cognitively like what's stronger than reappraisal when you're really, you know, in that strong threat level. And the answer is, I'm afraid nothing
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David Rock: when you're really in a strong, strong threat response. Your oxygen and glucose is out of the network that you need to both think about things and regulate emotions and actions. And so you know, your limbic system's really fired up
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David Rock: prefrontal really fired down, it would shut down. So there's no like cognitive strategy and a really strong threat that works. It's like talking to a teenager who's super upset and yelling at you, and you're trying to talk reason to them. It's like they're not listening to your reason.
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David Rock: And then
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David Rock: neither is your brain right when your own brain is really worked up, when you're at that really strong threat. Your heart's racing. It doesn't listen to reason. It doesn't listen to shifting perspectives right? And so what you need at that point is a biological intervention. What are some of your favorites? Biological interventions? What do you got.
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Emma Sarro: Absolutely walk away. I mean, I'd probably buffer myself in some way by exercising in the morning, too. But I think walking away from you know for me anything digital, right? And I think I think separating yourself sometimes, you know.
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Emma Sarro: calling someone who I don't need to reason with or have that reasoning conversation with. But I think that the physical thing is is walking away, taking a deep breath, and that would be, you know, my suggestion to a friend who's going through the same thing. Yeah, math. That's amazing. I think that's such a good one, because that definitely switches you away from the focus of that threat, for sure.
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David Rock: Just.
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Emma Sarro: Is that for you.
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David Rock: Snowboarding definitely.
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David Rock: definitely. It's a fantastic one, but a physical, unless you don't know how to snowboard. And you're going to hurt yourself. Otherwise, physically, you know, skiing or some kind of physical activity. Yeah, let's get in the chat. What's working for you for for biological responses. Certainly. You know, exercise as sleep. Often it's just you need a meal. It's often it's often a nap.
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David Rock: So those kinds of things so something physical that really moves energy or shuts down your brain. Those kinds of things are really big.
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David Rock: So lots of interesting comments there, a couple of people are asking about
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David Rock: like more resources on like labeling or reappraisal this stuff. It just reminded me that we've we actually put together a 6 month online program that anyone can sign up for. And actually, if you're interested in Niles, that's how you get access to Niles at the moment we've we've built a solution called lead, which is a 6 month kind of week by week. Experience where you get in and learn all about your brain. There's a big section on self-regulation in the 1st module. 3 modules, manage yourself, mobilize others, drive results.
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David Rock: and in manage yourself. There's lots and lots about labeling reappraisal, all of that. So I'll put the link here. That is actually something that is available to any individual. And you get access to Niles as part of that. So check out lead. If you're interested in kind of putting your brain onto learning about itself. Over the next 6 months you can start anytime.
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David Rock: But that's going to be an interesting thing to do at this time to give you some some cool stuff to focus on. It's about 15 min a week or more. If you want to kind of really really dig in last couple of minutes, Emma, we talked a lot about individuals. What about sending signals to teams? Right? So what can we do for teams to help them. The 1st thing is manage our own threat response, so that.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah.
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David Rock: Not affecting them. But what else can we do for teams to help them with their threat response.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I think what was just coming up for me is just the importance of of doing it yourself first, st right? Managing yourself first.st I mean, you really can, as a leader, expect to really support your team best until you have your own strategies. But role modeling them for your team, working them through reappraisals.
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Emma Sarro: you know, understanding their specific scarf threats or buffers that you can use that will especially help them. So I have individuals on my team who are incredibly certainty driven. So, knowing that, and knowing that I can provide as much certainty as possible, or relatedness driven, putting out that like out there, 1st getting them kind of on the same page and open so that we can have a difficult conversation if it.
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Emma Sarro: or a challenging conversation or talk through, you know the next goal. So it's definitely understanding yourself. But then giving understanding a bit about your team to give them and the autonomy to, you know wherever the flexibility is, because everyone, as we said in the beginning, is coming in with a different perspective.
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David Rock: Right. So checking where people are. To Danny's Point a lot of clarity at this time, and as a as a team, lead or family, lead or company lead like clarity is super super important. You can't create certainty, but you can create more clarity with timelines and processes, and what you're committed to what's off the table.
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David Rock: Right? So really creating clarity is such a big thing at this time. It's 1 thing you can. You can definitely nudge. And the thing with these these scarf signals is a little bit of a positive change can go a long way, especially if it's an unexpected reward. That's probably the easiest thing
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David Rock: to do is is that extra bit of clarity? And then a little bit more autonomy. Some unexpected autonomy is really helpful. If my key team could put the lead link in there again. So people are asking for that. So grab that. Or if you just go to neuroleadership.com. You'll find that
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David Rock: pretty easily. But let's put the lead link. If anyone wants to get in there, and then you can access Niles as well, and play with that. Thanks, Tony. So the other thing I just remembered about is when the pandemic hit, we actually built a solution called focus, which is about thriving through incredible change. And this actually teaches a lot of the self regulation habits and a bunch of other strategies for really focusing during a
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David Rock: difficult time. So if you are from an organization and interested in that, just put the word focus and your company name in the chat, and someone will reach out and chat with you about that. So that was that was something we designed back in the pandemic in 2020 and 2021 released, then still super relevant. And we're seeing more companies wanting to do that at the moment as well. So you put the word focus and your company name. Thanks, Raf, and we'll someone will follow up with you.
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David Rock: So sending signals to your team, 1st signal
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David Rock: is is that you're doing okay, and that you're optimistic. It's really important, you know. Otherwise, helping them label, you know, helping your team label right? Helping them reappraise.
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Emma Sarro: You can't tell someone how to reappraise, but you could give them options. Yeah, yeah.
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David Rock: Like like, here are a couple of different ways. You might see this which one works for you right? Because if you're telling someone how to reappraise. Firstly, you can't read people's brains, and then it feels like your idea, not theirs, and
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David Rock: reduces their status and autonomy and raises yours. So definitely.
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David Rock: sending, sending those signals with clarity, with autonomy, those things as well. So let's some speaking of autonomy, throw up my team can throw up the poll. So we know how to support people. All sorts of things happening at the moment. If you're wanting to learn the certificate in foundations of neuro leadership at 6 months
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David Rock: program online, different to lead. This is a theory program. If you want to really like, spend some time diving into the science and really understanding the human brain. Incredible time to do that. So we have. That, I think, is an interesting
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David Rock: opportunity in individual
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David Rock: education as well. So I think we're pretty much say, Emma, any other questions you wanted to to answer before we hand back to. To Aaron.
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Emma Sarro: No, I think this this was great. It was a great discussion. I think. We would all like help ourselves to build some of these strategies. I know it's hard sometimes, especially when we are overwhelmed, or, you know, frustrated or uncertain under threat. But just a few of those can start to help you refocus and remind your team of that shared goal. You know.
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David Rock: Yeah, the buffers are so important. I'm working on a new book at the moment, and there's just no way I can write a sentence, if I'm you know, watching the news a lot, or, you know, like I've got to switch off
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David Rock: and really have a lot more positive experiences around me, and it takes me like a day or 2 to get back to focusing. It's, you know, it's hard. So I think, you know, reflecting and respecting that it's hard to focus at this time. And it's going to take discipline, intentionality to be able to do that. So thanks everyone for joining us at a big group. Today. This is recorded. Erin can share more about that and kind of what's happening next.
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David Rock: But just thanks so much everyone for for being here. Thanks, Emma, for your thoughtful comments and partnership as always. And, Erin, we'll we'll hand back to you. Thanks so much, everyone. Bye, bye.
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Erin Wickham: Thanks, David. Thanks, Emma. This was a great conversation. If you haven't already. Please take a look at our poll up on your screen and let us know how analy can help you out in the future. The poll will stay up for a few more moments, as I share some closing announcements
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Erin Wickham: for C-level or senior executives looking to get an inside look into their own brain as they learn critical habits for leaders. We are designing a three-day brain lab of effective habit activation seminars in real-time. Eeg, scanning participants, will walk away with insights into their own brain as it faces complex challenges
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Erin Wickham: specifically for senior executives. If you enjoy your brain at work, live, you'll love our neuroleadership insider exchange program. We invite you to join this exclusive opportunity where you can enjoy benefits such as 1st looks at our new research, roundtable discussions with leading executives and researchers, and helping us craft new innovations at work to apply, follow the link shared in the chat.
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Erin Wickham: And if you enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love our podcast. Show. So make sure, you subscribe. You can hear past versions of your brain at work live anywhere, you get podcasts on demand. This is where we officially say goodbye for this week on behalf of today's guests and the Nli team behind the scenes. Thank you for being here, and we'll see you here next Friday. Have a good one.