0:00

Change is happening all the time and faster

0:02

and faster. Part of what we're trying to help

0:04

people do is internalize that, understand

0:06

what does it mean to accept that, and

0:09

then to depart from there on

0:11

your developmental path. It's

0:14

not about getting through any one change,

0:16

it's not about any one critical moment.

0:18

It's about all the moments that will come.

0:26

Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast.

0:28

Today we welcome Gabriella Kellerman

0:30

to the show. Gabriella is the chief

0:32

Innovation Officer at Better Up and the

0:34

head of better Up Labs. She is

0:36

also a Harvard trained physician with

0:39

expertise and behavioral and organizational

0:41

change, digital health, well be and

0:43

AI. As a thought leader,

0:46

Gabriella has been published in The Atlantic

0:48

Scientific, American Mind, JAMA,

0:51

and the Harvard Business Review. Her first

0:53

book is called Tomorrow Mind, which

0:55

she co authored with Professor Martin Selgman.

0:58

In this episode, I talked to Gabriel Kellerman

1:00

about prospection and future proofing

1:02

the workplace in the twenty first century.

1:05

According to Gabriella, the twenty first

1:07

century is always changing, and she argues

1:10

that we can plan for uncertainty by

1:12

cultivating creative leadership building,

1:14

rapid rapport and learning resilience.

1:17

We also touch on the topics of imagination,

1:19

kindness, and positive behavioral science.

1:22

It was great fun to nerd out with my friend

1:24

Gabriella about imagination,

1:27

prospection, creativity and other

1:29

awesome skills that I like to study as well, which

1:32

we can refuse in the workplace to really help

1:34

everyone deal with the growing

1:36

and rapid uncertainty we're facing in

1:38

our lives right now. So without further ado,

1:40

I'll bring you Gabriella Kellerman. Gabriella

1:44

Kellerman, so great to have you on the podcast.

1:47

It's great to be with you. Thanks

1:49

for having me. So congratulations

1:51

on your new book Tomorrow Mind Thriving

1:54

at Work with Resilience, Creativity, Connection,

1:57

Now and in an Uncertain Future.

1:59

It's quite the sub title there. You

2:01

co authored this with Martin

2:04

Seligman Martin ep Selgment.

2:07

How did that collaboration come about? Yeah, so,

2:09

about five years ago, Alexi

2:12

Robashow, the CEO of Better Up, asked me

2:14

to start better Up Labs. As you

2:16

know, it's a lab where we are looking to

2:19

develop and accelerate development

2:21

of the knowledge base of how to build

2:24

critical skills that we need to thrive in

2:27

our personal professional lives today

2:29

at the overlap of the dew And

2:32

the person that I most wanted to work

2:35

with in that endeavor was Marty. He's obviously

2:37

been working on these problems his whole

2:39

career. His writing and work's

2:41

been influential for me, it's been influential

2:43

for Alexi, for so many of us at

2:46

Better Up. And we made the pilgrimage

2:48

out to Philadelphia to meet

2:50

with him and pitch him the

2:52

idea, and you know, I think he understood

2:55

the potential for this to be what

2:57

he calls the Bell Labs

2:59

of Positive Psychology is still

3:02

something we're trying to live up to. And

3:04

we've been researching together ever since. Oh

3:07

well, you said you've been researching ever since?

3:09

What have you been researching? Yeah, So we

3:11

in our lab, we have a we

3:14

have a whole research staff.

3:16

There's about fifty PhDs at the company

3:18

now, so bigger than a lot of academic

3:20

departments. And so we do studies

3:23

in lots of different ways. So we do studies in

3:25

house with our own staff, We do

3:27

studies in partnership with academic

3:29

labs, like with Sonya Lubomirski.

3:31

You had such a great show with her

3:34

not long ago. And

3:37

then we also help and you

3:39

know, advise or share data with other

3:41

labs for them to analyze themselves

3:43

and publish on It's it's all

3:45

part of our mission. That's awesome.

3:48

I feel like y'all are really interested

3:51

in that notion of prospection.

3:53

That's a core theme of this book. What is

3:56

perspection? What is that? Yeah, so it's

3:59

our ability to imagine

4:01

and plan for the future, and

4:04

it applies to our personal lives, applies

4:07

to our professional lives, applies to individuals,

4:09

applies to groups. Okay, so

4:12

it's not the same thing

4:14

as imagination. Imagination

4:16

is a component of but you can have imagination

4:19

without the perspection. It's a great question.

4:21

This actually a little bit of

4:23

a debate that I think

4:26

Marty has one view on, some of our other advisors

4:28

have a different view on. And we

4:31

think about it more is that what's the relationship

4:33

between creativity and perspection? Is

4:35

prospection a subset of creativity or

4:37

is creativity a subset of perspection. We

4:40

take the view that it's more the latter perspections

4:43

the broader project of imagining

4:46

all kinds of things and then taking

4:48

action on it. And as you said, so imagination

4:51

is kind of the first phase of perspection.

4:53

It's really quick, it happens

4:55

on the order of seconds to minutes,

4:57

and it's optimistic and divergent.

5:00

And then the second phase of perspection is

5:03

more deliberate, more valuative,

5:05

takes longer, can be

5:07

more pessimistic. So for some

5:10

of us, getting better at prospection is about

5:12

the first phase and learning to

5:14

live and tolerate ambiguity a bit

5:16

better, learning to think more expansively

5:19

and divergently. And then for

5:21

others it's more about in the second phase,

5:23

how do we improve our accuracy

5:25

of planning for obstacles that can come.

5:28

You say perspection is the twenty first

5:30

century superpower. That's

5:32

a bold statement. That's

5:34

a bold statement. What do you think it is about

5:36

particularly, and I know your context is in the workplace

5:39

mainly in this book. What is

5:41

it about the nature of the workplace

5:43

in the twenty first century that you think really

5:46

requires perspection? Yeah, so it's

5:48

become a platitude to say that the

5:50

pace of change is one of the defining features

5:52

of our era. But it is. Change

5:55

is happening all the time, and faster and faster.

5:58

Part of what we're trying to help people do is internalize

6:00

that, understand what does it mean to accept

6:03

that, and then to depart

6:05

from there on your developmental path.

6:08

It's not about getting through any one change,

6:11

it's not about any one critical moment.

6:13

It's about all the moments that will come.

6:16

And perspection is part of what allows

6:18

us to yes see ahead,

6:20

not as much in a future a sort

6:23

of a future telling way, but more

6:25

in a way of being able to imagine lots

6:27

of possibilities and being positioned

6:29

to respond to them in an agile manner.

6:32

The more opportunities we can

6:34

imagine and position ourselves for, the

6:37

better able will be to respond. So

6:39

it's part of the project of trying to restore

6:42

agency in this time of tremendous

6:44

uncertainty. So you think that in

6:46

order to kind of future proof the workplace

6:48

will require this flavor

6:51

of prospection that's agency oriented,

6:53

because it is that your flavor of perspection

6:56

does have this agency or flavor to

6:58

it. You know, it's not the just freewheeling

7:01

daydreaming that sometimes I talk about, like

7:03

positive constructive daydreaming. Yeah,

7:05

no, I love that too, And creativity

7:09

we treat as its own kind of

7:11

skill and superpower. There's sort of five skills

7:13

in the book. We are originally

7:16

going to write the whole book on prospection though, and

7:18

you're right, it is very much of

7:21

primary interest and it's

7:23

something that grows tremendously

7:26

during coaching. So of all the

7:28

things that we measure when people go through coaching,

7:31

perspection moves most dramatically, most

7:33

quickly. And we're very

7:36

oriented toward what are things we can build.

7:38

We know how to help people build that will

7:40

help us in this era. So there

7:42

may be other things, right, but if we can't

7:45

help people build them, that's

7:47

not where we're going to focus our time. When it

7:49

comes to creativity, what is this novel

7:52

typology of creativity that you present in the book.

7:54

Yeah, so it's a way of thinking about different

7:57

ways of being divergent. So we often talk

7:59

about activity as divergent thinking,

8:01

but what does that mean? And

8:04

part of our goal is to help people

8:06

identify with the label of creativity,

8:09

even people who have never thought of themselves

8:11

that way before. So we want

8:13

to give really concrete examples and

8:16

group them into categories that people can

8:18

identify with. And I think

8:20

part of what we heard early on in developing

8:23

the typology and what we're hearing from

8:25

the article. Since it's been out, it's really

8:27

gratifying to hear people say, oh, identify

8:29

with that type. I didn't even know that that's a form

8:31

of creativity. And to start

8:33

to open up that sense of identity

8:36

and creative self efficacy, it's

8:38

part of what we hope this can accomplish. It's

8:40

also a great tool for leaders who

8:43

are leading innovation teams to be able

8:45

to say, Okay, in our portfolio,

8:47

we tend to do integrative

8:50

innovation. We tend to do

8:52

splitting innovation. Do we have enough distal thinkers

8:54

in the mix? Do we have enough individuals

8:57

who are doing good at figure ground reversal?

9:00

We challenge ourselves to think in all

9:02

four of these dimensions and come

9:04

up with ideas, and it's a way of encouraging

9:07

different forms of divergence. Did

9:10

you mention all four? Yeah, so there's integration,

9:12

splitting, figure ground reversal,

9:15

and distal thinking. Splitting

9:17

doesn't sound good. That sounds like a worline

9:20

person. This, No, what

9:22

do you mean by it? Yeah? It was not I meant

9:24

to be defined

9:26

by the DSM. So splitting

9:28

would be taking a construct

9:30

that is normally thought of as holistic

9:33

and showing how it can be more usefully divided

9:35

into parts. It happens a lot in

9:38

the land of product. You might launch

9:40

a product and gradually discover

9:42

actually, this is more effectively divided

9:45

into these subtypes. To recognize

9:47

that, to understand that there's room

9:50

to optimize it into potentially

9:52

very different types of products. Is it's its

9:54

own kind of innovation. It

9:57

has a lot of overlap with analytical thinking,

10:00

but the analytical thinking can happen

10:02

at you know, a really a micro level, and

10:04

this is more at the level of an idea

10:07

product that you're putting out into the world. Well,

10:09

I love I love this breaking this down into

10:11

different types of diversion thinking, because yeah,

10:14

you're quite right, the field of creativity does

10:16

tend to just focus on one kind of

10:18

creativity diversion thinking, like

10:20

how many uses are there for a brick? And well, what

10:23

is creativity hygiene? How

10:25

does that relate to diversion thinking? Yeah, let me

10:27

tell you about that. And I'm curious what you what

10:29

you think of the idea of creativity hygiene.

10:32

So one of the things that I

10:34

love about studying creativity,

10:36

which is also what makes it so challenging,

10:38

is that there is a non conscious

10:40

component to creativity. And you

10:43

know, as researchers

10:45

in brain sciences, we're not supposed to talk

10:47

about unconscious things, right, but

10:50

there's a lot of what we do that we don't have

10:52

conscious control over. And it's clear

10:54

from the literature that at least

10:57

some of what determines creative output

10:59

we don't fully have conscious control over. And

11:01

so if you're trying to then give people guidance

11:04

on how do you optimize for

11:06

something that is not entirely under your conscious

11:09

control, one analogy

11:11

that comes up for me is to

11:14

sleep. Sleep is something that's

11:16

really essential for us, but we can't just you

11:18

know, snap our fingers and be asleep. And

11:21

so the field of sleep hygiene originated

11:23

from the same set of challenges,

11:26

how do we help people organize their life and

11:28

their lifestyle to optimize

11:30

for this non conscious outcome. And

11:32

so we're trying to do the same with creativity

11:34

and say, okay, we know it's

11:36

this default mode network that's going to provide

11:38

a lot of the rich inputs for

11:41

this creative output you're going to bring. We

11:43

know that there's all of these ideas about

11:45

the kinds of exposures

11:48

that highly creative people have that feed

11:50

the default mode network. How can you

11:52

orient yourself around things like novelty

11:55

breaking routine as a way

11:57

of feeding that default mode network. How

11:59

can you you also learn to tolerate ambiguity

12:02

more so that perhaps you can extend

12:04

the time that you spend again in that phase

12:06

one, in that more expansive, divergent

12:09

phase. We also try to help

12:11

people understand what effective

12:14

incubation periods look like. So, as

12:16

you know, when we're working on a creative

12:19

problem, it's helpful to intersperse

12:22

active, kind of conscious

12:24

executive control type of work

12:26

with this day dreaming type of work,

12:29

and that's the one we have less conscious

12:31

control over. But some of the great

12:34

studies on how that incubation

12:36

period works most effectively also

12:39

suggests that it's good to be doing something

12:41

while you're incubating, but not too much,

12:44

right, so it's not sort of just lying in your bed,

12:46

but it's also not sitting and answering

12:49

emails. And so how do you dial

12:51

in those incubation periods with activities

12:53

like taking a walk or taking

12:56

a shower, things where you're on sort

12:58

of autopilot doing something

13:01

that you're allowing your brain to be working

13:03

on those things in the background. We

13:06

don't necessarily have a clear concept of what's

13:08

that like, just right enough level

13:10

of attention for an incubation period,

13:12

and that's what helping people dial in. Oh

13:14

great, I know that. When I was

13:16

working with Marty, he was a really interesting idea of the

13:19

sense of the audience as an important

13:21

part of the creativity. Is that part of creativity

13:24

hygiene as well, or maybe it doesn't quite fit. We definitely

13:26

include the utility to the audience

13:28

and the definition of creativity,

13:31

so we use that and novel

13:34

surprising and useful, the last one

13:36

being the sense of audience, but

13:38

we don't necessarily embed

13:40

that into the hygiene component.

13:43

Yeah, okay, yeah right. I was like, where does

13:45

that fit? Yeah? Oh gotcha.

13:48

So I love in your book how

13:50

you connect this to creative leadership.

13:53

So can you tell our audience a little bit about what creative

13:56

leaders do? Well? You know, I think I think that a

13:58

leader of great creative teams,

14:01

they may themselves be greatly

14:04

creative, but we try to focus on

14:07

what does it mean to lead a team and

14:09

help bring out creativity from a

14:11

group. So much of creative

14:13

output today, all the most

14:16

important innovations of

14:18

the last you know, I would argue

14:20

fifty years have happened in groups. We're

14:22

sort of beyond the day of the solo inventor

14:25

in a garage somewhere, and so

14:27

how do you bring together groups to do that

14:29

effectively? And there's many, many challenges

14:31

to overcome. Some

14:34

of what we're suggesting is kind of small

14:36

at the one on one level, and some of it's more

14:39

the systems and plans and processes.

14:41

One of the components that I try to

14:44

talk about as much as possible because

14:46

it's so powerful and also so simple,

14:48

is this idea

14:51

of creative self efficacy, which,

14:53

as you know, is our self

14:55

belief that we are creative. Whether

14:58

it's a teacher or a manager. People

15:00

who are in positions of power in any

15:03

particular way with respect to us

15:05

have an outsized influence on

15:07

our self perception as a creative. And

15:09

so teachers, managers,

15:11

organizational leaders, when they can notice

15:14

that you've done something creative, when they can recognize

15:17

it, even if it's something very

15:19

small, it helps build up self

15:21

belief in ourselves as creatives,

15:23

and that in turn influences

15:25

greater, richer creative output for

15:28

the team for the good

15:31

of the organization. So you're helping

15:33

your individuals on your team when you notice

15:35

these things, when you call in and recognize

15:38

creative output, especially from people who don't

15:40

think of themselves as creative, help

15:42

them build that up and you'll see returns

15:45

in terms of what they're able to put forth.

15:48

I see your coaching expertise come into

15:50

the mix here with you. Know, there's a big

15:52

concept in the coaching world called strength spotting,

15:54

and you're talking about creative strength spotting.

15:57

I love the contribution you've made to

15:59

this book, Gabrielle. I think we need to give you

16:01

some credit, give you a lot of credit. You

16:04

know. I've mentioned Martin

16:06

Sulligan's name a lot because he's obviously

16:08

a giant in the field. But you should

16:10

really be commended for the

16:13

contribution you've made in your own sort of major

16:15

contributions to this book. So I just want

16:17

to make that absolutely clear before

16:19

we move on. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely,

16:22

Well, you know, what are some mistakes

16:25

that a company can make that

16:27

can throw a creative team off. I think that's a

16:29

really important thing to discuss as well.

16:31

Yeah, so how

16:34

do we manage

16:36

risk? And part of that is

16:38

how do we manage quote

16:41

unquote failure of creative

16:43

efforts? Is a huge part of where

16:45

things can go wrong. So we

16:48

need to

16:50

be able to tolerate as individuals,

16:52

as teams organizations a certain level

16:54

of risk if we're going to get to major

16:57

creative output, and that entails

16:59

having a portfolio, and some of

17:01

the things in that portfolio are going to fail

17:04

in the sense that they're not going to be the thing that

17:06

makes it to market, or it's not going to be the solution

17:09

to the problem. Being able to recognize

17:12

those efforts help people understand those

17:14

efforts still matter not

17:17

have consequent negative consequences

17:19

as long as the efforts were done well and in good

17:22

faith, you know, not punishing people

17:24

for risks that didn't pay off. Those

17:26

are all places where companies can go awry

17:29

and send messages that are It

17:32

may feel to a leadership team like a whisper,

17:34

but it will come through like a megaphone

17:36

to the front lines in terms of what

17:39

it's telling them about their own lack of

17:41

safety as innovators. So that's

17:43

somewhere where we have to be extremely careful.

17:46

It's also a great place to focus

17:48

efforts and to focus the

17:51

way we think about culture for

17:53

the organization as a whole, because when you do

17:55

it right. It sends a beautiful message,

17:58

and you know, you see this beautiful coming

18:00

together and openness and

18:02

suggestions of ideas that wouldn't

18:04

have otherwise come up. Nice well

18:07

said, Well said, you mentioned safety

18:09

a little bit, and well, I think that a

18:12

lot of what you're saying right there links to the

18:14

idea of the need to matter right

18:16

in some way as well, to feel

18:19

safe to matter. I've never quite put it that way

18:21

before. A workplace where

18:23

you really self actualize,

18:25

and you know, real self actualizing workplace

18:28

is one that really appreciates that mattering drive.

18:30

Do you bring in Isaac Polteonski's work

18:32

at all in your thinking about

18:35

this, No, we don't. You should.

18:37

He's such

18:40

a legend in the field of positive psychology

18:42

and in understanding the need to matter.

18:44

And what I really like about his approach

18:46

is he really acknowledges

18:49

that not everyone

18:52

is coming from the same level

18:54

of privilege to show to speak. And I see

18:56

that as something that I never seen already talk

18:58

about ever know how to put

19:00

this, you know, I just don't see as

19:03

in positive psychology much of an acknowledgment,

19:06

you know, when they when there's a discussion of agency

19:08

in the field, I don't see much of acknowledgement

19:10

that, like, well, some people in our

19:13

world maybe matter too much. Some

19:15

people don't even get the chance to matter. So

19:18

that's why I really love his framework. So I just encourage

19:21

encourage that to be brought into this discussion.

19:23

I mean, I think it's a great point, and even in the

19:26

broader so we think of mattering as a subset

19:28

of meaning and purpose or a more actionable

19:31

way of thinking about meaning for

19:33

the organization in the broader conversation

19:35

and meaningful work. I think this a

19:38

hugely important point is to

19:40

what extent is it a privilege to expect

19:42

work to be meaningful? To what extent

19:45

is it a fair expectation that put out

19:47

into the world for people

19:49

who are, you know, agricultural

19:52

laborers and maybe would not choose

19:54

to be that if they had an alternative. And

19:57

I think these are really important questions, and there are

19:59

a wide range of responses, including

20:01

people who would say, absolutely,

20:04

you know, you're doing folks a disservice by

20:07

saying that just because they're from

20:09

a lower socio economic status they shouldn't

20:11

be able to find meaning in their work. And

20:13

then on the opposite end are folks who say No, it's

20:15

just a privileged concept to begin with. But

20:18

I agree it's a very important component

20:20

of the of the conversation, and that

20:24

meaning is one of these areas where we can't be culturally

20:27

sensitive enough around

20:29

where do we find that in our lives, in our

20:32

work lives and our personal lives, and

20:35

what assumptions are we making about what it

20:37

could or should be for anyone else? Yeah?

20:40

Absolutely, I mean, just to be clear, I'm not

20:42

trying to go to Wokeville here all of a sudden, But

20:44

the idea of agency, I

20:46

think there's something that I can call toxic

20:49

agency, you know, That's how

20:51

I would label it. I think that toxic

20:53

agency would be treating agency

20:55

as though that's the only thing that matters, and

20:58

that people don't have any constraints at all

21:00

on their environment, you know, like and just ignoring

21:02

all that I would say as toxic

21:04

agency. I also think that toxic agency

21:06

can be like a situation where

21:09

a leader matters too much,

21:11

you know, like a leader has all the

21:13

power right and no

21:16

one else has had any power whatsoever. I also

21:18

see that as toxic agency. So I don't think like agency

21:21

in and of itself is necessarily a great thing for

21:24

Marty, so much of it started

21:26

for him with the learned helplessness studies,

21:28

right, and the ways that we yeah and

21:31

learn our sense of agency and pathologic

21:33

ways. And so I think part

21:35

of wanting to give people agencies

21:37

that it's also about how do you restore it to

21:39

people who've had experiences that where

21:42

they felt victimized and they no longer feel

21:44

access to agency. Agree

21:46

completely, there's you know, neither extreme

21:49

is where we want to be absolutely

21:51

absolutely. Maybe we

21:53

can back up a second, you give me a little bit the history

21:55

of the behavioral sciences. Why is

21:57

this the world we're living in right now?

22:00

You know, how is the approach that you're

22:02

putting forward different from

22:05

maybe the medical model of psychology

22:08

or psychiatry. The world

22:10

of science that we're advocating

22:13

to be used to be better distributed

22:15

and applied in our daily lives. And

22:17

we're talking about adults, but there's so much

22:19

of it for kids too. It's also

22:21

a passion of mine.

22:24

We can roughly call them the positive behavioral

22:26

sciences, banning psychology,

22:28

neuroscience, even psychiatry. There's positive

22:31

psychiatry now, and it

22:33

is very different from

22:36

the pathological model

22:38

of the behavioral sciences, which took as its

22:40

focus how do we heal people

22:42

who are psychologically unwell? And

22:45

even when I was training, the idea

22:47

is you study people who are

22:49

psychologically unwell to

22:52

help them right, to really help

22:54

them with their tremendous suffering. But

22:57

also you hope that in doing that you will

22:59

discuss were principles that you

23:01

can then apply to people who are not

23:04

necessarily unwell, but could their

23:06

existence could be improved and

23:09

they could help you achieve their potential

23:11

and et cetera. And

23:14

at a certain point for psychology

23:16

is probably the early nineties psychiatry,

23:18

it was more like the Oughts. There's this

23:20

realization that, hey, this is not all

23:22

adding up, Like we've hit a

23:24

wall in terms of how much we've been

23:27

able to move the needle on rates of psychopathology.

23:30

We've hit a wall on the level of symptomatic

23:32

improvement we've been able to give for folks

23:35

with psychological illnesses. And

23:37

it has not translated into a

23:39

science of well being. And as you know,

23:41

it's not the first time that there's been attempts to study

23:43

a science of well being. Maslow

23:46

and the topic of your beautiful book

23:48

did this so well, but

23:50

it didn't take off as a science, in

23:53

part because it became so popular,

23:55

and then it sort of got swept

23:58

up in a bit of the woo woo, the hippie

24:00

and self health movements, which didn't have to

24:03

impede didn't have to impede it becoming

24:05

a science, but it did. Whereas what

24:08

Marty and others she'd sent me high,

24:10

Sonya, so many other legends

24:13

who really built positive psychology

24:15

said no, this has to be a science.

24:17

There's a lot of great quotes from Mike

24:19

do you sent me high? About this? And it's

24:22

only going to sustain and be applicable

24:24

and have the impact if it remains a science.

24:26

So of course you can get a PhD. Now you have

24:28

to learn statistical methods

24:30

to call yourself a positive psychologist, similar

24:33

training to any other kind of psychology

24:36

that you would do, but with a focus on the life

24:38

well lived. Very simple, succinct way

24:40

to put it is, think about historically,

24:42

most of psychology and psychiatry, if

24:45

there's a number line from a negative

24:47

ten where you're very psychologically ill to

24:50

a positive ten where you're thriving and doing

24:52

amazing. Most of the behavioral

24:54

sciences were focused on how do

24:56

we get people from a negative six to a negative

24:58

three, whereas positive psychology

25:01

is more about how do you go from maybe a negative one

25:03

to a plus three or a plus one to a plus

25:05

five. How do we really optimize the life

25:07

well lived? The life

25:09

well lived in the workplace, which is the

25:11

focus of our topic today in particular,

25:14

I'm right in saying that this book

25:16

is sort of like a Schmorgus board of things

25:18

that you think are necessary to future proof. So

25:21

we already discussed perspection. I want to like

25:23

put some structure to this interview somehow we talked

25:25

about creativity, resiliency,

25:28

rapport, this throwing all

25:30

sorts of things I read from your book. What you tell

25:32

me what the actual technical five are?

25:34

Yeah, no problem. So the acronym's

25:37

prism, so P, prospection are

25:39

resilience, I, innovation,

25:43

S is social support and the

25:45

particular lens we have on social support

25:48

is what we call rapid rapport. And then

25:50

the m is mattering. Amazing,

25:52

So already today we've discussed

25:55

more. We discussed mattering, right, we discussed

25:57

what haven't we discussed? Well, I don't think we've gone

26:00

into resilience as much as I would like, So can

26:02

you please tell me some of the key drivers of resilience

26:05

is particularly in the workplace setting.

26:07

Yeah, so you know, resilience means a lot

26:10

of different things to a lot of different people. There's lots

26:12

of definitions floating around. Our

26:14

approach is to say, what do you need

26:17

to have in place in order to see resilient

26:19

outcomes. So resilience is sort of a

26:21

way of showing up. That's the outcome of

26:23

having different psychological capacities

26:26

and skills available. So in

26:28

our data, we found five key

26:30

drivers of resilience and each of them

26:32

can be built and developed. Here

26:35

you go. Some of them people are strong

26:37

at. Some of them people need to work on it. It's

26:39

different for each of us, and so part

26:41

of the hope is to encourage

26:44

people to take a really personalized approach

26:46

to what it means to build resilience for you.

26:48

So here are the five. Number one, emotional

26:51

regulation. Got to be able to acknowledge,

26:54

identify, experience the emotions

26:57

and then take a step yourself,

27:00

reappraise, decide what you want to do while

27:03

not being overwhelmed by the emotions.

27:06

So that's number one. Number

27:09

Two cognitive agility, which

27:11

is the ability to rapidly

27:14

shift between sort of a horizon level

27:16

scanning of opportunity and a very focused

27:18

dive where you identify you need

27:21

to go deeper. It's

27:23

about being able to shift back and forth between

27:25

them rapidly. Number three

27:28

is self compassion. So

27:31

when we hit challenge, are

27:33

we able to express compassion to ourselves

27:36

the way that we would to someone else. It's

27:38

very soothing, helps

27:40

us tremendously put things in perspective, makes

27:43

sense. It drives resilience self efficacy.

27:46

So this is now generalize

27:48

self efficacy, not creative self efficacy.

27:51

Do we have self belief that we can get back

27:53

up? Do we have self belief if we try something

27:55

we can succeed at it? And optimism,

27:57

so the

28:00

tendency to imagine

28:02

a positive outcome in

28:04

the face of uncertainty. It doesn't have to

28:06

be unrealistically optimistic,

28:09

but it is good for our hearts

28:12

literally, our hearts, our brains,

28:14

our bodies to be able to think optimistically.

28:17

Cool. Yeah, those are great, and they dovetail

28:19

nicely with the

28:22

work of George Bonano at Teachers

28:24

College and his book The End of Trauma. He

28:27

talks a lot about the major markers

28:29

of resiliency, and a lot of those overlap and

28:32

particularly that flexibility mindset. I

28:34

mean that's very general. Talk to

28:36

me about the workplace in particular, what

28:39

can managers do to

28:41

instill that Our science comes

28:43

a lot from studying coaching. Coaching

28:46

is a tremendously powerful way to beld

28:48

resilience. Now, not everyone

28:50

can afford a coach, So let me just break down

28:53

some of the factors that I think are really important

28:55

about coaching that can be expressed

28:58

in other ways in your life. Coaches

29:00

are very personalized to you, So

29:03

to learn these things, you want to do it, as I said,

29:05

in a way that's focused on the areas

29:07

that you need to focus on and also acknowledges

29:10

and honors your strengths. Because let's

29:12

say I happen to be really good at self compassion

29:15

if I'm going through a difficult time, to

29:17

know that that's something I can actively

29:20

proactively lean on for myself is

29:23

something that's going to help me, just as it

29:25

will help me to know, like, hey, I could

29:27

use some work on emotional regulation when

29:29

I'm not in a moment of crisis. That's where I'm going

29:31

to spend some cycles on myself, with

29:33

my coach or on my own. The second thing

29:36

about a coach is accountability, so

29:38

they're really great at helping people stay

29:41

on the path of change that they're committing to.

29:43

You can have a friend be an accountability partner.

29:46

If you don't have a coach, you can have a manager, a

29:48

colleague. There's other ways to access

29:50

that for yourself. And then you know

29:52

a third pieces that's really valuable to

29:54

have another human along with you for the

29:57

ride. Coaches aren't amazing at that. Again,

30:00

to have it be a friend or a colleague,

30:02

someone you could just talk to about what you're going

30:04

through, someone you can kind of hear

30:06

yourself be vulnerable with. There's a power

30:09

to that as well. There's

30:11

also lots of exercises that are

30:13

available freely. You are so

30:16

much of an expert's god in these

30:19

positive interventions, but

30:21

they really help with a lot of

30:23

these drivers. So for example, the

30:26

gratitude letter, the gratitude

30:28

visit, which most people know about ways

30:30

of teaching yourself to become

30:33

more steeped in gratitude. Those

30:35

things build optimism and

30:37

in turn resilience, and so there's

30:40

an abundance of these kinds of exercises.

30:42

They're really well done with a coach, but you can

30:44

also do them on your own as

30:47

a leader, first

30:49

and foremost important to have

30:51

an accurate sense of your own resilience,

30:54

because we know that leaders who

30:57

are more resilient have more resilient teams.

31:00

Their teams are less burned out, their teams

31:02

are more innovative, their teams are more productive.

31:05

So just by working on yourself, you

31:07

can actually have a downstream effect on

31:10

your teams. And it's quite a large

31:12

effect, which is hard

31:14

to believe when you say it in words,

31:17

but when you think about your own experience

31:19

of previous people you've reported to,

31:22

if they were less resilient, if they were less

31:24

emotionally regulated, if they were less optimistic,

31:28

probably was not great for your well being, and

31:31

they probably not someone you wanted to work for for a

31:33

very long time. So there's an

31:35

experiential truth to it that

31:37

we see born out in the data.

31:40

And then in terms of what you can do to actively

31:42

instill it for your team, there's

31:44

a lot that you can do to bring in some

31:47

of these practices to your

31:49

team meetings, to your team processes.

31:52

Gratitude's a great example. Can you open

31:54

team meetings with gratitude doesn't

31:57

necessarily have to be to the team.

31:59

It could be express so gratitude to someone

32:01

in your life right now? How can you model

32:03

that and build it into the fabric

32:06

of your The way your team treats

32:08

one another, the way your team goes about

32:10

marking milestones, There's

32:12

a lot of opportunity to actually

32:15

build those exercises, in those habits

32:17

into your day to day work with your team. Yeah.

32:23

Well, I should have started off this whole interview a little bit

32:25

by saying who are you? It's

32:27

better late than ever, but can you introduce

32:29

yourself to our audio, our international

32:31

audience. People listening to you all from all over the

32:33

world. They want to know who's Gabrielle Kwerman

32:36

and you know what, what does she do with better

32:38

up? Yeah? Sure, so I

32:41

am Gabrielle Eris

32:43

and Kellerman from Berkeley, California

32:45

and always been passionate about

32:47

the science of thriving. That's what I've devoted

32:50

my whole career too. I started

32:52

as a research psychiatrist, so clinical

32:55

work and doing fMRI research, and

32:58

pivoted into Behave Your

33:00

Change in behavioral health technologies as

33:03

a place where I saw greater appetite

33:05

for innovation, for interdisciplinary

33:07

thinking and an opportunity to move

33:09

faster One of my most

33:12

important role models is my father, who's

33:15

a scientist who's devoted his whole life

33:17

to the problem of fusion

33:20

and making energy from

33:23

water from hydrogen. After

33:25

fifty years, his lab had a

33:27

major breakthrough that made the news just

33:30

last week. How was your father? Oh?

33:32

Wow, I mean that's pretty huge,

33:34

pretty huge news. It's amazing

33:36

he's alive to see that. I could

33:39

talk about that for in, you know,

33:41

many hours, But I

33:43

do not have the appetite to work for

33:45

fifty years on you know, in his case

33:47

is small part of that one problem.

33:51

I want to see results more quickly. And

33:54

so this place that I've found

33:56

in technology, where we can rapidly

33:59

experiment and and get new interventions out

34:01

to people is a place where I found

34:03

a good fit for my temperament, for

34:06

the way I like to think as an

34:08

integrator across lots of

34:10

different fields, and a way

34:12

to access a lot of people quickly, so

34:14

when you do have an innovation, you

34:16

can get it out into the universe

34:18

into people's hands quite effectively.

34:21

Is that what you like most about coaching? When

34:24

I decided to devote

34:26

my life to helping people thrive,

34:28

there were two polls. One

34:30

was a very intellectual pull the brain

34:33

is fascinating to me. I could geek out

34:35

on the brain all day long. I

34:37

get chills when I learned something new about

34:39

the brain me it's the ultimate

34:42

mystery. And then there's a really

34:44

emotional side to it, which is it's

34:46

always been very meaningful to me to help

34:48

people get through something tough that

34:50

they're going through. One of those people

34:53

that you know, I feel honored that people come

34:55

to me to talk about things that are hard in

34:57

their lives that they're going through, and so

34:59

I knew I'm wanted to lean into that ability

35:02

to help people one on one. In psychiatry

35:04

you get to do research and help people one on

35:06

one. In the world of coaching that I'm

35:09

in, you get to do research and help people

35:11

one on one. So that combination

35:13

of the one on one connection and the opportunity

35:16

to actually impact at scale is

35:18

where I find a very happy

35:20

place to sit in the middle of the seesaw. Yeah,

35:23

and you really are making a big impact.

35:25

I mean you're you're like high up in the better

35:27

up organization. Here. Let's like not sell

35:29

you short. What's your technical

35:33

title? Chief innovation officer, Chief

35:35

innovation officer, Come on, don't let's not

35:38

let's let's let's be honest. You're you're you're very

35:40

high up there in that organization, and you're really impacting

35:42

a lot of people that you work with there and a lot of people

35:45

that you influence. You have. How many coaches

35:47

are there in total? It better up? Right? Now? We

35:49

have about three thousand coaches

35:52

globally. Whoa, it's through. I thought

35:54

it was two thousand. You all are growing.

35:56

I have such a love affair

35:59

with the company. Better up. I don't know how else to put

36:01

it. I really respect everyone there

36:03

so much. It's very mutual. We

36:05

love working with you. Well, that's

36:08

good to hear. It's good. It's mutual. It's

36:10

good. Okay, great. I'm glad that we got a chance

36:12

to know a little bit more about you and how

36:14

you fit into all these pieces

36:16

of these puzzles. I want to talk

36:18

about a topic rapid

36:21

rapport, that you bring up

36:23

in your book, because I think that that

36:25

is a big barrier these days,

36:28

is that people are so cynical,

36:30

right like these days, like people are

36:32

so distrustful, and I

36:35

see it in the air, and I see it on Twitter. Maybe

36:37

it's just Twitter, but is it happening

36:39

in the workplace as well, and how can rapid rapport

36:41

help. There are so many barriers to deep

36:43

and authentic connection at work. Certainly

36:46

the technologies that we have can

36:49

do quite a lot to divide us when they're

36:51

supposed to actually be facilitating collaboration.

36:55

We don't have a lot of time to communicate with each

36:57

other. We're separated in space are

37:00

our teams are always forming

37:02

and reforming and shuffling. So just

37:04

as you get to know someone, you're no longer working

37:06

with them, or they move to another company, And

37:09

then there's all the dimensions of difference

37:11

that we need to navigate. So obviously

37:14

racial, ethnic, cultural, religious

37:16

difference, functional difference,

37:19

So sales and marketing can feel like different

37:21

teams. Sometimes my

37:23

company versus your company. Even when

37:25

we're navigating a partnership you or my customer

37:28

customer versus service provider,

37:31

that can feel like an US them type of situation.

37:34

So all of these dimensions of difference

37:36

that mean that to some extent

37:39

the people were spending our time with, our brain

37:41

is initially processing as a stranger

37:44

is a significant

37:48

a significant brain

37:50

barrier that we have to overcome alongside

37:52

the barriers of time and space. So

37:55

what we try to introduce is what do we know about

37:57

the science of essentially short

38:00

cuts for all of those barriers, So what

38:03

are the ways of building trust quickly

38:05

effectively? How can

38:08

we overcome consciously

38:10

these this processing

38:12

of others as strangers, as people who

38:14

are different across any of those dimensions,

38:18

And how can we feel close to one another even

38:20

when we're not in the same office working

38:22

together, at least not for long periods of time

38:25

or the answers to all those questions read

38:27

the book. Read the book. The

38:30

book is the best place to start, but I can give

38:32

you a few of the dimensions of what we cover.

38:35

So one piece of the research

38:37

that I think is really important and

38:39

was a lot of fun to learn about

38:41

for me the first time that I was exposed to

38:43

it is through the lens of

38:46

time. If

38:48

you look at the profession

38:51

where the barrier of time interfering

38:54

with our ability connect is probably the biggest

38:56

problem, I would argue, it's in medicine.

38:58

So there you have who

39:01

are treating people, sometimes with life threatening

39:03

conditions, and they have fifteen minutes

39:05

to spend with them, right, how

39:08

do you do that in a way that elicit's compassion?

39:10

How do you do in the way it makes that person feel connected,

39:13

that makes them trust you and want to

39:15

follow through on the things that you know could actually

39:18

save their life. And so they've done

39:20

these studies on doctors, and

39:22

what do you have to say? Is one question? Right,

39:24

So what's kind of the right script? And it's nothing

39:26

earth shattering, it's I'm here with you, I

39:29

care about you, we're here together,

39:31

I'm with you, those kinds

39:33

of things that you would think of naturally.

39:37

But also how long does it take to

39:39

get there? How many times do you have to say

39:41

that? How many seconds, how many minutes? And

39:44

what they've seen which is so amazing

39:47

is that even increments of ten seconds

39:50

of compassionate statements can

39:52

meaningfully impact the patient's level of

39:54

anxiety. It can take a minute

39:57

or less to say what you need to say

39:59

to a patient to get them to a

40:01

better health outcome through

40:03

those statements of kindness and compassion.

40:07

So one of the big learnings and what we try

40:09

to get across in the book is we

40:11

don't accurately predict

40:14

how long it will take, and so we might

40:16

not say anything like that at the end of a call with

40:18

someone, at the end of a meeting, at the end

40:20

of an interaction. The whole call may be

40:23

three minutes, and so we might

40:25

think, oh, it's to say something meaningful

40:27

and connected, I'd have to stay on twice

40:29

as long, right, But actually

40:31

just ten or twenty seconds of Hey, this was

40:33

great. I know it's hard right now, we're

40:36

here together. It builds

40:38

over time and it matters. Another

40:42

piece I'll mention as a quick tip

40:44

is and this was some research that we

40:46

did with Sonya's lab at you see Riverside

40:49

Sonya Lubomirski and

40:52

we looked at so for a while,

40:55

and this was such a fun study to

40:57

do. We just paid people all

40:59

around the carey to do kind acts for other

41:01

people, and we looked at

41:04

what dimensions of those acts

41:06

were most likely to produce positivity

41:08

resonance, which is Barb Fredrickson's

41:11

idea of a very deep and

41:13

embodied feeling of connection. She

41:16

even calls it a feeling of an

41:18

embodied feeling of love. So,

41:20

which of these different types of acts, whether

41:23

it's a email message to

41:25

someone, giving someone a gift, paying

41:27

someone a compliment by a video

41:30

message versus in person versus

41:33

by phone. Crunched

41:35

all the numbers and one of the most

41:37

important distinctions was whether the

41:39

act was done synchronously versus

41:41

asynchronously, So whether

41:43

it was by phone, by

41:46

video, or in person. To have

41:48

shared time together made

41:50

that act much more effective in getting

41:52

to a sense of positivity resonance

41:55

than to do it asynchronously. This

41:59

is a big aha for us

42:01

at work because we do so much asynchronous

42:04

communication, and so it's just

42:06

a check on yourself. Are you relying

42:08

on the asynchronous to build relationships

42:11

or are you actually picking up the

42:13

phone to call someone, getting

42:15

on a zoom if that's your thing, or

42:18

of course in person. The shared

42:20

time is where we get the most

42:22

than for the investment that we're making.

42:25

That knowledge needs to trickle down

42:27

to organizations, especially

42:30

during the COVID era. I mean, do you all talk it

42:32

all in the book about how the nature

42:34

of work has changed in the past couple of years

42:36

with everyone having exhausting zoom calls

42:39

cash. Yeah. I mean our

42:41

perspective is it's the pandemics

42:43

really accelerate a lot of these trends,

42:45

and so even though they were in play before,

42:48

now it's just much faster and

42:51

probably accelerated all these developments

42:54

by five or ten years in the space of two

42:57

The fact that we're working more remotely

43:00

and more hybrid is probably

43:02

the biggest area we get questions

43:04

about, and so these are all tools that can

43:06

help us a lot with that. It's

43:10

also been meaningful to people to know

43:12

that just because it's not in person

43:14

doesn't mean that it can't help us connect

43:18

in a meaningful way. So sharing

43:21

time by zoom, sharing time by phone,

43:23

I think we have a way of almost

43:26

dismissing it as it's not

43:28

going to make us feel connected, and so therefore

43:31

let's just not bother. But to be

43:33

able to say, actually, it can, and here's

43:35

how to make the most of that time, I

43:37

think is reassuring and helpful

43:40

when leaders are trying to build new teams

43:42

who've never met each other in person, right,

43:44

which is crazy, and that's very

43:47

common and prevalent today. The whole relationship

43:49

is virtually mediated. So knowing

43:52

how to use those mediums to your advantage

43:54

and how to get ahead of the divides that they

43:56

can create, yeah, for sure,

43:59

call a lot of ground today. Any other specific

44:02

challenges posed by today's

44:04

world of work that we there's

44:06

the guaring omission from our conversation today.

44:08

I think that the intimate

44:10

relationship between these

44:13

changes in our world of work and

44:15

the extent to which we

44:18

are feeling depleted, and

44:20

there's these spikes and mental

44:22

health conditions among the workforce.

44:25

I think that that connection can

44:28

be brought out for each of us

44:30

in a more emotional way to

44:33

really internalize that sense of change

44:37

after change after change, after

44:39

change after change after change,

44:42

and more change and more change is

44:44

what's coming. I

44:46

need to do some acceptance work around

44:49

that, and then I need to really

44:51

orient my developmental path to

44:54

being able to cope with that. It's

44:57

not about getting through one chapter of

44:59

challenge, about preparing for all

45:01

the chapters to come. And

45:04

that is this sort of meta perspective

45:06

that we're trying to help people get to so

45:08

they can make the best use

45:10

of the little time that we have to

45:13

be investing in these skills that will

45:16

see us through for the long haul

45:18

versus through any individual chapter. Nice

45:21

nice, Well,

45:24

Kavie, thank you for future

45:26

proofing everyone here today on

45:28

the Psychology Podcast. Huge

45:31

congratulations to your very

45:33

very special book. I mean, this is your

45:36

moment, so I want to give it to you and

45:38

say huge congratulations. I hope you

45:41

feel a great sense of pride and

45:43

by knowing that it is helping the world.

45:45

And thanks for being on my podcast today. Thanks

45:47

so much for the opportunity. I really

45:49

appreciate it, and thanks for running this podcast,

45:52

which is always amazing. Well,

45:54

thank you thanks

46:01

for listening to this episode of The Psychology

46:03

Podcast. If you'd like to react

46:05

in some way to something you heard, I encourage

46:08

you to join in the discussion at thus psychology

46:10

podcast dot com or on our YouTube

46:12

page The Psychology Podcast. We

46:15

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on our YouTube page as well, so you'll want

46:19

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46:21

a great supporter of the show, and tune in next

46:23

time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,

46:26

and creativity.