Latest / The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast / The Psychology of Influence, Trust, and Workplace Leadership | Benjamin Granger

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The Psychology of Influence, Trust, and Workplace Leadership | Benjamin Granger · The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast

• 0:00
  AIs can commoditize a lot of knowledge, but we're the ones who give it the context, who give that the human story that appeals to the emotional system and it helps build that
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  mental image.
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  If you want to drive financial and operational outcomes in the long term, you want to sustain a system where you're constantly growing, you have to have mechanisms of good
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  communication.
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  We've always worked in groups and communities.
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  And today we just do that in these groups that we call companies.
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  And they're just really, really big, much larger than the groups we're to working.
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  But the fundamentals haven't changed.
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  Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
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  My name is Rick Meekins.
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  I am your host as usual in our studio.
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  have Dr.
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  Benjamin Granger.
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  How are you today,
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  I'm doing great, Rick.
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  Thanks for having me, man.
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  Cool awesome awesome folks before we get started if you haven't done it I'd be so grateful if you'd like subscribe and hit the bell so you get updates every time we drop a new
• 1:12
  episode And now without further ado, let's get into it Benjamin I would love it if you help our guests understand a little bit about you who you are what you do and why you do
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  what you do So the floor is yours.
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  So I'm an organizational psychologist by education.
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  I have a doctorate in organizational psychology.
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  And I work for a company called Qualtrics.
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  probably a lot of listeners are familiar with Qualtrics.
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  What we do primarily is we help organizations stay connected with their consumers, with the future market, with their employees.
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  And so my job
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  as I serve as the chief workplace psychologist.
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  I've been there for over a decade, which is hard to believe.
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  And I basically lead a lot of the research and the thought leadership that we do.
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  And the reason I do what I do is because we all spend so much time at work.
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  And a lot of us, myself included, have historically viewed work as kind of a means to an end, a currency exchange of my time for money.
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  money.
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  But I really believe that work can be very fulfilling and is inherently valuable to us as students.
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  And so I want to help educate people at core employees, but also leaders on how to make work better and fulfilling so that we can be more productive individually, we can be more
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  productive.
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  companies and make more money and do it all by making people's lives better.
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  yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's the thing it's you know, I think a lot of times when we think about work it is it is work, know almost that almost that that agricultural
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  mentality where you get up you sweat you work hard all day and then you go home and you do the thing but you know We work hard as a culture, you know, and we work with other people
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  and your work speaks
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  directly to the idea of doing this in sort of a community, a shared thinking, right?
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  You wanna talk about that a little bit?
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  Yeah, I'm so glad you're bringing this up, because one of the ideas that has really influenced me is so basic and yet is so powerful.
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  And this comes from my good friend, Dr.
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  Steve Hunt.
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  He was the longtime chief expert of workplace and technology for SAP, the big global technology company.
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  And the way he defines an organization, our company,
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  is a group of people using shared resources to accomplish a shared mission.
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  I love that definition.
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  if I'm a student of history, I'm a student of fields like evolutionary psychology and anthropology.
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  And through my study, what I've concluded is that's how humans have always operated.
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  We've always worked in groups and communities.
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  And today we just do that in these groups that we call companies.
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  And they're just really, really big, much larger than the groups we're to working.
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  But the fundamentals haven't changed.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I think it's, I think, you know, a lot of times as, as leaders of these, of these organizations, you know, it becomes very difficult.
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  We don't necessarily think of the people that we're leading as, as, know, the people that we're leading, you know, we don't necessarily look at ourselves as leaders, but we don't
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  necessarily know how to think about them in terms of, you know, a culture.
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  talk about company culture, but not really a community that has a culture.
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  Can you speak to that a little bit?
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  It's a great point.
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  I think the way I would describe it, very similar to what you're saying, is when I work with senior leaders of large organizations, what I find is, and I don't think this is
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  intentional, I think it's just a product of the pressure that they're under, is they tend to look at organizations like a machine and they apply more of an engineering mindset.
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  Okay, if we move this lever and that lever, we're gonna get this outcome.
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  We need to hire this many heads and then that's going to this many sales heads.
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  That's going to generate this much revenue.
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  We're going to hit these numbers.
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  So we apply a very engineering mindset.
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  I'm guilty of this too, by the way, right?
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  But, but what you're speaking to is really important in that we are truly a group of people who have a shared mission and that shared mission is always about meeting some
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  human need or desire.
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  So it's not just about us inside the organization.
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  It's also about our connection to people outside.
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  mean, name me a company that exists today that doesn't meet some human need.
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  They don't exist, and they never have.
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  That's the whole point of an organization, is that we are producing something, some service, product, that is meeting a human need.
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  So I think fundamentally, you can't remove human psychology.
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  from a conversation about organizations.
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  And because of that, you can't remove community and culture from that conversation either.
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  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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  Absolutely.
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  It's, it's, we have as leaders, I mean, we do have, you know, bottom line responsibility for a company's fiscal success, you know, and how do we, how do we motivate or how do we
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  get, I'll use the engineering terms.
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  How do we, how do we maximize productivity, you know, for our teams while at the same time, you know, creating these cultures that, that work.
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  creating these communities that were.
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  Yeah, this is a great question because this actually is one of the challenges I sometimes get when I define organizations like I did earlier as a group of people using shared
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  research to accomplish shared mission.
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  One of the common clapbacks I get often from very senior operators is, well, where's the money here?
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  Where's the where's the operational outcomes and the metrics are trying to drive?
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  And that's a good challenge, because what you just described is the reality that we live in.
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  We have to drive these things.
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  We have stakeholders outside of our
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  our customers, have financial stakeholders, we have boards, have CEOs.
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  And the way I have rectified that in my model that I've adapted from Dr.
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  Hunt is to, in fact, I was actually in Sydney, Australia just two weeks ago doing a talk on this exact topic.
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  And I have this visual of the people, the resources and the mission as these are the
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  the levers that you pull to achieve the financial results.
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  And I just give a simple example.
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  mean, imagine you have a revenue or margin target that you have to hit, or growth target or a logo acquisition target.
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  Okay, well, how would you go about doing that?
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  Well, there's a lot of ways to answer that and it'll depend on industry, but fundamentally, if we go down to the root of it, I have to get more out of people.
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  I have to get them working effectively together.
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  I have to make sure we're all on the same page, what our mission is.
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  And I have to understand how well we're accomplishing our mission, i.e.
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  are we producing products and services that our customers actually want to buy and repurchase and expand their usage of?
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  So that definition, right, or those fine, I'll start this way, The financial and operational outcomes are functions of people
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  how they're using their resources and their shared understanding and effectiveness of completing the mission.
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  That is fundamentally a human problem.
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  It's not an engineering problem.
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  It's a human and it's a psychological problem that we have to solve.
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  If you don't mind, mean, can you explain that a little bit more?
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  I mean, I'm still I get it, you know, cognitively, it makes sense just, guess, based on experience.
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  But, you know, what is what is what is the root of that?
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  How do how do we really connect those dots so I can, you know, get out my crayons and make a diagram?
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  Well, I wish I had the visual handy.
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  But essentially, I'll start with the people part of this equation.
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  One of the things I studied quite a bit is human motivation.
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  know, like, how do you get people who are coming into work to want to perform?
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  How do you get them to go above and beyond to do the right things?
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  There are innumerable answers to that question.
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  But one of the things we now know about human motivation, and this goes all the way back to, know, a lot of people familiar with Maslow's hierarchy.
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  It's got that nice pyramid image and you hit the basics at the bottom, food, sleep, resources, and then you move up in the ladder.
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  But about 20 years after Maslow came a psychologist named David McClelland
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  And his theory was remarkably simple.
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  And a lot of his research was done in an organizational setting.
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  And what he concluded from all of his work was essentially, humans have three fundamental motives that are universal.
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  Humans want to be social.
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  Even the most introverted of us have this need to be social.
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  We're a social species.
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  We want to be part of a group adding value to the group.
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  Find me somebody who
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  at a deep level doesn't want to do that.
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  You'd be hard pressed.
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  The second is a need for achievement.
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  And this is kind of our inherent need to grow and develop.
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  If I'm an employee and I'm working in an organization where I see no movement opportunity, I feel like I'm stuck.
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  We know from our work that you're much less likely to get what you need out of those employees.
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  They need to see a path forward for themselves and for the group they're a part of.
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  And then the third need is a need for what
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  McClelland called power today.
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  We would probably say more like control self-efficacy.
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  I want to have more control over my life.
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  mean, again, find me somebody who doesn't want to be a meaningful contributor to a group who's growing in some meaningful way and wants some control over their lives.
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  You're going to be hard pressed.
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  So that's part of the equation is how do we set up an environment and a culture that enables employees to to feel positive about those things?
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  Mm-hmm.
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  we move on to the resources part, which is, we, do we have the right resources that our employees need?
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  Are they using our tools correctly?
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  One of the things we study right now heavily is how employees are using AI tools.
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  And Rick, I'm sure you've seen some of the headlines here.
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  A lot of the studies, you know, if you look at what McKenzie's finding, if you look at what Kendra was finding, dismal, dismal outcomes that the companies are seeing with their
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  implementations of AI.
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  Why?
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  My hypothesis based on our data that we've collected is not a problem with the AI tools.
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  It's a problem with whether people feel threatened by the technology, whether they see value in it, whether they view it as an existential threat that's going to come and take
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  their job, or whether they view it as a tool.
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  A minority of organizations who are implementing those intelligent technologies today are getting results right now.
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  And that's a human problem.
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  That's not a technology problem.
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  That's a human problem.
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  But in order for us to know that, we have to actually listen to people.
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  We have to talk to them.
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  How are you using this?
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  What are you using it for?
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  Are you concerned about this?
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  And then finally, that mission.
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  And it is shocking, Rick.
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  and I'm frequently shocked by how many
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  senior leaders and organizations can't cite or can't state what the company's priorities are.
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  Or a lot of times I'll work with senior leaders in certain departments.
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  I won't name any of those departments.
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  But one of the first questions I asked, well, tell me how your company makes money.
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  And they can't answer that simple question.
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  That's a problem of communication in an organization.
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  At a fundamental level, what we're really talking about is If you want to drive financial and operational outcomes in the long term, you want to sustain a system where you're
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  constantly growing, you have to have mechanisms of good communication.
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  You have to be doing that frequently.
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  You have to understand what motivates humans at a fundamental level.
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  And you have to create a culture and an environment that promotes those needs.
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  And you have to be talking.
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  I mean, that's what's more fundamental to a group than communication.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  I'm glad you mentioned that.
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  was thinking about communication, you know, going from, you know, that whole mission side of things, you know, and the leading side of things, we've got the, I don't know, I'll
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  call it the stories, you know, that we need to push down to our teams and get them engaged and that sort of thing.
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  What, what, and.
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  you know, outside of not knowing how we make money, you know, what kinds of, where are we as leaders missing the boat?
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  Where are we not being effective in communicating this to our team?
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  And we've got big visions, you know?
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  I mean, you look at, you know, you look at AI, AI is like handed to us on a platter.
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  It's just like, Hey, this is something that can fundamentally change the way that we do work.
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  We can be more productive, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, you know, and we're not successful in implementing it.
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  What's, what's, what's happening?
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  I think there's a paradox inherent in all the technologies that we use today.
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  just even the platform we're using today for this podcast, or Slack, or Google Teams, and Meet, and Zoom, and all these tools that allow us to communicate, our phones where we can
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  literally call somebody on the other side of the planet, another hemisphere at any time.
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  And yet these technologies kind of nudge us toward what I would call
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  low fidelity communication.
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  And I'll take a bit of a nerdy sidetrack here and I'll come back to your question, Rick.
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  But when I was studying, as you know, Rick, I recently published a book called A Leader Worth Following.
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  And this was a four and a half year deep dive into all sorts of fields of science, including our own research at Qualtrics because we have millions and millions of data
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  points from consumers and employees.
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  And so I studied in all sorts of fields and one of the most surprising findings or facts that I ran across in my study was I got really interested in like, when did humans
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  actually learn to talk to each other?
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  And the answer is believed by most anthropologists that the ability to communicate verbally through words emerged about a hundred to two hundred thousand years ago.
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  Now, to most people, that sounds like a long time.
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  And it is for people who think in terms of days and weeks and months and quarters.
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  But if we zoom out and we look at mankind's history, mankind has been communicating nonverbally for millions of years.
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  And so fast forward to today and no knock against remote work.
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  I'm a remote employee, you know, I'm working for Bob calling in here from my home, but
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  But what I'm seeing is sort of a de-evolution of our community.
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  We're moving away from the ancient forms of volume.
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  We're actually being in person with people and creating.
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  One of the ways I like to do this communication now that I know a little bit more about it is I use the word communication.
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  we're conveying a message.
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  My message is, here's what our mission is, here's what our goal is.
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  Let me make sure I convey that, get that across.
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  But today I think of it very differently.
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  Effective communication, when you look at some of the neuroscience and how the brain actually represents ideas, a better way to think about communication is, how well as a
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  leader am I creating a vivid mental image?
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  Kind of going back to your crayon example, right?
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  What's that image in the minds of the people that I need to communicate with?
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  Is a email with black text on a white canvas enough to convey that message?
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  Or do I need to tell stories?
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  I love your use of the word story earlier in the question.
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  That's how humans have communicated.
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  What about body language?
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  Do we practice this?
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  And so I do think that
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  The technologies we use are amazing.
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  I'm not against them, but I do think they nudge us away from higher fidelity communication that I believe we need to come back to.
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  Do you see a remedy for this?
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  mean, at this point, we're establishing communities that are more on the global level.
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  You've got friends all over the world that you speak with.
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  You know what I'm saying?
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  You communicate with.
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  mean, is there a way that we can expand?
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  increase the fidelity of our communication with our global reach now.
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  It's a tougher problem.
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  And you bring up a really good point, Rick, that it was easy for our ancestors because they worked, you know, they lived in tribes of like 200 people and they were all
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  physically in the same location.
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  So, of course, they lean more on nonverbal communication.
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  That's harder for us.
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  But I think the first thing we we as leaders need to acknowledge is how does the human brain and the human mind process information?
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  And most of our thinking is actually unconscious, happens at an unconscious level.
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  It's a very uncomfortable thought for a lot of us.
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  But the cues that we pick up on when we're meeting somebody for the first time, or we're sitting in a board meeting, or we're watching a company webcast, the cues that we pick up
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  on, whether it's the visual aids or lack thereof, or the energy of the leader who's speaking, or lack thereof.
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  or the facial expressions or the poor or good body language, these things communicate a great deal.
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  And so I do think that there's nothing wrong with being global.
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  There's nothing wrong with using these technologies to communicate.
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  But I think the first thing we have to do is just remember that we just basically learned to talk yesterday and we learned to write an hour ago, right?
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  From a cosmic perspective.
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  and appreciate that when we communicate something, not everybody is going to perceive it the same way we do, right?
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  Everybody has a unique lens that they look at the world through.
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  So that's point number one.
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  Point number two is to, as leaders, really challenge ourselves and ask that question, all right, if I'm about to communicate something really important, maybe we're going through a
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  restructure.
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  Maybe we're adding a new product line.
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  Maybe we are going through a reduction in force, like really critical moments.
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  These are the times to challenge ourselves to say, how can I best build a vivid mental image in the minds of people?
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  And I'll give a couple of quick tips here.
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  One thing, and I'm going go back to your use of the word story.
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  When we put
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  our goals and challenges and missions in a social context, the brain lights up.
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  Like you remember those old word problems that we used to have to do in math?
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  maybe your kids are working on and kids hate them.
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  my kids how to use them.
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  my gosh.
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  No critical thinking skills whatsoever.
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  Love my kids.
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  I was the same way.
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  I hated word problems.
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  Now as an adult, I love them because there's this whole research studies that take you take an algebra problem with abstract numbers, no social context.
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  And then you give that problem to a group of people and then you take the same math problem and you put it in a human context with people.
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  Far more people get the word problem right.
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  And why is that?
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  because it's much easier for the brain to create a vivid mental image of a social context.
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  So this is a really simple tip for leaders is like lean into the storytelling.
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  This is especially true with AI now, because the AIs can commoditize a lot of knowledge, but we're the ones who give it the context, We're the ones who give that the human story
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  that's emotional, that appeals to the emotional system and it helps build that mental image.
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  And then the last tip I give is simply, you know.
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  thinking about like, do I need more than an email here?
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  Do I need to actually get on video with my global team?
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  Do I need to have some visual aids?
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  Do I need to have a story along with the message I need to tell?
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  These are all things that help to bring our words to life and I think can help us to just upgrade our communication.
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  So I think just to summarize, one, just...
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  We have to be acknowledged the way that the human mind works.
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  Organizations are inherently human institutions.
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  How does the human mind work?
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  Understand too that not everybody is gonna view the message the same way we do.
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  We have more context than other people usually as leaders.
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  So appreciate that and challenge ourselves to use more visual aids in our communication, more stories.
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  Get on video, get animated with your body language.
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  These things are really, I think, will help leaders communicate more effectively.
• 22:02
  Yeah, I agree with that.
• 22:03
  agree with that.
• 22:04
  You know, it was interesting.
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  I was thinking about, you know, just the idea of podcasting.
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  You know, we have this, you know, this visual communication.
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  You're giving us information, but you're putting it into a story for him.
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  And so it makes it easier for us to relate and be able to take action on that.
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  We understand the why.
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  You know what I'm saying?
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  It's like, wow, suddenly, it's really clear to me that I need to pay attention to how I'm communicating with my team.
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  And again, hey, do I need to come on camera?
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  Do they need to see the passion in my face because they can't get that in an email?
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  Emojis are helpful.
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  But it's...
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  a little.
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  It makes me think about, you know, sometimes, especially when we, you know, we have histories, you know, we have these biases, we think, you know, as recipients, especially,
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  you know, we think we're receiving something in a certain way.
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  And it's not the way that we intended or not the way that the leader intended to get the information across to us.
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  Are there tools, are there things that we need to do to kind of overcome
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  these types of challenges?
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  mean, you you're talking about a global organization.
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  I mean, we've got beliefs that are different.
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  Yeah, the first thing I would say, I mean, the analogy or the mental image I like to paint is imagine everyone has invisible glasses on and the color and correction of the lenses of
• 23:32
  our glasses are completely unique to us.
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  In other words, they're shaped by, this represents our perceptions, right?
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  our personalities, which are unique to us, our past experiences, which no other human's gone through exactly the same configuration of experiences.
• 23:48
  So this is a good framing to go into this with is that, and then to your point, let's say, and in fact, I was on a leadership meeting yesterday where we were talking about this
• 23:59
  concept of mental imagery.
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  And one of our sales leaders in our Tokyo office,
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  had pointed out, this is really important for us because when we translate from English to Japanese, you can't do a one-to-one word translation.
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  It just doesn't work exactly the same way.
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  Even if we're translating from English to Spanish, it's much easier to do that than to translate to Japanese.
• 24:26
  So this is a really good point you're bringing up in that we're global.
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  We have many different...
• 24:32
  religions, we have many different ideologies, many different political leanings, company or country cultures.
• 24:40
  And so there's no, I don't have a quick fix for this.
• 24:44
  I think the challenge that we have as being in very, very large organizations, in global organizations is that we have to communicate way more and much, much better than we have
• 24:57
  historically.
• 24:58
  the issue of getting people to use resources effectively is essentially a communication problem.
• 25:04
  So, but again, I do think, and we have had a lot of success with leaders who, that simple reframing of how do we build a compelling image in the minds of people in Japan, in
• 25:16
  Turkey, in the United States, in Canada, maybe there's a language barrier, that's fine.
• 25:22
  Maybe let's not lean on our words so much.
• 25:25
  Maybe let's actually get some visual images.
• 25:28
  Let's work with those teams directly, have conversation.
• 25:31
  Another thing to answer your question that is really nagging at me, Rick, I have to be honest.
• 25:38
  One of the concerns I have about how companies are using AI is that what I'm seeing from both
• 25:45
  talking to leaders who are trying to implement these tools and also our data that's collecting data from employees, is they are bypassing what used to, like we used to get
• 25:55
  around in a room to solve a problem.
• 25:58
  Let's brainstorm some solutions.
• 26:00
  What are some hurdles we see?
• 26:02
  What are some obstacles?
• 26:03
  And now sometimes we're like, well, why waste time having a two hour conversation when we can just
• 26:11
  can just pose the problem to our AI or generative AI tool and it can do its part?
• 26:19
  That gives us this illusion of, and it may just not be an illusion, but we get to a quick answer that we're very confident in oftentimes.
• 26:30
  But the problem isn't the short term.
• 26:32
  The problem is what happens in the long term.
• 26:34
  What happens if, for example, we all start to do that and we stop talking with each other?
• 26:40
  and we stop having conversations and asking people's opinions, we just roll it out.
• 26:45
  What happens to our ability to really have a shared mental model of what the problem is we're trying to solve or a deep understanding of what we're doing?
• 26:55
  And to your point, why are we doing it?
• 26:57
  You lose that.
• 26:59
  so it might be a short term win, but I think it's a long term loss and I'm really concerned about it.
• 27:04
  So what I encourage people to do is
• 27:07
  do is don't call...
• 27:09
  rich conversation, brainstorming sessions, problem solving sessions.
• 27:14
  That is not a good place, in my opinion, to offload to AI.
• 27:18
  We have to keep doing that.
• 27:19
  Because if we offload it to AI, then the problem you're describing is going to get way, way worse.
• 27:25
  I agree with that.
• 27:26
  I agree with that.
• 27:27
  It's kind of, you know, I think about it, you know, and we don't think as much.
• 27:33
  You know, when we're generating, know, when we're just, you know, plugging, you know, looking for answers from AI, we don't, you know, in some cases, I mean, we don't even
• 27:40
  think about the answers that we're getting.
• 27:42
  We're just taking those answers and we're spitting them out.
• 27:44
  was just, it was a big consulting company that did that.
• 27:46
  They created a report, you know, using General AI, they sent it out to their client and the information was wrong.
• 27:51
  That's scary.
• 27:53
  You know, and for running companies like that, I mean, it's, you know, we, we, I always think from the perspective of we're losing quality.
• 28:00
  You know, even in emails, we lose the quality of our email communication because we're not doing it.
• 28:06
  We're just turning it over to AI and AI is just spitting out, you know, something, you know, generic almost, you know, what happened to the personality that comes across in
• 28:16
  those emails, right?
• 28:17
  I totally agree.
• 28:18
  And that is a concern I have.
• 28:20
  I don't look at AI as either good or bad.
• 28:23
  I think it's neutral, but it's how we choose to use it that's either good or bad.
• 28:28
  And I think there are some great, I use it daily, but what I refuse to use it for is to replace my thought work.
• 28:36
  I mean, I can't tell you how many times this has happened in...
• 28:42
  interactions professionally, even in my personal life where I get, you know, maybe it's a strategy doc, maybe it's a proposal, maybe it's an answer to an essay, right?
• 28:55
  I do some teaching and it's like, wow, this looks impressive.
• 29:00
  This is really good.
• 29:01
  And then I go ask the person who quote unquote created it.
• 29:05
  Hey, walk me through it.
• 29:06
  Tell me how you came to this.
• 29:07
  They have no clue what's in it.
• 29:10
  That's scary.
• 29:11
  That's It's funny.
• 29:13
  Sometimes people ask me to review whatever it is, whatever document website, whatever it is.
• 29:18
  And I'm sitting here like 20 seconds into I'm like, use AI to write this.
• 29:23
  This is not, this is not good.
• 29:28
  This is not a GVR goal here.
• 29:30
  That's so funny.
• 29:31
  That's so funny.
• 29:31
  I want to talk about your book.
• 29:33
  I want to talk about the inspiration behind it.
• 29:38
  You had a process, you had quite a process to put it together.
• 29:41
  Can we talk about that story a little bit and then talk about what the book is about?
• 29:45
  Absolutely.
• 29:46
  So this is a book I never intended to write.
• 29:49
  So yeah, that's not how I went into the process.
• 29:57
  Like if I go back to when it actually started, I could go back, I think, four and a half years ago.
• 30:05
  I was having this real big moment of imposter phenomenon where a lot of times we call it imposter syndrome.
• 30:12
  at feeling like, do I deserve this?
• 30:17
  Do I belong here?
• 30:19
  Because at Qualtrics, I'm surrounded by a just absolutely phenomenal group of psychologists and behavioral scientists.
• 30:29
  mean, some of the best professionals I've ever worked with.
• 30:32
  And so as I took on the chief workplace psychologist job, I'm like,
• 30:36
  Do I deserve this?
• 30:38
  So what I decided to do was I was like, I got to earn it.
• 30:42
  So I started just reading voraciously.
• 30:45
  started going through the archives of our research, hunting for the big research question I went in with is, what's different about exceptional organizations than the average?
• 30:58
  And that was basically my question.
• 31:00
  The companies that just nail the employee experience, they have great cultures, they create great experiences for their consumers, and they make money.
• 31:08
  And they do that, and they sustain that.
• 31:11
  What's different about those?
• 31:13
  That was the question I went into.
• 31:14
  And then that took me on a long journey.
• 31:17
  I allowed myself the freedom because I wasn't planning on writing a book.
• 31:20
  I just said, well, this got me interested in leadership studies.
• 31:24
  So I dove into the leadership literature.
• 31:26
  That took me to evolutionary psychology.
• 31:29
  That took me to anthropology.
• 31:30
  That took me to evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and even physics.
• 31:36
  And I just, I got really fascinated and like, what's underneath this?
• 31:39
  What's underneath that?
• 31:41
  And what's underneath that?
• 31:42
  Like, what causes that?
• 31:43
  So I just kept going down these rabbit holes.
• 31:45
  And then, you know, Rick, I'm a spiritual person.
• 31:48
  one day, this is about two years into my reading.
• 31:52
  By the way, when I read, I write.
• 31:54
  Like I was just writing notes and connections and analogies and I started using it in my consulting work and it was landing and I was like, hey, maybe there's something here, you
• 32:03
  know, I started applying it to my work and I was sitting in church one day and I just got this little nudge, you know, like maybe you should like organize this and maybe write a
• 32:17
  book.
• 32:17
  And I was like, yeah, why not?
• 32:19
  And you can't make this stuff up like three days later.
• 32:23
  It's like a Wednesday.
• 32:24
  I get a cold reach out from a major publisher who read something I wrote and was like, hey, you we read some stuff you're writing.
• 32:32
  We'd love to partner with you maybe on a book about these topics.
• 32:35
  I'm like, it's amazing you just did that because I literally just decided to write a book.
• 32:41
  We were off to the races at that point.
• 32:43
  And what it really is about is
• 32:46
  this idea that what differentiates the most successful companies by a definition of great cultures, great employee experience, great customer experience, and sustained financial
• 32:58
  performance?
• 32:59
  The answer essentially went down to leaders.
• 33:02
  There's something different about those companies' leaders, their mindsets, their communication habits that differentiates them from the average.
• 33:12
  Mm.
• 33:12
  was the primary answer.
• 33:14
  And so what I decided to do was write a book for leaders that puts it in the context of an environment where we're high uncertainty, very fast paced change, accelerating change.
• 33:27
  And how do we need to show up differently?
• 33:29
  How do we become leaders?
• 33:30
  that actually motivate people, that get people to want to work for us, to get people that want to achieve the mission versus leaders who people work for just because they feel
• 33:41
  stuck and have to.
• 33:42
  So that's essentially what it's about.
• 33:44
  Yeah.
• 33:44
  Wow, wow.
• 33:45
  What was the most interesting?
• 33:46
  It was so interesting.
• 33:48
  had a conversation with somebody a couple of weeks ago who's built, you know, he's maybe 40 and he's built like multiple organizations that, you know, grew very, very fast, know,
• 34:00
  grew seven, eight, was able to exit, you know, six, seven, eight figures.
• 34:04
  And from the time he was 16, and I asked him the question, it was just like, what makes you different?
• 34:08
  You know, cause most entrepreneurs aren't doing this.
• 34:10
  Most entrepreneurs,
• 34:11
  are barely bringing home $100,000.
• 34:13
  What's the secret sauce?
• 34:15
  And he didn't have the answer.
• 34:17
  I guess he thought everybody can do it, but neither here nor there.
• 34:20
  What were some things that surprised you?
• 34:23
  were some things that you learned in this process that you were just like, wow, this is absolutely crazy?
• 34:29
  I mentioned the emergence of communication and speech.
• 34:33
  That was surprising to me.
• 34:34
  I never thought about it from a cosmic perspective like that.
• 34:38
  Like, wow, we basically just learned to talk and write.
• 34:42
  We're missing a lot.
• 34:44
  But another one that I found really interesting, this was a rabbit hole I went deep in, when I was studying in evolutionary psychology, which...
• 34:52
  I didn't even know it existed.
• 34:53
  So I'm going to assume a lot of listeners have never heard of this field, but yeah, I didn't even know.
• 35:00
  I'm a psychologist and I didn't even know about this field, but it basically is a field that is trying to look at how did the human mind evolve?
• 35:08
  What were the conditions in the past that shaped the way that the human brain and the human mind works?
• 35:15
  Like, why do we all perceive things differently?
• 35:17
  Why is
• 35:18
  Why do we look at something objective and come to a different conclusion?
• 35:21
  We're watching a baseball game and an umpire makes a call and you say great call.
• 35:25
  And I'm like, that was a terrible call blue.
• 35:27
  You know, like, why is that?
• 35:29
  Well, what happened evolutionarily for us to develop in that way?
• 35:33
  And when I was studying there, I ran into this really fascinating line of research that was led by a social psychologist named John Maynard.
• 35:42
  And what he was looking at are these two.
• 35:45
  strategies that leaders use to ascend in social status.
• 35:53
  The first point I thought was really interesting, which is all known human societies have social hierarchies.
• 35:59
  Almost all social animals have social hierarchies.
• 36:03
  So even if you go back way in time and you look at ancient civilizations, there was some degree of a social hierarchy.
• 36:09
  And the conclusion from the perspective of evolutionary psychology is that leaders emerged as a group level adaptation.
• 36:17
  It was adaptive for our survival to have people in leadership positions.
• 36:22
  The second important premise is that, and we all know this, it's better to be at the top of the hierarchy than the bottom, right?
• 36:28
  Or not in the hierarchy.
• 36:30
  So we know that that's really important and we know that we all strive for that growth back to McClelland's need for achievement.
• 36:37
  Yeah.
• 36:38
  two strategies that humans use to achieve social status.
• 36:43
  One of those is what Maynard calls dominance.
• 36:46
  And this is an ancient form of status striving and basically is like, you know, it's my way or the highway.
• 36:52
  And if you don't like it, you're out or I'm a beat you up.
• 36:55
  And in the past, that literally happened in modern organizations.
• 36:59
  You don't see a lot of kinetic force, but what you would see is like psychological pressure.
• 37:05
  putting existential risks like you're gonna lose your job if you don't do it my way, right?
• 37:09
  That's aisle of leadership, like, you know, Bill Lumberg from the Mike Judge classic office face, right?
• 37:15
  The classic dominant leader.
• 37:17
  And what was interesting is that all social animals use that strategy.
• 37:22
  Crickets, I'm in Louisiana, crawfish, frogs, geese, ducks, primates, humans, all use dominance.
• 37:29
  But...
• 37:30
  There's another strategy that humans use that no other animal uses consistently, and that's known as prestige.
• 37:37
  And what Maynard describes as prestige is that it's very different in that it's not about somebody imposing themselves on other people and using force, but rather, I have a talent,
• 37:48
  I have specialized knowledge, I have a gift, and I'm going to share it for the group benefit.
• 37:52
  Yeah.
• 37:53
  Ancient times, this might've been like somebody who's really good big game hunter or somebody who was incredible storyteller or somebody who was a great nurse of babies.
• 38:02
  You know, those specialized talents and skills help the whole group.
• 38:07
  And this would be akin to like servant leadership.
• 38:10
  What's different about that is prestige.
• 38:15
  It's not somebody saying, you know, it's my way of the highway.
• 38:18
  It's everybody else saying, we want to follow you.
• 38:22
  We want we want to follow you for this particular task.
• 38:25
  That distinction really impacted me because when I kind of ingested that and said, OK, well, what can I do with that today?
• 38:31
  And I thought about all the leaders I've worked for in the past when I thought about myself as a leader.
• 38:36
  I had to do some hard self-reflection, like, you know, a lot of times I've been the dominant leader.
• 38:42
  I've tried to be the alpha.
• 38:43
  And was that really the best way to get?
• 38:46
  groups of people to work effectively together toward a shared mission.
• 38:49
  What it also powerful point here, at least to me, was there's nothing special or unique about dominance.
• 38:56
  All social animals do it.
• 38:58
  There's nothing about that that makes us unique or leans into what makes us uniquely human.
• 39:03
  But prestige does.
• 39:04
  Prestige is powered by the more advanced parts of our brain, the parts of the brain that make us unique from other species.
• 39:11
  And so in a sense, I think that really, and by the way,
• 39:15
  When you connect those two strategies back to my study of what was it about those elite leaders, those elite companies, they were much more likely to use or at least rated by
• 39:26
  employees and consumers as prestige type tactics.
• 39:29
  They're doing things that others perceive are in their benefit and they say, I want to follow you, not I have to follow you.
• 39:38
  I can totally see that.
• 39:40
  Just thinking about different leaders throughout our country's history and just the different approaches to leadership and it comes down to how much the country liked him or
• 39:56
  I guess him.
• 39:57
  you know, their administration.
• 40:00
  It's really, really, really interesting.
• 40:01
  I put myself in that position as well.
• 40:03
  I was like, what kind of leader would I prefer to follow?
• 40:06
  You know, it's like on one side, it's just like, okay, you know, there is, mean, I mean, there is, I guess someone that would almost be dominary, but I would probably have, you
• 40:16
  know, some level of pushback at some point, right?
• 40:18
  But then someone that...
• 40:20
  is that that influence of prestige is like somebody I respect.
• 40:23
  Hey, I aspire to be like that person.
• 40:26
  And I'd be more inclined to work harder to get aligned with the mission and vision that that person is sharing.
• 40:34
  You're making a really interesting observation that I can't say I've actually thought about, which is seeing from us as the followers, seeing an ideal future self for ourselves
• 40:44
  and those leaders like that we aspire to be.
• 40:46
  I've never actually thought about that, but that's that that's actually quite interesting that we have that affinity toward them, not just because they add value to us, but
• 40:54
  possibly because we see an ideal future self for ourselves in them and what we want.
• 41:00
  to be.
• 41:00
  Yeah, that's really interesting.
• 41:04
  But as I was kind of deep diving into these things, one of the important points I think I should bring up is that dominance does work.
• 41:15
  As much as I hate to say that, it does work.
• 41:18
  And that's why we've seen
• 41:20
  know, autocrats and tyrants throughout history, as it works.
• 41:24
  But if you think about like in your exploration of like leaders of the United States, for example, you if we were to zoom out and look at leaders throughout history who use classic
• 41:35
  dominant strategies, even, you know, like sometimes I like to watch like those those documentaries of the earth.
• 41:42
  and all the species and there's always an alpha, right?
• 41:46
  But it did dawn on me one time, well, wait, does the alpha ever leave the alpha?
• 41:52
  Like, do they always stay the alpha?
• 41:54
  And I think the answer is no.
• 41:57
  Like what autocrat throughout history made it out?
• 42:00
  the alpha with a great legacy.
• 42:02
  Yeah, there is that.
• 42:05
  It's classic King of the Hill, you know?
• 42:07
  exactly Exactly Right somebody always comes somebody younger stronger Always comes and takes over But what about prestige?
• 42:17
  You could have people in their 90s who we revere, who have died, who we revere because of what they contributed to our community and society.
• 42:27
  We confer status on them.
• 42:29
  So it dawned on me that dominance can work, but it's a short-term game.
• 42:34
  And when other people have leverage, when other people are stronger and they start to rally against you,
• 42:40
  that the game's gonna end and it's not gonna end well.
• 42:43
  But Prestige is a long-term game and it also works and it works over time.
• 42:49
  That's a really good thought.
• 42:50
  That's a really good thought.
• 42:51
  never, I would never consider that.
• 42:52
  That's brilliant.
• 42:53
  Hey, I have a question for you.
• 42:55
  So the name of the show, of course, is the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast.
• 42:59
  And so most people can define winning, you know, pretty easily.
• 43:02
  The challenge that we have a lot of times is maintaining that relentless pursuit.
• 43:07
  So my question for you is what would you recommend to someone
• 43:11
  to encourage them to maintain that relentless pursuit.
• 43:14
  Mmm.
• 43:15
  Oh, there's a lot of ideas swirling in my mind on this one.
• 43:18
  You know, I'm a nerdy psychologist.
• 43:21
  I give a nerdy psychologist answer.
• 43:25
  But I went one of the things I don't think this is the answer.
• 43:28
  I think it's one answer is to adopt what, you know, what Carol Dweck would call a growth mindset.
• 43:36
  Or, you know, if you look in similar literatures, a learning orientation.
• 43:42
  toward your objectives.
• 43:43
  And there's a little bit of irony here because I think as you pointed out earlier, Rick, a very important point that we all have financial objectives and targets that we have to
• 43:54
  hit.
• 43:55
  And those are important.
• 43:56
  don't want anything I said here to dismiss that because that is important.
• 43:59
  But there's a little bit of irony here in that if that's all we're focused on,
• 44:04
  that thing that we're striving toward, that metric, that number, what happens to the number when you hit the number?
• 44:11
  It goes up and then you got to do it again and then you got to do it again.
• 44:15
  but if we, and by the way, there's a lot of research on like performance orientation.
• 44:20
  Like I want to perform really well when I do a task or when I take on a project and the results are good.
• 44:26
  They, you know, people do well when they do that.
• 44:28
  But there is another orientation that actually leads to better long-term outcomes.
• 44:32
  And let's replace the word outcomes with winning.
• 44:35
  And that is actually, instead of focusing only on the target as the thing I'm striving for, it's to focus on constant improvement.
• 44:43
  I'm going to learn as much as possible from this activity, no matter how I perform.
• 44:48
  The irony here is that, generally speaking,
• 44:51
  when people are dominated or have a mental orientation toward, want to learn as much as possible.
• 44:57
  And we compare their performance to somebody who says, I just want to be the best.
• 45:03
  The people with the first orientation actually perform better in the long run.
• 45:07
  so there's it is ironic, but it's similar to, you know, my big sports guy and my favorite athlete of all time is Michael Jordan.
• 45:15
  And one of the things I really appreciate about Michael Jordan is how intensely he practiced.
• 45:22
  know, there's all these stories from his teammates about he was so intense in practice.
• 45:28
  You know, it's kind of like the opposite of Alan Iverson.
• 45:30
  Practice, practice, you know.
• 45:32
  But when he was in so intense in practice and he was always learning and he has this great quote.
• 45:38
  I can't quote it exactly.
• 45:39
  It's I did include it in the book, but it's something to the effect of
• 45:42
  I've been given the opportunity to win the game X amount of times.
• 45:46
  I've missed 200 and something shots.
• 45:49
  I failed over and over and over again.
• 45:51
  And that is why I succeed.
• 45:52
  So he had this mentality of, of course he was incredibly talented naturally, but the reason he was the greatest of all time on one record saying that the greatest of all time.
• 46:04
  is because he worked harder than everybody else.
• 46:07
  And it was the combination, that mental orientation that I'm going to get better from my losses.
• 46:12
  And because I lose, that's going to make me better.
• 46:15
  That I think is a really important, like that constant pursuit of winning, adopt a growth mindset, adopt a learning orientation.
• 46:22
  You're to be much more likely to do that.
• 46:24
  growth mindset, learning orientation.
• 46:26
  That is perfect.
• 46:27
  That is beautiful.
• 46:27
  Ben, thank you so much.
• 46:29
  If anybody wants to get in touch with you or get your book, what's the best way to do that?
• 46:33
  I have a really simple website out there, benjamingranger.com.
• 46:37
  I've got some cool stuff there.
• 46:38
  can check out when and where I'm speaking next, what sort of research is.
• 46:43
  Got some details in the book.
• 46:45
  if you'll spare 30 more seconds, Rick, I got also a cool little thing on there, which is a companion playlist to the book.
• 46:52
  And so I'm big music nut.
• 46:54
  And one of the things I...
• 46:56
  I did in my first manuscript, because I'm very naive, is I included like a bunch of silly song quotes and movie references from comedy movies.
• 47:07
  And so I sent my manuscript to the editor and she was like, hey, these are great, but you got to get permission to use these.
• 47:15
  So I was like, well, I don't know what that is.
• 47:18
  And so unfortunately I had to scrape all the song references.
• 47:21
  But what I did instead was
• 47:23
  I created a playlist that accompanies each chapter that songs that inspired me, either the lyrics or the deep meaning, or even some cases, the time signature of the song has a
• 47:34
  connection to a lesson in the book.
• 47:36
  And I think it serves two purposes.
• 47:37
  One, it's just a really fun little scavenger hunt.
• 47:40
  Like, what was the lesson that this song connects to?
• 47:43
  But I think the more important thing is this is, I think, a really good way to solidify the conversation that we have through the book.
• 47:50
  You know, next time you hear that song on the radio, you'll remember that lesson that we talked about.
• 47:55
  So I think it'll be a lot of fun for folks.
• 47:57
  I like that.
• 47:57
  like that.
• 47:58
  might have to incorporate that in my storytelling, you know, just put some music in.
• 48:01
  Yeah, there you go.
• 48:03
  I best did not do that all the time.
• 48:05
  It's like we'll have a conversation and they'll be like, know, somebody will say like one line, it's just like, then, you know, whatever song was associated with that.
• 48:13
  It's just enriches life.
• 48:15
  I absolutely love it.
• 48:16
  But this has been a great conversation.
• 48:18
  Thank you so much for being here.
• 48:19
  I love this conversation.
• 48:22
  I really appreciate it.
• 48:23
  I learned a lot.
• 48:23
  Thank you so much.
• 48:24
  I really appreciate you having me on Rick.
• 48:26
  I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope we can do it again sometime.
• 48:29
  My friend and folks Thank you so much for watching or listening to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning podcast We'll catch you next time