Hello, I'm Jonathan Kirschner, Founder and CEO of Air
Consulting. This is a podcast about
leadership. I've been looking forward to
this podcast for about 6 months. We have with us Doctor Michael
Platt. I'll just start with a few small
things Michael's up to. So Michael is a professor in
three schools at the University of Pennsylvania, the School of
Medicine, Wharton, obviously, and the School of Arts and
Sciences. What not everyone knows is that
Michael is also a founder and entrepreneur, A venture
capitalist, now father, sports enthusiast, fitness enthusiast,
researcher of many things, including monkeys, which we'll
get into. And, and really I'll just say
like a very important person in my life, somebody who has taken
a my interest in neuroscience and psychology and deepened it
in such a incredible way. And so I thank you for that
inspiration and for all the influence you've had on my own
thinking, Michael. Well, Jonathan, it's great to be
here. I consider you a good friend as
well as a colleague. I think we've probably known
each other for all going on 10 years.
Not quite. It's it's feeling like we're
rubbing up on a decade. Yeah.
And, and AIR Consulting is, has
been, I think the oldest continuous partner of Wharton
Neuroscience, the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative that I
found it indirect. And so we've had these amazing
continuing interactions and, and, and you and your company
has shaped a lot of our thinking.
A lot of what we do is we've moved more and more into
leadership and, and HR and management, you know, kind of,
you know, expanding the scope of the application of neuroscience
across business. Well, it's a, it's an amazing
opportunity to dive deep into some of these like incredible
topics of neuroscience and leadership.
Maybe we could just start. Michael, can you give us like,
how in the heck did you arrive at this place?
Like why neuroscience? Bring us on the journey of like
how you got here. Well, you know, that when I was
10, I, I thought, I want to be, you know, a professor in three
schools. No, I didn't.
No, I, I, it's a, it's a miracle that I'm here.
I mean, I think it's, it's really quite extraordinary.
And, you know, I do think it's the, you know, the kind of thing
that, you know, happens here, you know, in America that, you
know, I, I see, you know, the promise that each and every
individual can, you know, be, you know, who they want to be
and who they can be if they work hard enough.
But, you know, so I grew up working class, You know, my dad
was a mechanic. My mom drove a school bus.
Her parents were, you know, grocers and her brothers were
grocers. So, so working class family.
I was the first kid to go to College in the very large
extended family. Wow.
I won the lottery and went to Yale, remarkably enough.
I mean, I was an athlete. I was, and I guess that helped,
went to Yale and the expectation.
What did you play with? With your football.
Football, I mean, I played baseball and I I wrestled some,
but but football was my. The most friendly game to the
brain. Well, that's why I ended up out
of football because I'd had so many concussions.
And you know, when I was a kid, that was just called getting
your bell rung, you know, and, and like literally, you know,
by, you know, your parents would laugh.
Oh, you got your bell rung. So, but you know, when I got the
call, I ended up, you know, I was supposed to play for Yale
and then I, I go to practices and then they're fitting me for
a helmet and they'd say, how many concussions have you had?
And well, what's a concussion? Well, did you ever had your bell
rung knocked out on the field? And when I told them, they said,
well, no, you, you're not playing anymore.
So that was a disappointment for me.
Then I ended up getting many more concussions after that, but
that's another story. But anyway, so I go to Yale and
you know, I first Gen. college kids.
So the expectation was you're going to do something practical.
So become an engineer or, you know, go go into medicine.
And I took an anthropology class freshman year, first semester,
and I just fell in love with it. I realized that, wow, this, this
field which is really broad, it's the broadest lens through
which you could try to understand human nature.
Study of people people but. But in in, you know, the
richness of not just culture, but and, and language and
linguistics, but really importantly for me, biology and
our, our biological heritage. So, you know, paleoanthropology
and also understanding the nature of our closest living
relatives, which figures in, you know, my life very heavily
primates. And so so I end up becoming an
anthropology major, really just digging into that.
And between junior and senior year of college, I won a
scholarship in essence from National Science Foundation to
go on a field expedition, which was in southern Mexico in the
jungle with a bunch of other college students to study
macaques. We're living on an island and,
and it was really an extraordinary experience.
And I met the woman who had later become my wife and.
Also, she was also on that same she was.
Also on that expedition. So.
So we met then. So that was a long time ago.
That was 19 88 actually way are you you might not alive.
But I'm like collecting baseball.
Cards. Yeah.
So it was, it was quite an extraordinary, you know, when,
when you're out there in the middle of nowhere, you know,
it's like, you know, what kind of magic can happen.
So, you know, after that, I was, you know, senior year, I was
like, oh, you're supposed to start looking for a job.
And then I learned, wow, you can actually get a PhD in this same
field. And, you know, if you're lucky
enough, you can win scholarships, etcetera, to pay
for it. And so I did not want to go to
work. In fact, my dad said, you know,
because he had, you know, he'd been under the hood of a car
for, you know, since he was 17, basically.
And he said, you know, don't start working until you
absolutely have to because you'll be working the rest of
your life. So if you have an opportunity to
study, keep studying. And so I said that that's really
good advice. So I came here to Penn to do my
PhD in anthropology to work with just amazing mentors, Robert
Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney, who are lifelong mentors.
They were famous for really developing sophisticated ways to
understand what monkeys know about their worlds, in
particular their social worlds. And so, so I came here, I did
some field work in Venezuela and and then eventually did my
thesis in a lab because I needed to bring in some control to the
work I was doing, trying to understand how a different
species of monkeys represent their environment.
So what they know about where food is and how long they can
remember that and things like that.
So OK, so long story. Not really.
It is a long story. But as I was doing that, I
realized, you know, if I really want to understand human nature,
I have to go to the brain. This is insufficient.
I'm making inferences about what's happening in the brain
based on behavior, but it's not enough.
So I just made this crazy career move to I went to NYU to do a
postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience.
And that was before neuroscience was cool.
It was starting to become kind of cool.
So, but it was quite a, you can imagine somebody who'd done
field work and, you know, had this was like a new level of
challenge. You know, I had to take the
first year PhD curriculum in neuroscience so I could actually
learn something about the brain while simultaneously setting up
the lab. It was a new lab.
My mentor Paul Glimcher was, you know, was really profoundly
important in my life and I knew nothing about neuroscience.
And So what was interesting is that I came there at the
promise. We had a pact that basically I
would be able to do the experiment that I finally just
published a year and a half ago, you know, some like almost 30
years later, but but it was like, I want to understand how
the brain actually makes sense of our social worlds.
And so I want to be able to record from neurons across the
brain, you know, in that are involved in in encoding
information about others and understanding the meaning of
their behavior. And then, you know, planning,
you know, making decisions and, and acting accordingly,
appropriately, adaptively. But, and he said, yes, but first
you have to learn neuroscience. And so you're going to do this
really boring stuff for like 3 years, which was true.
I had to study eye movements. And you know, because it's a
really simple system and we knew a lot.
We had a really good sketch of the how the visual system works
and also a really good sketch of how the output of moving your
eyes works because it's a really simple, it's just, you know,
there's, there's six muscles and that's it.
Unlike, you know, your arm, which is super complicated.
So I did that and while I'm doing it, I'm, you know, I'm
like super bored and, but doing neuroscience, which was awesome.
But I, I was thinking, you know, what I want to study is decision
making. People are starting to study
decision making in neuroscience, but the decisions they're
studying and this is still really important work are what
seemed to me not the most important decisions.
So like, is the light bright or dim?
Is the, is it, you know, red or green that's important when
you're coming up to traffic light?
But in general, it's like, it's really the decisions that matter
to us are the ones that are the ones about things we value,
right? And anything from like eat the
apple or the doughnut to, you know, who do you, do you marry
this person or you, you know, you, you continue shopping, you
know, you put your money in stocks or bonds.
And that had not really been considered at all in
neuroscience. And so I was sort of ignorant
enough to say, well, we why don't we go to the people who've
really kind of figured out on the on the outside, like the
math, you know, around that. That's economics basically.
And so I said, well, why don't we study how value, right and
utility are, are computed in the brain and are you, you know, and
then shaped the decisions that we make.
And so that was, you know, it by some measures of paper we
published in Nature in 1999, it was considered the 1st paper in
the field of neuroeconomics. There were, there was other work
absolutely critically important, but that was sort of the
beginnings of that. And then you see like over the
next like the, the mentions of the word value or even reward or
decision were basically almost zero in neuroscience.
And then it came exponentially. So, so then, and it was
interesting because, you know, at that time we couldn't get
funded for it. You know, everybody thought,
well, this is really out there, this is crazy.
Once you do something that's, you know, a little bit more
incremental. But we, you know, we publish
that paper. And so then I go on the job
market kind of softly and you know, probably, you know, apply
for 100 jobs, who knows? But I got one job offer.
Turns out you only need one. You just got to make the best of
it. And it was a great place.
So I went to Duke, joined the neurobiology department, which
was in the School of Medicine, which is also a new adventure
for me because now my job was to also to think about clinical
conditions. I had to teach clinical
neuroanatomy to 1st year medical students.
I've never done that before. I ended up running the first
year medical school course in neuroscience, you know, after a
few years. And but that was also really
important for me because I had never really thought about the,
you know, the the sort of human health side of, of neuroscience
and and brain function and dysfunction.
And that has carried, you know, through with me to today as
well. You know, so OK, so I was at
Duke for a while. I, I had a taste for building
things I didn't know that I did. So I started Co founded the
Center for Neuroeconomics at Duke and then became director of
the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, which was an
interdisciplinary interschool kind of department.
And then ultimately ended up directing the Institute for
Brain Sciences, which was Duke's way of doing interdisciplinary
scholarship. So these institutes were ways to
get resources into the hands of kind of people who knew the
local, you know, the, the, the local community and could put
people together in interesting ways.
So it was a joint project of the medical school and, and the rest
of the university. And my job was not only to
connect the neuroscientists who were across schools to each
other, but also to outward to everything else.
And that was what was really exciting because, you know, now
we're bringing neuroscience into contact with business, law,
humanities, arts, started a Center for neurohumanities there
also. So, so then that starts to get
really interesting, you know, and I'm not, we weren't telling
them like, oh, we're going to solve all your issues, but no,
let's have a dialogue because we are all wrestling with the same
thing, right? Which is human nature.
And you know, they're just different ways that neuroscience
can be helpful, I think in all those domains.
So that that kind of put me then on the path to where I am now.
And, you know, I'd like to build things back then.
And I was starting to kind of be like, I don't know, people are
thinking, oh, maybe you'll be a Dean or something.
And then I got this amazing call from Penn.
You know, it was, you know, president calls me up and says,
you know, I want to give you your dream job.
What would it take? And, and I said, well, you know,
and they said, we see, we have this vision of you not only in
the medical school, but at Wharton.
And I'm like, wow, that's, that's a signal, right, that
the, you know, the School of Business believes that the
future of business education practice, a big part of that is
going to be neuroscience, right? And so I said, yeah, I'll do
that. But I also need to be in
psychology too. So three times the faculty
meetings, but that was. So I came here and then, you
know, started this, this this center in essence, which is
Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. And our mission is really to to
use the insights that technology, you know, the the
analytics of neuroscience and apply that to all things
business. So you can think about it just
like making business more efficient, effective and humane.
And really it's about performance.
So how can we help you and you and you, you know, reach your
full potential And how can we help teams to do that?
How can we help businesses to do that?
How can we help society to do that?
And that's, I think really kind of the thread that runs through
all of that. And I think that we have over
the last not quite 10 years shown that that's possible.
That's incredible. Wow, that's a that's a hell of a
journey. So from from football to
anthropology to early days neuroscience at NYU, did your
time doing some brain tracking, you know, getting the
foundations of the brain and then getting into decision
making their economics monkeys, I guess have been a through
thread. Absolutely.
But you know, you did just write up when you wrote this book.
This is now the updated version the leader's brain.
And I I note the word leader. You've been really interested in
leadership in particular. And so I a curiosity around
that, like what? What's so compelling about that
specific lane among the field of lanes that you could choose?
Well, I think we've all had the experience of, you know, good
leaders and bad leaders and the leaders make a difference in our
lives. You know, this is this is
something that we, I don't know that I would say that monkeys
have leaders per SE, but they're, you know, there's sort
of a distribution of power that, you know, influences their
societies. And, you know, ours is a little
bit different, but think about it this way.
And I think that's why, you know, in this book, I think is
interesting because I added a new chapter as well as a lot of
other stuff. But leading in the age of AI and
think about it this way, you know, technology is
accelerating, human evolution is not.
So leadership, I believe can and should close that gap, right?
So. OK.
It's, you know, incumbent upon leaders to help people to
especially right now navigate the uncertainty, the the
volatility, the the onslaught of information and disinformation
and misinformation, the anxiety that comes along with that.
As you know, as if we kind of confront a a pace of change and
magnitude of change that really is not that we're not wired.
So the technology is accelerating at a pace that that
far exceeds the evolutionary movement of.
Yeah. So let me put it even more
concretely. This thing up here right is
hasn't changed in 200,000 years. Well, not even incrementally.
My very basically no so and in fact it has changed very little
in 35,000,000 years and and maybe even more than that.
So that's, we last shared a common ancestor with, you know,
monkeys was around then. And yeah, I half my time I study
monkeys and, and how the monkey brain works because it's a, you
know, it's a microcosm, if you will, for for our own brains, we
have all the same brain areas wired up in same way doing the
same stuff. But for the most part, it
hasn't. No, it's remained 3. 1000 years
in our species Homo sapiens sapiens appeared on this planet,
which we generally believe is around 200,000 years ago.
With full blown language most likely.
Yeah, it's not really changed. At all?
Maybe some regions are like slightly bigger, slightly
smaller. You know, I, I, it, that would
be hard to know because we, you know, the traditional way of
doing that would be to look at what are called endocasts, which
is kind of the, you find an old skull and then you can, you
know, mold, make a mold on the inside.
But that's just going to show you where some of the bigger
bumps and grooves are not something that's very, very
specific. And so there may be so that, you
know, in terms of evolution, right, there would have to be
changes in the brain even at a microstructural level or circuit
level that are heritable. They have a genetic component
and that would differential differentially affect the
representation in subsequent generations, right.
So if it's something that helped you to do a little bit better
than your competitor. And there was a genetic
component to that then, and you had more offspring than they did
then, you know, then down and that's down.
That's how evolution works. So I don't know that we have any
real evidence for that. And, you know, it's, it, it's a
really short period of time for, you know, for evolution to have
occurred, although, you know, there are, you know, there are
various traits that have changed, you know, in a really
short period of time, like lactose tolerance in adulthood,
you know, is, is really found in people from Northern Europe,
right, where daring cultures first emerged.
But otherwise, you know, not. And that's, that's, that's about
8000 years, maybe tops. So, you know, but that's a,
that's a minor. That's minor.
It's not like structural brain, right?
Evolution, right? And I think that what's been
much more profound, and this is kind of very obvious, I think,
is that culture, once it emerged of our sort of human culture,
you know, aided by language in terms of transmission, operates
so much more rapidly than biological evolution.
So you get cultural change, changes in technology going from
stone tools, going from really rather crude stone tools to, and
just a few to a profusion of, you know, even, even, you know,
I'm talking about 30,000 years ago or so where suddenly, you
know, people are making, you know, arrows and, and fish hooks
and all kinds of things where you know, up till then for a
million years, we basically had one major, well, like an
Australian hand axe, you know, beautiful, symmetric.
That was it. Pretty much it.
I mean you'd have some choppers and things, but that was it.
And that was actually, I love this example because this hand
axe, which started out relatively crude when they first
appeared and you know, by the time a million years later, they
were really refined, really quite beautiful, stunning.
And it what's amazing is like everybody had one, you know,
it's like it was like the iPhone.
It was sort of a status symbol. They were beautiful and elegant
and use it to a whole bunch of different things.
People did put like they embellish it it would and and
make up their own. Yeah, I mean, and then and
people be buried, you know, when, When?
There's yeah, there's dumbass. Yeah, exactly.
So it's kind of a. So cool, but there's a turning
point in which somebody figured out what we can make.
And just suddenly make all kinds an arrow.
Yeah, all kinds of things. We have no idea how or why.
You know, it's fast happening. And we're learning more and more
from from the archaeology. That's fascinating.
It's subject to what's preserved, which is, which is
you. Know, but it's a good example of
I mean in, in in some ways right now, you know, we see, you know,
very we see these inflection points in time where there's
incremental changes that there's there's times of of total
stable, you know, you know, stasis in, in some in something
regards with regard to innovation and then something
just like happens and there's just this like.
Boom. Of innovation like we're in that
right now with AI obviously, right?
And then that would have been, you know, analogous, that would
have been a time analogous to what we are experiencing now in
theory. But to your point, the brain is
relatively stable over the 200,000 years or so, or 200,000.
Let's just say 200. 1000 let's say 200,000 years, whereas the
sort of evolution of culture and technology.
Yeah, you can see it. I mean it is and it's
cumulative, right. So what you know, the
technological innovations of, you know, your parents or
whatever, you get to have them right away and then you can
amplify and embellish and create and innovate from that.
So you can see that that is, you know, kind of a flywheel ratchet
effect, incredible, you know, as we could, you know, you see
these major inflection points as you were saying.
So people settling down, you know, staying in one place,
developing agriculture, you know, different kinds of
materials going from, you know, bronze to steel, etcetera.
And then you know, of course, the, you know, the industrial
revolution, which is what a lot of people are comparing AI to.
I think it's far beyond that, but, you know, it remains to be
seen. So leadership is the IT, it's,
that's the the thing. What do we, you know what?
I'll refer to it as the variable that bridges the gap.
I'm I'm arguing that it has to be it.
Has to be it has to be. It doesn't just happen right it.
Leadership, whether it happens, I mean, it's a really
interesting question. I mean, there is a thing, you
know, called emergent leadership that just an individual, other
people around them like like somebody just steps up.
So, yeah, somebody steps up or somebody is sort of volunteered
because, and we don't really understand how this works that
kind of collectively or individually people see
something. And that's, that's one reason
why I'm also interested. There's another, you know, older
reason to me or you know, earlier reason to me why my
interest in leadership is that kind of ineffable quality.
You know, when you, you recognize somebody who's a
leader, even if you know, even if they're quiet, there's
somebody's got something right? It's.
Like an X Factor. It's an X Factor.
I mean, that's like charisma, for example, which I've always
been fascinated by, which is a a component is often something
that helps someone be a really great leader because it's that
what is it? It's presence.
It's these are all words that we don't really understand
biologically what they mean, but but they've got presence.
They people respect them, people follow them and for good or bad
rights, people have for his qualities.
And it's anyway. So in this book, you know, it's
a distillation of a number of I don't think it's comprehensive,
but but focusing on what I consider to be some key elements
of leadership. Importantly, perhaps most
importantly, sort of leading with the social brain.
And then that has been a focus of my work for decades.
Yeah. So social brain, I think more
critical now than ever. You know, it's a foundation of
a, a healthy, you know, mentally healthy life.
So you, you creating the conditions in a culture, which
you know, you've done at air, you know, a great leader, you
know it, it starts at the top and you create a, a culture and
you also model behavior that you know, that's, that's open and,
and empathetic and a clear communicator, somebody who can
take the perspective of others and then create a, a, a culture
conditions where that is broadly valued, right?
And, and it's that that's the, you know, so that people really
can work together and achieve more than they could achieve on
their own. And so I think that that's the
foundation. That's a big foundation for
leadership. And it's what I think
characterizes or distinguishes, you know, really good
organizations, effective organizations from those that
and that's, you know, we can talk about sports and how I
think that that is. AI would, I mean, I, I
definitely want to dig into. I'm very interested in like team
effectiveness and like, why does some teams like you could have a
team that you know, is composed of, of All Star individuals and
they totally fail. And you could have a team
composed of like some All Stars, some mediocre, some even poor
performers and somehow that team comes together and wins.
I'm very curious about that. But what?
Just stepping back for a moment, define like social brain like,
why is that? What is it and why is it so
important? So, yeah, so one thing I want to
kind of just dispel any notions of our brains being computers.
They're really not computers, although we're we're seeing that
there's some interesting parallels between, you know, AI,
you know, large language models and the way that brains seem to.
It would be easy to to come to that conclusion because you
because you the computer has memory and processing and it
pumps out an output so so true to the brain.
People have talked about brains using a metaphor for a long
time. OK, it's the the hardware and
then you you know language based so.
Why are we not? It's much more like a Swiss army
knife is. OK.
So you have more specific tools that do specific jobs.
So you'll have a knife and a nail file, a Corkscrew, which is
really important to me. So, and honestly, those, those
tools in the Swiss Army knife have been around for 35,000,000
years at at least. And you know, so there are the
ones in humans are going to be a little bit bigger or sharper
compared to the ones in monkeys, for example.
And the social brain or social brain network is one of those
tools. So it turns out, and this is a
real discovery of the last maybe 15 years might be going on more,
but a real discovery in neuroscience, which is that
there is this system in our heads for that, that his job is
basically to manage our interactions with other people
as well as our long term relationship.
So it's this, this network that you know, when you are basically
what it does is, you know, is when you walk into a room or
when I, you know, walked in here before and I saw you.
What happens is the, the pixelated data that's coming in
through my eyes from my retina and use the whole scene gets
broken down into pixels. It gets reassembled in the back
of your head. And then that information kind
of flows forward. And the first step in the social
brain network is just identifying, you know, creating
an image and identifying there's a person there, right?
I mean, there's a human there. Jonathan.
And there's.
Oh, it's familiar. I can give Jonathan a hug.
Exactly. That's exactly.
What so, So yeah, who are they? Familiar, unfamiliar.
And that information flows forward in the social brain
network being informed by, you know, your, if you do know that
person by previous interactions with them or maybe information
about reputation, etcetera. So we're dipping into the
hippocampus. Well, right, your memory bank.
Plays a role. I mean that's not where memories
live. Oh, interesting that that's sort
of the, the that's, that's the thing that like takes the
information that is going to get stored and then it it puts it
elsewhere in the brain. So.
Where does it go? Well, it kind of goes all over.
All over for some memories. Yeah.
It's distributed in basically in the parts of the brain that
would process in the 1st place if it's so like so-called face
cortex or parts of the part of the social brain is where
information about that is stored about other people, like what
they look like. So this anyway, this social
brain network as the information's coming in and
there's, you know, information about what you're hearing, you
know, maybe touch, smell. And so it's, it kind of breaks
into two pathways and 1 is a little bit, you can think of it
as being a little bit that's just a little bit lower in the
brain and it and it's going to go to more emotional centers of
the social brain network. So that are involved in decoding
what another individual's experiencing based on what non
verbal cues. So facial expressions, posture,
tone of voice, all those kinds of things.
You know, we have these dozens of muscles of facial expression
and the only reason we have them is to tell somebody else's brain
what we're feeling or thinking or what we're paying intention
to. That's the only reason they're
there. So anyway, those and those areas
are, are what's the source of empathy and kind of
understanding when another person needs or wants or what
they've learned from, from like, you know, tasting a, a, you
know, something that might be bad for you.
And the more activity you have in the couple of those areas,
like the, you know, the anterior cingular cortex and the insula
buried under here, that predicts like your likelihood of helping
somebody and, and generally how empathetic you are.
So that's one pathway and they're interacting and there's
another pathway you can think of as more cognitive or mental, and
it's doing the other part of the equation, which is trying to
figure out it forms a mental model of another person's mental
state. So it's like mind reading.
So it is decoding or making inferences about what that
person finds important from, for example, what they're paying
attention to, where they look, where they're looking, their
general disposition, are they trustworthy or not, You know,
especially if you've interacted with them in the past, it allows
you to make better predictions about what they're likely to do.
So that's going to guide your behavior.
Those two streams come together eventually to shape.
Now this is where we get back to decision making shape.
The calculation of value or utility signals, OK, which is
happening a little bit down here, OK.
And it's those value utility signals that then inform the
choice that we make. So do I approach you and hug you
or do I, you know, stand back and go whoa, no thanks.
You know, do I negotiate fairly with you or do I cheat, You
know, in our, in our negotiation, you know, I do I
bluff you in poker, you know that.
And then the system is really smart.
So it learns from every decision, every action you
engage in. So there's a forecast about how
what's going to happen based on what, you know, what did I do
and what, how you would respond. And then the difference between
what you, your brain forecast will happen, what it predicts
and what actually happens, that error signal, that difference is
fed back into the whole system so that hopefully it's a
teaching signal that then updates it and hopefully it'll
work better next time. So if you make a faux pas right
in an interact, then you hopefully learn from that.
Now, not everybody does learn as you know, there are differences.
And that's another, I'm talking about the average, you know,
average human brain, average human social brain network.
And of course, there are very, there's variation amongst
people. So, you know, some people are
better at reading social cues than other people.
Some people are more motivated to, you know, you call them
extroverts, right? But it's not really the
terminology we use in neuroscience, but it's they're
they're, they're more engaged, more motivated to be with other
people and some people less. So.
I'm not putting a value judgement on that at all.
That variation is there presumably for a reason, you
know, and we could talk about that too.
That's where the monkey work, I think is informative.
So, So the social brain network, would you think of that as one
of the various myriad of tools on a Swiss Army knife or is that
sort of more like an operating system that the tools live on?
I, I, I don't, I think they're those, those two things are you
can't really separate. So I would just say that it is a
tool. It's a tool.
One of the really. Really important tools that it's
not the tweezers or the no no. It's really important and we
have other tools, for example, for, you know, like thinking
outside the box and exploration and innovation, you know,
decision making, you kind of think of as a as a tool that's
in there. So that's how it's all, you
know, set up and, and the various basically what what I do
in the book is, is examine a few of these tools, you know, make
the case for why they're important for leadership.
So just decision making, for example, and then try to, you
know, tell you how it works. And you know, in a sense, like
for decision making, this is really important.
Why do we care about how the brain makes decisions?
You might just say, oh, we don't care.
I mean, that's what economists said when, when we when people
first started neuroeconomics and studying situationally.
Well, we don't really care. All we need to do is predict
people's behavior. We don't care what's going on
inside. Well, it turns out that knowing
that is really important because it, it defines the rules that
the brain lives by, right? There's certain constraints,
there's certain limitations on the way brains process
information that turn out to be really important for decision
making that are the source of many biases and, you know, the
source of the mistakes that we often make, right?
So if you want to make better decisions, wouldn't it be it
seems smart to understand those so that you can navigate, you
know, navigate those issues in a more effective way.
Yeah, totally. Coming back to I keep hammering
on social grains because they were tough.
It's it seems so vital. You said, you said something
earlier that really struck me like that, that this is what
allows us to get things done together that we would otherwise
not be able to do alone. I'm thinking about, you know,
like what's the like the So what behind the social brain network?
Would you say that that's like the primary?
So what that it essentially? There's many.
So what so, so, so we are, I mean, I, you know, I, I make
this point on time. We're wired to connect.
We don't have connection. We fall apart and we're seeing
that, you know, more and more and more, particularly in young
people. I think you'll be super.
Smart, super biologically healthy, but if you do not have
sort of interpersonal contact correct like you just.
You might really state. Deteriorate.
Yeah, I mean, people who are lonely, people who lack social
connection, it's really bad for your health.
It's bad for your mental health that that generally, you know,
increases anxiety and depression, etcetera, but it's
bad for your physical health too, we now know.
So lacking connection and feeling lonely, which is the gap
between the social interactions you want to have and the ones
that you're having. There are a variety of reasons
why that might happen. That's worse for your health
than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.
Oh, Lord. Serious.
Yeah. I mean, the epidemiological data
is really clear on this. And it just, and honestly, it
just kind of keeps getting worse because.
And we can talk about why that might be so, but people are
societies are becoming more and more fragmented, obviously
polarized, but people are just less social, you know,
especially here in the United States.
They, they go out less, they interact less with people
outside the home. They are less likely to belong
to community organizations to, you know, to go to church or
synagogue or mosque, all these. Well, there's an.
Irony because I might have like, you know, several thousand
LinkedIn connections and and Facebook connections and this
and that and yet I, I may, you know, not have plans with
anybody tonight and, and, and may feel.
You know, moderately if not more depressed, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's a it, there is a
distinction, right? There's a difference there
between, I mean, our brains are designed by evolution for IRL in
real life, in real life, 3 dimensions with another human
being, right? And we saw this painfully in
COVID, right? Suddenly overnight, you're told
you got to go lock yourself in your house.
We've got these great tools now, video conferencing.
But wow, what a difference that is, right?
So there's so many reasons why that just falls short.
But the basic reason is that our brains are designed for this
physical reality. In person, you stick somebody,
you squash them flat in A2 dimensions in a tiny little box
on the screen. You know, where there's bad, you
can't see their eyes really, you know, and there was a whole
bunch of them there. So that fragments your
attention. And it it's no wonder that you
know, you have Zoom fatigue or Teams fatigue or what not
because it's your brain has to work so much harder and it is
just not the same thing. So.
Is it like a social brain crisis going on right now or or like
the possibility of that? How do you think about like, you
know, our our increasingly digitized lives and the more
time we're spending on using AI rather than like a human
teacher? Or that's the next level.
I mean, I think that, you know, the first AI, I'm not the one
that came up with this, but the first, the very crude AI that
was unleashed on human, the human species was smartphones
and social media. Interesting.
You know, which is, you know, social media is, you know, built
on algorithms that are designed based on how our brains, you
know, assign value to things. But it, it basically it's
reinforcement. It's, it's, it's the same thing
as like going to a casino and, you know, getting the occasional
win and there's lots of, you know, bells and whistles going
off. And it also takes advantage of
our social brains because we're wired to look for information
about others, to learn about others too, and to, to value
reinforcement, social reinforcement.
I mean that can, you know, that can substitute for other kinds
of rewards that are necessary for life, like food and water
and you know, etcetera. I mean, we showed that a long
time ago in our, in our monkey work.
And it's it because it's so important to, you know, to our
lives. So kind of get back to your
question, the why the So what? First of all, it's it's critical
for our our health physical. Just.
Just being with others and so social support.
And again, the monkeys have told us a lot about this really
powerfully. But also as you were discussing,
there's power in what we can do together that we couldn't do
alone, but only so for the collective intelligence of a
group and collective innovative abilities, etcetera.
There's so much potential there. And the challenge is like
actually creating the conditions under which that can work.
That's the chemistry part, right?
Team chemistry. It doesn't necessarily happen
all the time. We've all been there, you know,
whether whether you're playing a sports or you're, you know, in
the office working on a team where it's like, wow, this is
just going off the rails or there's something wrong here and
we can't figure it out and we're not playing well together.
And we know when it's the opposite, when it's like sudden
it's like magic, right? You, you know.
It's flow state. We it's flow.
I mean, we, you know. Even like attend to the effort
'cause it's just happening. It's unfolding in teams that are
amazing, like we just saw with our amazing men's and women's,
you know, USA Hockey teams, you know, with the, the men's team
in particular not favored. Canada was a way better team,
way better team. The summer parts.
Absolutely way way better, Way better.
As you know, you're a hockey better, but a way better team.
But somehow, you know, the American team just that night,
you know, had it, had that right.
And, you know, we could talk about why, why that might be so.
But it was such a, you know, a reminder, you know, whatever it
was 46 years ago to the week. I was 13 years old in 1980 when
Placid, like Placid, you know, and that was that was, you know,
so the, you know, the the USA men's hockey team beating the
Soviet Union. Soviet Union was best it's.
Almost. This identical, it was kind of
like Rocky Four. It was like because it was the
Soviet Union, not Russia, but it was like they had these guys
were all professionals essentially supported by the
state. They had all the best training,
all the best everything. And, and the US team was college
players, you know, recruited whatever just a couple of months
before the Olympics had to, you know, put them together and
somehow get them to work together and develop chemistry
really rapidly with with the, you know, I think the the
premise was quite clear was that they may be, you know, they may
be a team of better players, but if we're the better team, we
could beat them, right? If we have that trust that if we
perspective taking, we know you know where everybody's going to
be, this sort of like anticipation and being able to
be in that flow state. Well, that's I actually want to
double click because, you know, you mentioned like ultimately
performance is a really important piece of your research
and, and, and, and, and something that motivates you to
continue to delve deeper and deeper into all these different
topics. And when we think about team
performance, so you mentioned like perspective taking
chemistry, which feels kind of, you know, woo woo, like I'd like
to understand what's happening really like what is chemistry
really perspective taking trust that also feels kind of soft,
like just just help. Like why would a team outperform
or underperform based on what's happening in the brain and maybe
even like social brain that works specifically?
Yeah. I mean, I think the, the, the,
why do they prevail, right? Is, is still a question that,
you know, I don't know. I don't know that we have an
answer for in the sense of like, well, you know, like when you
feel like you have psychological momentum, you know, but I think
that there's, there's like a, you know, we could talk about
the things that seem to be associated with that.
Like there's a joy in playing together.
You know that that's part of that, that flow state, right?
There's. That would be like a rewarding
that would be. Rewarding, it's joy.
There's one more of that something collective, you're
right. Something about doing things
together that feels like it's bigger.
It's it's more it's more than you alone.
And it's that we know this sense of purpose and drive, especially
when you're doing that for other people.
That is really, really motivating, right?
And so players may go the, you know, the you put in that bit of
extra effort, really take that risk.
And also, I think sacrifice. So it's the sacrifice part like,
OK, I'm going to actually pass it because I I'm, you know, AI
know he's going to make that shot, right?
Yeah. So which is a really hard thing
to do sometimes, right? You, you, you know you want your
own. Passing.
Glory your own self, glory, right?
And and think about somebody like a goalie who's got to just,
they're literally putting their body on the line, you know, to
stop these pucks that are coming 100 miles an hour.
Not for me, yes. So but that the ultimate like
self sacrifice position right? Yeah, Yeah.
So what what I can say that we now know, and this is something
we're investigating and other people are, which is that when
those conditions are met, chemistry that that is
associated with something that we call synchrony, interpersonal
brain synchrony, physiological synchrony, which first really
discussed in in dyads, you know, pairs of people.
So when you have a great relationship with somebody, when
you, you have to be your friend, your partner, whatever even Co
worker, you know, kind of when you finish each other's
sentences and you really just, you just click that click what
that is associated with what what that means is that actually
your brains are resonating together.
I don't mean some non physical sense.
I mean, although we don't know everything about how this works,
but when you have that kind of rapport, what happens is your
brains are you have similar patterns of activity in both of
your brains. So that means that you're kind
of like see they seeing or perceiving the world more
similarly. You're feeling more similar.
This is totally unconscious. Yeah, I mean, I, I, but I think
it is that, you know that. Biologically measurable.
Yes, so so but I'll I'll I'll give you.
Is it it can become conscious in the sense of like when you had
that experience, you know, when you're in a for me, like going
to an Eagles game and you know, and you you stand up and you
sing the national anthem. You know, The Jets fly over and
you just have this your hair stands up on the back of your
neck and it's like, yeah, I don't have any, but it's but but
you know, that feeling of like what?
Why do you go do things like why did go to?
You can watch it on TV. It's much more comfortable, but
there's something different about having that experience
together and so this. It's an awe inspiring moment.
You can't even describe it. It's ineffable.
So that is, that's brain
synchrony. So and that, and when our brains
align, it turns out that this percolates down to our bodies
too. So our, our hearts will will be
together. You know, we breathe together,
we move together, we start to Orient our attention together,
which reinforces, it's like a feedback loop, right?
And then critically, you can kind of run this in reverse by
moving together or breathing together.
This is why, you know, the, the lot of chemistry building
exercises involve, you know, moving together, singing
together, chanting together. So basically all these rhythmic
activities, every human culture has them, whether it's dance or
drumming or singing, they have all these right.
Those are synchrony building technologies.
So, and I believe that is their, you know, every culture has them
because, you know, when evolution hit upon that or
cultural whatever, it's that creates the glue that keeps us
together so that we're not acting selfishly, right?
Because it's a tension, right? You, you, there is a tension
between acting in your own self-interest and kind of acting
for the good of the group. And it's this, this synchrony
that is the glue. And we, you know, we've shown
that in a number of different studies and that it, you know,
it, it goes well beyond just inter, you know, 2 individuals.
It's teams. When teams hearts are beating
together, they can accomplish more difficult tasks.
They can use all the information that's available.
We believe that that when our hearts are beating together In
Sync, this is a this is what psychological safety is.
People been talking about psychological safety for decades
but not knowing what it is biologically.
But biologically is essentially in neurosynchrony.
It's neurosynchrony, absolutely. So that's, you know, though in
this, in this one study, which we published a year and a half
ago, and it was a, it was a, a business type situation,
although, you know, it was, it, it, it was still an experiment.
But we had teams of like 6 people.
We had, we had hundreds of them and, or hundreds some.
And we gave them this really hard challenge which they had to
evaluate candidates to hire, OK, one candidate out of a pool of
candidates. So they get this really lengthy
resume. And so there's a lot of detail
and we distribute information asymmetrically.
So they don't know that. So a couple of people or one
person, they might have a little bit extra information on the
resume that that actually turns out to be critical.
So without that, you kind of run to the default and you're like,
Oh yeah, I'm going to hire the, you know, hire the the woman who
went to Harvard. But it might turn out that
there's actually a problem with that individual.
So in order to get it right, make the right hire, everybody
has to participate. So number one, right?
So everybody's got to be engaged.
You have to feel safe enough in a sense and confident enough to
voice your opinion, to introduce information into the discussion.
You have to recognize, you know something that everybody else
doesn't know, which is pretty sophisticated social inference,
right? And the group has to have the
capability to have a real robust discussion.
It's not like one person's dominating or some people feel
too timid or shy to participate or they not been drawn out,
right? There is a leader, you know, in
there, even an emergent leader, not, not named as the leader.
So that in order to get right, you got to get all that to
happen, right? And it turns out that if, yeah,
if your hearts are In Sync, then you get it right most of the
time. And if they're not, then you get
it. You know you get it wrong.
And you were able to have to actually measure this.
Yeah, yeah. The heart rate monitors.
So you have the heart rate monitors on on the various team
members and the teams that sort of like outperformed on this
task essentially had greater synchrony together.
Exactly. So it wasn't a function of like,
this is the most intelligent team and that's why they got it.
Right. And what, what was in this, this
what was also really, I think important and, and, and, and
I'll make the case that everything we do meets this
test, passes this test. So their own self reported
rating of how much psychological safety there was on the team or
or their their anyway their their sense and their ability to
report the conditions of that committee did not predict, did
not did not. So it's the biology.
Predicts it but but they're on self perception.
Then no and that's where, you know, I think the applied that
that's why neuroscience also is super important in application
tells the true business. It's yeah, I always say if you
want to know the truth, ask the brain directly.
We can do that now in marketing. It's super clear.
Basically, you know, the standard approach is to ask
people, how much would you like it?
How much would you be willing to pay for that?
You know, did you remember that ad?
What did you remember? Traditional market research.
Yeah. And that's like is going to
explain somewhere between 0 and 8% of the variance in out of
sample in what everybody in the market does the brain data just
collected passively. So you don't have to interrupt
people to ask them questions, right, which changes their, you
know, their responses. You know, there's often bias in
there because of like I'm being asked questions about this for
some reason I don't want or I don't, you know, I don't want to
look psychotic or whatever. So the brain data all is going
to predict, you know, in our hands and in other people's
hands, anywhere between like 70 and even 90% of the behavior of
millions of people in terms of like everything from click
throughs to sales. And we've got some really
sophisticated stuff going on now where we can predict like
changes in stock prices is a function of ad spend.
I mean, it's like it's pretty, I mean, when you step back, it's
pretty breathtaking or revolutionary.
I mean, I would have said 20 years ago when I, you know, was
we first getting into this stuff, it was like, no way.
You know, we could predict maybe what one person would do based
on their own brain activity. But to take brain activity now
from just a handful of people, let's say 20 and predict what
millions of people will do. Now think about the ways in
which you could use that. You can use that like that's
like everything from AB testing, but on steroids.
It makes your process so much more efficient and scalable and
it allows you to iterate and you can do it, you know, honestly,
the entire process from, you know, design, creative,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And now like lather, rinse and
repeat for for management, like OK fitness for role, like how do
you know who to hire for which role?
And then how do you close the gap between, you know, where
their skills are now and what they need to do?
Again, neuroscience does that much more effectively than
traditional ways like a, you know, a Myers Briggs test or
something like that, which is only marginally more, you know,
better predicted than astrology. Well.
That one in particular, yeah. That's an Adam Grant.
Yeah, that's that. No, that's fascinating.
So, so I, you know, I'm curious to what extent narrow synchrony,
the team getting In Sync is a function of, of a great leader
stepping in and saying, guys, let's come together and setting
the tone. Or is it something that sort of
emerges more naturally? Like does leadership play a role
in determining whether a group becomes synced?
Yeah, I, I believe so. You know, that is still a work
in progress. We do know from a couple of
studies that leaders, people's followers, brains tend to sink
onto a leader's brain, which is which is pretty interesting and
kind of what you would expect. Why and how does that happen?
We're it's still, you know, emerging.
But but, but let's kind of back up a sense and and talk about
like one of the most effective ways to get In Sync with someone
is actually through an authentic conversation.
So give and take in, you know, that, you know, being authentic,
being a bit vulnerable, even, you know, this, this we and
other scientists have worked with, you know, this every every
year around Valentine's Day, you know, in the, the media, you'll
hear about the 36 questions to, to fall in love, right?
And that's a that's a legit exercise.
It's not so much for falling in love, but it's about breaking
down barriers and becoming close to people.
And my colleague and friend Emily Falk here at the Annenberg
School showed that when people are working through this and,
and we've done this exercise before.
This is Is this the fast fast friends?
Fast friends so so, but it is a it is a way to it's probably.
Why we're so? Stimulate and promote a real
authentic, it's like telling your story, right?
And so as you do that, people's brains like what they may start
out very far apart, right, in terms of their activation with
the pattern of activity. And as you work through it, they
come closer and closer together and there's some interesting
dynamics around like how well you know each other, etcetera.
But in general, having a conversation like that closes
the gap. And there are other ways of kind
of stimulating that to happen through even like briefly
saying, you know, like like just like me, this person has
experienced pain and suffering, etcetera, or meditating on that
person's humanity. So there, there are a lot of
ancient practices, right, kind of loving kindness, meditation,
etcetera, that that close that gap that gets you more In Sync.
So in terms of leadership, one thing I think a leader can do is
get everybody In Sync and get them In Sync with them.
Right. So, so it turns out that, you
know, like for example, when there's a really beautiful,
beautiful study done by my friend Ori Hassan, who's at
Princeton, which was done, I don't know, 15 years ago or
more. And he, he's one of The Pioneers
in in. In.
Studying neurosynchrony. Yeah.
And he had this great study where he had two groups of
people, participants who were going to go in the MRI machines
and scan their brains. And everybody's going to hear
the same story. It's called Pretty Mouth and
Green My Eyes by JD Salinger. And it's a short story and
there's two ways to kind of interpret it. 1 is that, and
it's this story about a, you know, a couple, they, they go to
a party in New York City. They somehow lose track of each
other. My husband goes home and his
wife's not there. And there's, you know, he calls
his friend up to ask if he's seen her and like, there's a
woman in the background. And so there's, there's two ways
to think about it. 1 is like the husband's needlessly jealous.
There's nothing going on or his wife's having an affair with his
best friend. And So what Ori did in this
study was to, for the two groups, give them different
prompts like needlessly jealous or wife's having an affair.
So now what? When you look at brain activity,
patterns of brain activity in the two groups, everybody who
had the like, you know, wife's having an affair, their brains
were all basically synchronized. You know, they looked exactly
the same and was totally different from the people who
were primed with, you know, husbands needlessly jealous so.
Fascinating. So now think about like, you
know, a charismatic leader or somebody when you get up there
to, you know, you're addressing your audience, addressing your
team. You're essentially your job is
to get them In Sync with each other and with you.
When they're In Sync, that that is a a predictor of you know
that they're going to process information, you know more.
Similarly, they're going to hear what you're saying and and act
on it. They're going to be more likely
to do with. More probable to carry out the
vision. Then if they're not so and you
know, each day everybody shows up a little differently, even if
they're, you know, part of the same team, like a bad drive to
work or didn't sleep well or, you know, if you had, you won
the lottery this morning. So everybody's brains are in
different state. And so that it's that if the
leader can get everybody synchronized with each other and
with them, they're going to have a much higher likelihood of
achieving their objectives. And that's, I believe why like
really effective speakers, right?
Our, you know, our really effective leaders are often
really, you know, they should be really great communicators.
That's how that you get everybody In Sync.
And in my, you know, I don't know that I'm such a great
speaker in terms of doing that, but my, you know, my shortcut is
the sort of poor man's synchrony builder is to tell a really bad
joke. So at the, you know, beginning
of every class, I tell some really bad science joke and
everybody either laughs or groans.
They typically groan, but they're groaning.
Together they're. Groaning together and they hear
each other groaning together because now they're all locked
in. They're like, we all feel the
same way, you know, and they're emotionally synchronized at that
moment, you know, and they're paying attention and they're in,
they're in it's. Fascinating to think about these
things we take for granted and think of it as, like, tactics
for speaking or just, you know, oh, that that yeah, you got to
be a little more humorous or, you know, enhance your
storytelling. But really what you're doing is
you're enhancing the synchrony of the audience.
That's right. What are like some very like,
you know, imagine they're like some narrow hacks that you can
share with with a leader who's looking to improve their
capacity to get their teams synced.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, you got to make time, time and space
for them to actually talk with each other.
So if you go in and you're like, let's just get right down to
work, you're missing that, you know, probably really crucial
few moments to build synchrony so that people can more
effectively. And you think you're being like,
listen, hey, we got to focus on performance, not the soft stuff,
but actually by getting to know each other, that enhances
performance. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, absolutely. And this is, you know, I, I was
telling you earlier, we've been working with PwC on a primer, a
guide for helping boards which are tasked with like really
challenging, you know, couple big decisions, you know, and
typically they're not together, you know, they're meeting
whatever quarterly or maybe twice a year or something.
So there's this sense that like we just got to get right down to
work and start executing, but then they're not taking that
time to have a bit of authentic conversation communication,
which re either establishes or re establishes the synchrony
that will enable them to, you know, be able to process
information better to be make sure they're all engaged, that
they're not distracted. So, so I would say, you know,
there's a number of things here. There's like create, create the
conditions for that time, make time and space right?
Model that so you model the behavior.
It's model the behavior itself, because that's contagious as
well from our social brain is everybody.
'S looking up with the leader and and sort of.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, mimicking in some ways.
Some way they don't know it, it's subconscious, but but it
is, it is contagious emulating. Yeah, Yeah.
So you guys make time and space model the behavior, make eye
contact. That actually is the first step
in get, you know when when you're face to face with someone
that begins to synchronize your brain activity really while
you're making eye contact. Yeah.
So think about then. Why would somebody have
resistance to making eye contact?
Well, there, there, there are a variety of reasons.
I mean, there are differences amongst people, people with
social anxiety, for example, it's harder to make eye contact.
There are some cultural differences, but in general we
make eye contact, you know, as as humans, people on the autism
spectrum typically or often don't make eye contact.
And the reasons why are are probably, you know, they're,
they're different reasons why? Because it's a, it's a spectrum,
right? But so those are some of the the
reasons. But I think also what's what's
happening now? You know, we talked about this
experiment that was been run on, you know, the youth of the world
beginning around 2010 with the introduction of smartphones and
then social media shortly thereafter.
Is that, and look, this is like the work of Jonathan Haidt and
Twangi and other people that now when you got this and now you're
staring at your phone, it's fractures attention.
Now I'm not paying attention to the thing that normally would be
the most important thing in my world, which is the other person
that I'm here with. And especially if that's
happening during the adolescence, which is a, a
critical period for developing social and emotional skills.
So just think of it, you know, I, I, I think this is not just a
metaphor that, you know, these tools in the Swiss Army night,
right? They're kind of like muscles.
Or you can think of it as like, you can sharpen them or dull
them. If you're not sharpening them,
then they're going to get dull, right?
Or they're like a muscle. And when you exercise, it gets
stronger. When you don't exercise it, it
atrophies. And so anecdotally, I had been
hearing for, you know, the last, you know, eight years or, you
know, certainly that younger people were kind of showing up
in the workforce lacking where their social emotional skills
are not as well developed as in previous generations.
And there's now data on on that as well.
And I can't remember the study who did it, but it came out like
a year and a half ago or two years ago maybe.
And it was all survey based, but of recruiters who said that it
was, you know, some really high percentage of applicants for
jobs, they come up for an interview, could not make eye
contact. And one of that's the first
step. I mean, that what I'm, you know,
we talked about social brain network, like my brain makes an
inference about what's important based on what you're looking at,
that you're not looking at me, right?
That tells me I'm not important. And then we also failed to begin
to build that right synchrony, which is the foundation of trust
and communication. You are at the world's best
business. School arguably right.
You always trade places graded very highly and by other
measures. Of daily so so you're teaching,
you know, weekly, daily and and working with researchers you're
working with and teaching the future yes of our world.
I wouldn't you say like America. Because these these they're from
everywhere our. People from everywhere and
they're going to go back to their homeland.
I have three questions for you. OK, What keeps you up at night?
OK, What is exciting you from a hopeful standpoint?
And then if you had the opportunity to sort of give
advice to that large group of people we might call the future
leaders, the future generation of our world, what would that
that be so? Such easy question.
Yeah, so easy. Alright, let's start with the
What keeps you? Up at night, Yeah, it's AI right
now. So it is, you know, it's
something and I think it's, I'm not the only one, you know, it's
changing, it's improving. Because you're using it and and
and you can't fall asleep. You know, there's that too.
I mean, it's exciting and it's amazing and like it's.
Incredible double edged sword. Yeah, but you know the and we're
I I believe we're already seeing it, you know, the the impacts on
labor markets, right dislocation I think will be they are they're
going to be profound. I mean, that was clear to me
when, you know, ChatGPT first came out.
How could that not be? And you know, some sectors, some
jobs are more exposed than others, but that, you know,
that's going to be potentially huge.
And you know, for those who might be unaffected directly,
like losing jobs or whole professions kind of being taken
over by AI, if you're still remaining, you're going to be
working alongside side AI or with AI.
So that's also another, you know, that's another source of
fracturing relationships with other humans, potentially
because you're spending more time in a screen, you know?
Your new Co worker, yeah exactly, may not be human.
It may not be human right. I think it's already happening.
There are there are companies and organizations where they're
where they're that there are. He raises like massive
implications based on literally everything.
Everything we just talked about. So that is scary and you know,
the ultimately, you know, we might be setting conditions for
a lot of societal upheaval and and it could be really
challenging and and getting back to that question of, you know,
this evolution is not accelerating to, you know, to
keep up. So and even culture isn't.
And so like this is happening so fast that our ability to, to
adapt, I think is, well, we'll, we shall see.
But it, it, it is something that humans have not had to adapt to
that pace and magnitude of change, you know, of
expectations for life. I mean everything.
The reordering of society from from birth to death.
You know, but I do love education.
Everything. Yeah, Everything, yeah.
Work, life, the whole thing. But I do love what you started
with, which was that, you know, as as human evolution sort of
inches along and technological evolution is is.
Yeah, increasingly a hockey stick.
Yes. What bridges that gap?
If I had a third arm. Yeah.
Could very. I think that's what we really
need, leadership. Yeah, we really need leaders
for. And that that that's the message
in in this book as well. So that was the first question,
the second. One that's keeping up at night
about. I guess I would say like, I, I
mean, I'm excited about all the work we're doing.
I think it's, I don't know, we're doing some really bleeding
edge work where we're actually combining AI and neuroscience
into to create new kinds of models, which we call human
brain digital twin. Human brain, so everybody's.
Talking about digital twins, which is like, but, but it's
based purely on, you know, it's like I I've run this video, you
know, this podcast through an AI that's going to pull out all the
visual features, what's happening and all the and, and,
and sentiments and text, right And it's it can digest that and
you know, yeah, essentially create a replica of us and our
interactions. What we do is we take that, but
we also passive brain data like so we started this in an in
media like advertising and and TV shows and whatnot.
You just have people watching this stuff and and then we're
trying to predict things like sales, you know, out in the
marketplace and even change in stock prices and things like
that. So you know, the AI, you know,
regular old digital twin, regular old digital twin, this
does it OK, does pretty good. The brain data does better on
its own, but when you combine them and create a new model, a
new deep neural network model, that is like super powerful.
From a predictive intelligence. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
So once we had that foundation, we're now deploying that kind of
platform for other uses. So in one case, you know,
working with a major global financial services company to
help them develop a new product, which essentially a, a financial
companion that lives in your phone that will be personalized
so that it is, it doesn't feel like you're banking.
It's like your friend, but it's a it's, but it's also a
financial planner when it makes you engaged and you feel great
and you're getting the daily wins, like I got a Starbucks
coffee or whatever, but also feel secure, like Peace of Mind
that things are going to be good for retirement, right?
And, you know, so it's, it's going to listen to all your
aspirations and, you know, figure you out, create a digital
twin of your brain right to then that's what we'll sort of live
in there. And we're, we're doing this
incredible applying this in other, you know, for other, you
could imagine, just sort of lather, rinse and repeat a whole
variety, you know, true human brain, digital twin of great
leaders, for example. So this, this will leave me to
like, if I, you know, I'm giving you 2 answers for each of these
questions, but the other one is like I, if I put my real
optimist hat on, maybe we thread the needle just right.
Maybe that actually lets us get back to the basics of life, the
things that really matter, like human interaction, human
relationships, community, spirituality, I would say is
part of that because we don't have to do the work, right?
I mean, yeah, we derive identity and, and some pleasure I have
from work. But why don't we like work in
the garden together? Or you know.
Instead of completing our our weekly report.
Yeah, or like, OK, now you know what, instead I'm going to focus
my my time and energy on playing music with other people.
Or, you know, it's kind of like, you know, the utopia of Star
Trek, you know, the original Gene Roddenberry, you know,
which is like all needs are taken care of.
And so your your job is just be the best you you can be, right.
So that. Would be really interesting.
That would be awesome. I don't, you know, I'm trying to
wear my optimist hat as much as I can.
It's usually not first thing in the morning.
Usually it's more of like AI Doomer, you know, reading,
reading whatever happened, what, you know, yesterday.
OK. So those are two questions and
the third one, the third one was just.
Like, you know, what advice would you give?
You know, imagine you're sitting at Huntsman Hall in front of our
many students that will go on to, you know, 10 years from now,
be CEOs, leaders in the world. What advice would you give them
now? Yeah.
You know, I think that my experience with the students at
Wharton undergrad and MBA is they they kind of get it like
they especially MBA students, they spend most of their time
networking. And I think, you know, you could
say that that's like, well, I don't know, it's it's like
skeevy somehow, because it's just about like knowing those
people. Who knows who?
But but if you're doing it really sincerely and sincerity
is a big part of to get the most out of this, you know, health
wise, brain health wise, etcetera.
But you know, really getting a strong foundation in in social
emotional skills. That's going to be the key to
leadership. It already is, but it even more
so into the future. Also key to resilience.
That is, you know, I think probably the number one
cornerstone, you know, our we're wired to connect and that is the
key to our resilience as individuals and as a species.
You know why we're still here? On the certainly the case with
the monkeys, yeah, I mean it was the social brain and the social
connection which was the highest correlated feature that, you
know, determines survival or demise and.
The power of us. United we stand, divided we
fall. Wow, so so really it would be
double down on connection, yes and keep growing that social
brain network yes and think of it as a muscle.
It's not, it's not a, it's a. Use it or lose it, you know?
Yeah, it, it is, you know, I think this is, you know, advice
to everybody, you know, is, is like, we're always looking for
the easy way out. Take a pill to get, you know,
Yeah. Skinny or to get ripped, you
know or AI to do your work for you but you know you got to do
the hard work like if. Is the social brain Ozempic?
No, there's social brain exempic.
You know, it's like if you want to, you know, compete at the
highest levels in sport, you know, you're going to have to
show you're a hockey player. Let's say, you know, show up at
5:00 AM or whatever. You.
You no. Escaping.
No escaping, you've got to do it.
And you know, the same is true for, for life and for, for our
ability to connect with each other and live with each other
and work with each other. Incredible advice.
We covered a lot of ground, a lot of ground and and yet we
land in a very simple place that arguably would be the answer
for. Hundreds and thousands of years
back and and despite the complexity of our times and the
fact that in two years from now they're probably be robots in
this room and all over, it's still about exercise, that
social brain establish human connection and and repeat and
repeat and grow. Yeah, I love that we stuck the
landing. All right, What's the Olympic
metaphor? Thank you so much, Michael.
This was a fantastic experience. I feel like we've gone on a
journey. And if you haven't had a chance
to read the the Leader's Brain, this has been updated and
expanded. I have the I've, I've just
finished the original now. I got a this one.
Yeah, absolutely. This is yours.
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, I'll take it. No, it's good.
And thank you so much, Michael. Thank you.
Such a pleasure to be here, as always, to get to hang with you,
Jonathan.