Adam Grant On The Secrets Of Strong Relationships In A Lonely World

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, a bestselling author, and the host of Re:Thinking. This conversation explores our modern disconnection and Adam’s practical tools for finding our people. We discuss his backstory, how screens create a facsimile of connection, the four kinds of friendship, why first impressions can be misleading, reserving judgment while setting boundaries, and more. Adam is a generous thinker. This exchange is an invitation to rethink how we connect. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Kohler Health: Get 10% off Dekoda with code RICHROLL10👉🏼https://www.kohler.com/kohlerhealth Squarespace: Use code RichRoll to save 50% off your first order of a website or domain👉🏼https://www.squarespace.com/RichRoll Airbnb: Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much👉🏼https://www.airbnb.com/host Freaks of Nature: Save 20% with code RICHROLL👉🏼https://www.freaksofnature.com Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% off your first order of DS-01®👉🏼https://www.seed.com/RichRoll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors👉🏼https://www.richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at https://www.voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:29Speaker 01

  You can spend about 75% of your time alone. But if you start to exceed that 75% number, you're in trouble.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  New York Times bestselling author.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  And the organizational psychologist Adam Grant.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Offering practical guidance for strengthening bonds with friends, relatives, and colleagues.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  I think a relationship in which you can't be candid is actually not a relationship. It's a charade. What most people do is they say things like, I love you, but no, I love you. And therefore, I'm going to tell you this.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  This is illustrated through this roller coaster you've been on with Brene Brown.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  I came out of that very public fight with somebody I'd met once for five minutes in a green room before a speaking event. I swore I would never talk to her again. It's almost amusing how often I find myself violating the very things I study and teach.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  This epidemic of loneliness, moving us further and further apart from each other.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  If you list your friends, and then they list their friends, only about half of your friends list you back. If your goal is for me to like you, come to one of my events that I invite you to.

• 2:33Speaker 04

  I know.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Rich ghosted me and he doesn't like me is how I'm feeling right now. What are we now? I mean, are we allies? Are we pals? Are we none of the above? Are we just associates?

• 2:48Speaker 04

  So Adam, it's so nice to meet you in person for the first time. We did this during the pandemic on Zoom, but finally I got you here.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  I remember it well. Glad to be back.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  I appreciate it. The, the occasion for this conversation is your new book, Vibe, which we're going to focus on today. To me, I'm curious if people ask you like, why did you write this book? Or what was the impetus to this? And I want to hear the whole origin story behind it. But to me, it feels like a, a natural extension of Think Again. Like Think Again is all about like, how can we better understand each other? And this is taking it a step further to say, okay, now we know how to understand each other. How can we more deeply connect with each other in a meaningful and, and kind of like longstanding, sustainable way?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Nailed it. Done. I have nothing further to add, Your Honor.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  But there was, you know, a few kind of inciting incidents, like a sort of one in your background, and then a more recent one that made you, that made this feel more timely and pressing.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Definitely. I think from a personal perspective, yeah, I was a very shy nerdy introvert as a kid. I'm still an introvert. I think I'm still nerdy. I'm less shy than I used to be. And I got bullied in elementary school. My friend group dropped me in middle school. And I kind of, at that point in my life, felt like people don't want to talk to me for the most part. And I suddenly realized a few years ago, sitting on stage, that I went from people not wanting to have conversations with me to strangers listening to me have conversations with other people. And that transformation is fascinating. And I keep having experiences of meeting people and feeling like, wow, we just had instant chemistry. But I also still have experiences where I see

• 4:37Speaker 01

  people that I know well and like a lot. And sometimes it's just awkward, or we stumble our way through it. And I really wanted to understand how do we vibe with more of the people more of the time?

• 4:48Speaker 04

  What is your definition of vibe? Like, we know the kind of casual, like, oh, you know, that person has a vibe, or we're vibing. And I don't feel like we really have pinned down what that actually means. There's a sort of mystical ephemeral like quality to it. And you're kind of taking that and trying to drill it down into something practical.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  I want to. So I, I think about a vibe as the quality of a connection between people. And neuroscientists have studied this and shown that when two people feel like they're vibing, their heartbeats and their brainwaves actually start to synchronize. And so they're literally vibrating in rhythm together.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  And this is something, I mean, the core thesis is essentially like upending this notion that it just is something like, you know, I just don't vibe with that person to this idea that it's something that you construct and that you can build and work on.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Bingo. And it's actually easier in a lot of situations than we might realize.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Tell the story about your LA Talks experience, because that's, that's sort of the way into this discussion. Yeah.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I mean, it's fitting that we're doing this in LA, I think. So I, let's see, three years ago, I was on book tour for my last book. And Rain Wilson from the office was, was going to be the host. And he texted me the night before, and he said, I've, I've COVID, I can't come. And I thought, who could possibly replace Dwight Schrute? And I didn't want to let the audience down. I also wanted to make sure it was a great event for my publisher. And I basically started emailing and texting everyone interesting I knew in LA. And the first person to respond was Jennifer Garner, who I had met once over Zoom for half an hour a few years earlier. And she said, I got you. And she skimmed through the book in the car on the

• 6:37Speaker 01

  way to the event. And we proceeded to have one of those riveting conversations I've ever had in my life. And we ended up releasing it as a podcast. And I got all this feedback about how great our chemistry was. Where did that come from? She wasn't prepared at all. I didn't know what I was getting into. We had no real plan. And it was a great experience of, you know, the vibe just feeling like magic. But as a social scientist, I want to know what, what actually caused it? And how do we create more of those kinds of interactions?

• 7:08Speaker 04

  What happened was you went into that green room and trying to like, you know, how do I connect with this person? What's my strategy? Let me ask her about her life, et cetera. And she kind of flipped the equation on you.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  She did. She actually started, she, she, she answered a couple of my questions. And then she said, no, no, no, I don't want to, I don't want to ruin the dynamic. What we should do is, we should start riffing like we would if we're on stage. And so she actually, we did a rehearsal almost live. It was different topics.

• 7:39Speaker 04

  She's an actor.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, she knows, she knows what she's doing. She's, she's done her fair, fair share of chemistry reads over her career. But what I never really thought about before is, and this is ironic to say in a podcast, because we, we often have long-form conversations. But one of the rhythms that you see in successful conversations is people go back and forth more often. Sometimes it's called burstiness, where it seems like the interaction is literally bursting with energy and ideas. And in an interview, that rarely happens, right? Somebody asks a question, they tee it up, you give your two or three minute soliloquy, and then next question. And Jen was creating this much more natural riff, which then we carried on stage.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  All right. Well, similarly, here we are sitting across from each other. I had a one-hour Zoom experience with you. I have a sense of, you know, how you, how you behave and how you act. And I've seen you in many interviews, but I don't know you, you know, and I want this to be great. And so I'm nervous. And how do I, how do I get Adam to like me? Like, what is your advice about how you and I can create a vibe so that this is, you know, this becomes more dynamic of, of an exchange than it would ordinarily or otherwise?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  This is very meta.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Well, I already like you, Rich. I admire you. And, you know, that's not just because of the way that you turned your life around after your struggles with addiction. It's not just because of your extraordinary athletic achievements. It's also because of, I think, all the time about the lighthouse observation that you made last time we talked, about how you didn't feel like you, you needed to be an evangelist, selling a tool like meditation. Yeah, I have such a vivid memory of that. And I think all the time about how I can be more of a lighthouse. And so I think if you and I are, are trying to maximize our vibe, I guess the question is, what do we need to shine a light on together?

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Yeah. The way I always approach these conversations is trying to figure out, like, I'm not a psychologist, but like, what animates this person? And what can I say, even in the conversation before the podcast, to establish some degree of trust? And I would say that my go-to move is generally to lead with some degree of vulnerability, you know, to establish like, hey, like, I want this to be open. I trust you with this thing about me. And maybe I can go through this person's life and, and, and find some similarities, like you have diving, I have swimming, you know, I grew up in Michigan, also, you know, like, like, how can I, how

• 10:08Speaker 04

  can I work that in, you know, it's so that it feels natural, so that we're like, kind of on a level that we wouldn't be able to, you know, kind of achieve, or that I would have to work very hard to accomplish.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you, you already did it, right? Even just saying you were a little nervous. That, that was a display of vulnerability. And, you know, it immediately, it leads me to say, wait, Rich is the host. Why would he be nervous? I'm the one who's supposed to be nervous as a guest.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Well, it's, you know, the other thing we share is, is being chronic people pleasers. I want you, my, my goal is, I want you to like me, you know, like, that gets, that gets in the way of like, trying to just get something out of you that is helpful to the audience. Like, I'm here to serve the audience, but I have this other agenda. How do I balance these things? I don't know. You know, like, I've done this 1,000 times plus, and I'm still nervous because I want it to be good. And I want it to be good for you, too. I want you to leave and feel like, oh, that was worth my time.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Well, I have no doubts about that. But also, I mean, that's, that's a good nervous energy, isn't it? That anxiety is a sign that you care.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's the same, it's the same kind of butterflies that you would get like before a race or before a dive or something like that. It's like, you know, you want to perform well. It's not like fear. It's more like. Like expectations that you're placing on yourself, I suppose.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Which I think is fair. So I do have to say, though, if your goal is for me to like you, come to one of my events that I invite you to.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  I know.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Like, Rich ghosted me and he doesn't like me is how I'm feeling right now.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  This is a perfect setup to get into the material in the book because this is my core dilemma. I mean, first of all, for anybody that doesn't know Adam, I have never seen somebody so Johnny on the spot with email. Like, I haven't emailed you that many times, but every time I do, you reply instantaneously. I know how busy you are. I'm like, this is an insane superpower. I don't know how you do this. Like, I am the worst. I have these avoidant tendencies, but also my communication just stacks up. And then it's just very difficult to respectfully be corresponding with all of these people in the world. And I carry around all this guilt about it. And that is a segue into kind of the challenges

• 12:22Speaker 04

  of my relationships and my friendships, especially as I get older. You know, this becomes like something that I'm trying to solve for. Like, I've been pretty good lately about reconnecting like with my college friends. But how do I make new friends? And, you know, the kind of tableau in the background. And probably the real reason that you wrote this book right now is because of this, you know, epidemic of loneliness and our increasing, you know, like sort of relationship with screens that have create this facsimile of connection while also kind of moving us further and further apart from each other. And now all of the AI tools that are supplanting

• 13:06Speaker 04

  human communication on digital devices that are even moving the needle further in the wrong direction.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm worried about all of those things. And I think it didn't used to be so hard. You didn't have to keep up with an inbox in order to keep up with another human being. You showed up at school, you showed up at work, you went to whatever third place you happened to run into people at, whether it was a library or a bar or a gym. And increasingly, we can live our lives completely isolated. And the weird thing about that, Rich, is there's a big debate among social scientists about whether we even have a loneliness epidemic at all, or whether it's an aloneness epidemic. People are spending more time alone.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  How do you distinguish the difference?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  So loneliness is about how you feel. Do you feel isolated and excluded? Aloneness is about how you spend your time. What are you doing? How much are you around other people? And the aloneness is clear. I mean, Robert Putnam told us a quarter century ago that we were bowling alone. And now we're golfing alone and we're playing video games alone and we're eating alone. And those trends have all continued. But on the one hand, Americans feel, on average, more isolated than the typical person anywhere in Europe. But on the other hand, it's not so clear that people are distressed by this. And I think that's actually part of the problem, that a lot of people say, you know, I'm content to see no other humans in a day. I like the fact that, you know, I can dash my food and I can eat in silence and I can binge a movie.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  And I think in the short term, we've kind of orchestrated our lives to create these dopamine hits that in the long run, leave us empty of real connection. But I think we don't always feel the pain right away.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  What is the message to that person who thinks they're perfectly fine in that habit loop?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Well, my read of the data is you can spend about 75% of your time alone without feeling lonely. But if you start to exceed that 75% number, you're in trouble. And I think what that means is we need to figure out how to connect and reconnect, which goes right to the heart of your question of how do I make new friends and how do I keep up with old ones?

• 15:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, I had Anand Giridharadas on the show recently. And he said something that I've been thinking a lot about, which is the idea or the fact that we have off-laid our systems of human connection to these, you know, to a select few tech oligarchs who are the exact people who are sort of the least kind of qualified to manage human interaction. Like, these are not people who are known for their, you know, kind of capacity for that skill set specifically. Like, they tend to be, you know, coders or people, you know, like introverted coders or whatever.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  And they're like, we figured out how humans should interact and connect. And like, actually, are you the right people to be designing this for us? And yet here we are, we're all like living in this world that they've created.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Are you suggesting that tech oligarchs are not masters of human relationships, Rich? Is that what's happening right now?

• 16:06Speaker 04

  I mean, you know, aren't they masters of all things? Galaxy brains that we should basically, you know, give over our freedoms to, Adam?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, it's ironic in hindsight because the origin story of a lot of social media was people who had a hard time connecting.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Looking for ways to connect.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  Solution, right?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Yes. But it was not intended to replace or displace the real interactions that were working fine for probably the majority of humans.

• 16:36Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. And here we are. All right. So help me learn how to make friends.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Why are you looking for friends?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Because friendships are inextricably related to my own feelings of happiness. And I would say that I fall into this pattern where I'm at home with my family and that's great. And then I have someone like you who's coming in here and I prepare for this person and I come in and I have a meaningful social interaction and then I kind of like go home. And you're my big social interaction for the day. And the great thing about this job that I have is that sometimes people like yourself, like they do become friends. But I also am managing so many things and like, like, like most people, like I'm just busy. I'm just trying to get through the day. And we also live kind of in a remote area.

• 17:30Speaker 04

  And here in Los Angeles, it's like, oh, do you want to go to this dinner party? Or do you want to, it's like, this is going to involve like an hour and a half of driving there and an hour and a half back. And like, do I really want to do that? I'm going to be up too late. I'm going to be tired. And, you know, all of that, right, plays into it. And so as a result, I end up sort of more misanthropic than is healthy.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Okay. All right. So I have some ideas for you. First of all, let's talk about what kinds of friends you're looking for more of. Can we talk about allies, pals and companions?

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, because, because this plays into how we define what a friend is and some confusion around that.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I was stunned to read a whole series of studies by sociologists showing that if you list your friends and then they list their friends, only about half of your friends list you back.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  Which is really shocking and depressing.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  Very depressing until you realize, oh, a big part of that asymmetry is we have different definitions of what a friend is. Some people, they need to know your kids' names and birthdays and have, have the ability to pick up the phone and cold call you or pop in to visit you with no warning before they will say, yeah, we're friends. And others will call you a friend the second time they meet you. And I think we need probably clearer and more nuanced language about, well, what kind of friendship is this? And what role do we play in each other's lives?

• 18:50Speaker 04

  And you've identified four categories.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I think the three meaningful ones are allies, pals and companions.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  The first one is associates. That's sort of like, Arthur Brooks calls this deal friends.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a very transactional relationship. It might be your carpool neighbor. It could be your carpenter.

• 19:06Speaker 04

  Right. So we have allies, we have pals, and we have companions.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  So allies are people you pursue goals with. They're your go-to collaborators. They usually have complementary skills. You would love to start a project with them or maybe even a company with them. Pals are people you have fun with. You'd probably invite them to maybe go surfing together. Or maybe you show up at a concert together because you love the same band. And then companions are people you confide in. They're people that you count on for emotional support. You might call them in a medical emergency. And I think a lot of friendships fizzle. And this is not unique to friendships. It's also true with, with professional relationships and even family bonds. A lot of our connections fall apart because we're not on the same page about what kind of bond we're trying to build.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  You, you want to be my pal, but I think we're just allies. And so we're like ships passing in the night.

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Mm hmm. So what, what is to be done? I would imagine in every interpersonal dynamic, there is some degree of asymmetry, a difference of expectations, right? Like, some person is like, oh, I really want this person to be my friend. And that other person is thinking like, this person's cool to like, go have a coffee with. But, you know, I'm going to kind of like create the boundary there.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I think the, the starting point is really to ask, which of these dynamics are missing in my life? So one of the things I did after I finished writing the book was I wrote a little quiz to take to try to figure out what's your default approach to interaction and then what might you be overlooking? And whenever you write a psychometric assessment, the first thing you have to do is test drive it yourself. And so I took the quiz and I came out with my results and realized I approach almost every person I meet as a potential ally. And I'm constantly asking, you know, what are you trying to accomplish this year? What's your biggest challenge? And then I want to try to find a way to help. And I'm just cutting off the opportunity to just enjoy each other's company.

• 21:01Speaker 04

  Right. Like, the other person's like, can't we just like have lunch, dude?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I want to solve your problem.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  I want to talk to you about, you can see everything.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yes, and I.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  I don't need you to solve my life.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  No, if I can't fix something that's bothering you, then why am I here?

• 21:16Speaker 04

  How does that work in your marriage?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Not always. Well, Alison has to remind me. Just sympathy, not solution sometimes. But.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  What's interesting about it is I realized, okay, maybe I have room for more pals and companions in my life because my relationships are so heavily ally-driven. And so I became obsessed with playing padel last year, or paddle, whatever you want to call it. And you need three other players. And I thought, okay, let me take all my favorite people in Philly that I never spend enough time with, that I always put off, oh yeah, we should hang out, we should catch up. And let me invite them to play. And we've started a league now. It's our own league. It's a WhatsApp group. And somebody jokingly called me the commissioner recently. I just send a weekly poll. And then whenever we've got a quorum, we show up and play. It is a blast. There's no goal outside of the activity. But it's a completely different kind of interaction than I've had in my life. And so let me put

• 22:09Speaker 01

  the question back to you and ask you, what kinds of bonds are you missing or looking for?

• 22:14Speaker 04

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• 24:56Speaker 04

  I think what I'm missing is more kind of community-based interaction, like groups of people. You know, like because of, because of like, you know, we have a bit of an empty nest now, and we do live in this kind of quiet part of the, of town here. And so I'm pretty good when it comes to like, really deep stuff, and with my old friends. But new friends, more casual kind of relationships, activity-based stuff, you know, run clubs serve the same purpose. You know, I think there's also, and I'm interested in what the science says about this, like, the idea of participating in a, in vigorous physical activity with other people, something about

• 25:43Speaker 04

  having an elevated heart rate, or, or like focusing on a, on executing a skill when you're with other people. That's obviously conducive to a lot of ease in, you know, kind of taking away the anxiety of a new interaction. But I also think it lends itself to depth. Like, some of the best conversations I've had, often with people I don't know that well, is out on a long run. And you just, there's something about it, like where you just start opening up. And like, suddenly you're having this incredible conversation that makes you feel much more connected to that person. And I've always been curious, like, is there some, some kind of dopaminergic or hormonal thing that occurs when you're

• 26:23Speaker 04

  in that, you know, kind of low-grade, elevated aerobic state?

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're on to something important here. So I think intense shared experiences accelerate connection. We have lots of evidence for that. And part of that is because when your hearts are racing in unison, it creates a feeling of synchrony. You feel like, you know, we're literally moving in lockstep. And we're in harmony together. We have a shared purpose. We are kind of on the same path. And we also don't have the same, we don't have the pressure of having to lock eyes. Especially for introverts, eye contact can be extremely overstimulating. And I think sometimes just staring ahead at the road. Like, okay, sweating together is social grease. And, you know, we can just,

• 27:10Speaker 01

  we can chat without worrying about how is, what am I saying going to be evaluated? And if I, if I express some vulnerability, is the other person going to judge me as weak? Or are they going to see that as an act of courage? It's just easier to be in a shared flow state, where you're not second guessing or self-monitoring all the time.

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is the value of our digital interactions. Like, it's easy to be dismissive of them altogether. Like, okay, this is obviously contributing to loneliness and isolation, and, you know, all these things that we, we touched on a little bit here. But I have ongoing text conversations with people that I've connected with online that I've never met, and maybe never will meet. And they do, there is something nourishing about that. You know, and I'm talking to this person that I always wanted to meet. Maybe I'll never meet them. But short of this platform, that wouldn't have even been possible. And also recognizing that, like, my whole career

• 28:07Speaker 04

  is sort of like, emerged out of these platforms that are now, you know, kind of notable for the way that we, they have driven us apart.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  I think there's something to that. I think, one of my mentors, Jane Dutton, studied high-quality connections. And she, one of her big findings was that momentary, enjoyable interactions actually add to our wellbeing, even if there's not a relationship that comes out of them. And I think that a lot of us are overlooking that. I think, like, we minimize friction. Like, you don't want to have to say hi to the Uber driver, or to the barista. But those kinds of pleasant exchanges, they actually have a meaningful effect. They allow you to feel seen. They allow you to feel hopeful about human nature. And I think, there's no reason why they can't happen digitally. I think the expectation, though, is often

• 28:58Speaker 01

  that, okay, if I haven't converted this communication into a lasting bond, then I've failed. No, it's perfectly okay to have a nice interaction with somebody, and then not build a relationship out of it.

• 29:11Speaker 04

  Talk a little bit about first impressions. You have some interesting, somewhat contrarian thoughts on this. This idea that, on first, you know, on, on first brush, you kind of get a read of somebody, and our intuition kicks in, like, yeah, this is somebody I want to get to know better, or they're not. Then we have kind of organizational structures around this, speed dating and the like. Where do, where do our intuitions lead us astray? And what is it that you want to say about what, what's lacking in terms of relying too much on that for the future of a relationship?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  I think the big mistake we make when we form a first impression of people is we've only seen a slice of their personality. We've seen a particular pattern in a particular context. And that may not be what they show up like if we were to meet them in a different setting, or if we were to talk about them, if we were to talk with them about a different topic. So I think, I think often about examples of great friendships and collaborations that almost didn't happen at all, because people misperceived each other.

• 30:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have a series of examples in the book.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  I mean, so let's take some easy examples. Let's take the two computer science students who met on a Stanford orientation tour, and could not stand each other. They found each other extremely obnoxious. And they got into these very petty arguments. And then, fast forward a year or two, they're in the computer lab together, and they realize they both think search is really inefficient. And Larry and Sergey build Google together. They clashed in one context where they each wanted to one-up the other, and kind of prove their status and intelligence. But now they have a shared project, and they become great allies.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova, similar example. The one that you really dig into is this C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis relationship with Tolkien.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, the, first of all, if they had not become the best of friends, we would not have the Narnia series, and we would not have The Lord of the Rings. They, they were basically both academics who wrote on the side as a hobby. Neither was really succeeding at it. And it wasn't clear that they were ever going to pursue it professionally until they started encouraging each other. But their relationship almost never got off the ground because they met at a faculty meeting. And C.S. Lewis goes home that night and writes in his journal that Tolkien needs a smack or so. And he just, he thinks he's insufferable. He thinks that he is pompous. He thinks that he has these very old fashioned ideas

• 31:52Speaker 01

  about how literature should be taught. And it isn't until months later where they're on, they're on opposite sides of the big fight over the English curriculum at Oxford. Lewis ends up showing up at an Icelandic myth discussion that Tolkien is leading. And he goes because he's always liked Norse gods. And he sees a completely different side of Tolkien. He sees, instead of being serious, he's playful. Instead of being judgmental and dogmatic, he's open minded when talking about these myths. And they end up walking back from this, this basically book club together and staying up until about 2:30 a.m. talking about Thor. And they're pals instantly. And that opens the door for them to become each other's most important

• 32:37Speaker 01

  sounding board for ideas. They challenge each other to, to actually try to write science fiction stories, and those stories go on to plant the seeds of, of their greatest accomplishments. And it would just be so easy to freeze frame and say, all right, you didn't like each other in that faculty meeting. As academics, you're done. Like, this is never going to work. But guess what? You talk about Norse mythology, and low and behold, there is an opportunity to develop compatibility.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  So the lesson that you extract from that for all of us is?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  Well, I think the big lesson is we should think differently about people's personalities. I think, I was trained originally to think about personality as a set of relatively stable traits. So I'm an introvert. I am highly agreeable. I like to get along with people. I am extremely conscientious and goal oriented, and you expect me to be that way all the time. But we all have these if then signatures where in different contexts or different situations, different aspects of us come out. So if I'm on a stage, suddenly I don't look as much like an introvert anymore. And my inner extrovert emerges. If I believe that you're wrong about a matter of social science, I might sound extremely disagreeable and become a logic bully.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I'm basically trying to defend a principle that's important to me, which is intellectual integrity and the pursuit of truth. But you will see a part of my personality that is not my default. If I am playing paddle with this group of friends that I really enjoy, I might actually become less goal oriented and not worry about whether I win, although that's pretty rare for me. But I think we should, we should look at other people in terms of, okay, I saw a particular then. What is the if that brought, that brought that out in them? And then if I didn't like it, are there different ifs? They could have listed a different then.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Right, we meet somebody, maybe they're having a bad day or they're in a specific set of circumstances that are, you know, creating the set of conditions to manifest a trait that you don't like. And then we project that trait onto them as, as being a constant, as opposed to saying, well, this is context specific. Let me give this person a break. I mean, I think that requires a little bit of humility on our part, like a moment to like step back and, and exercise like a reservation of judgment. Like, we make judgment calls all the time, and we do it generally with little to no evidence to support whatever that judgment is. But once we make it, it becomes fairly intractable and difficult to then kind of backpedal.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  That is very well put. That's what I should have said. And, you know, it reminds me of, there's that saying, I think it's Maya Angelou, who said, when people show you who they are, believe them. And I think people are too quick to accept that at face value. I think somebody engages in one behavior you don't like, and all of a sudden, you're supposed to judge their entire character based on that? No, I think what, I, I think what we should take away from that message is much more nuanced. It's when somebody shows you who they are consistently over time and across different situations, then you should believe them. But let's not over generalize. You saw somebody do something you didn't like in one moment.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  That may not be the defining moment of their life.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  And then the next step from there is how do you create sustained connection with somebody who doesn't see the world the way that you do? Which is really kind of the core disease that we're all suffering from right now.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a huge problem right now. The, the study that I think really shocked me the most was the average person would rather interact with a stranger who shares their politics than a friend who doesn't. Like, I think you just completely misunderstood the meaning of friend. The whole point of, of being friends is to say, I respect enough about you and your values that I can accept that we might not agree on everything.

• 36:41Speaker 04

  Hmm, you have a quote, you have three quotes that kind of define or delineate the themes of the book. But one of them is similarity is not necessary for solidarity.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I, I even believe it. I, I think, yeah, a lot of people assume that similarity attracts. And there is some truth to that. So you are more likely to gravitate toward people who have similar personality traits to you, who have similar backgrounds. The fact that you and I both come from water sports and come from Michigan is an immediate draw. Once similarity has brought us together, it has no ongoing influence on our likelihood of becoming close or staying close. And what matters is not whether we are similar. It's whether we feel similar. And what that depends on is, is basically us building compatibility. It's us developing a shared interest in what happened, and you can see everything. And what can we learn about Elizabeth Holmes?

• 37:36Speaker 01

  From, you know, from this extended observation of somebody who seems to believe her own lies. You and I get fascinated about that together, and we go deep on it together. And all of a sudden, now we've created a sense of similarity. But it doesn't matter whether we were objectively similar or not.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  The unique obstacle of our time is the fact that we can go on somebody's social media platform and scroll through like all the things that they've said, you know, dating back years and years and years. And this is contributing to forming, you know, a, a kind of view of their theory of mind. And then we make a judgment on that before we've even met them. And we, we layer that over them as a template for who this person is prior to even having our first authentic interaction with them. Before all of this, obviously, we could meet people the way that they are. We didn't know whatever, like everybody's opinion on every single thing before we met them. And so now we have to contend with that and overcome this thing

• 38:38Speaker 04

  just to do what we did naturally prior to all this nonsense.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  That's so true. I, you know, I haven't, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I think you, you just captured something really important, which is, people, people are almost using your history on social media as a reference check. And they're trying to pre-cancel you. They're looking for a reason to, to already conclude, we're not a fit, we're not going to match. As opposed to saying, you know what? Everybody is more than the most unpleasant opinion that they've shared. And some people have even left their old opinions out there because they want to remind themselves that they're not proud of every thought they've had. And they shouldn't internalize every idea that comes into their head.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Nor should they necessarily believe every emotion that enters their heart. And I think we're pretty good at giving ourselves that grace and saying, oh, yeah, I was, you know, I was much less mature then. Or I've grown a lot since then. But we don't extend that same grace to others. And I think we do that at our own peril.

• 39:42Speaker 04

  I think we also, and you get into this in the book as well, we, we look at that and we say, all right, well, this is the way this person sees the world, this is what they think. And we then make the leap to say that this is how they're going to behave. There's this whole thing in the book about acceptance. Like, how can we accept people and reserve our judgment? While also setting a boundary around behavior. And these two things are, are very different. But by being able to differentiate these two things, it gives us a way in to connect with people. We can, we can not be okay with how they're behaving in certain ways,

• 40:25Speaker 04

  but we can accept their differences in comparison to, you know, ours.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  That was an aha moment for me when I met my favorite basketball player, Joe Dumars. I'd, I'd grown up. He was my favorite player on The Bad Boys. He was the good guy on The Bad Boys. And Jody had the really interesting experience of having to corral Dennis Rodman, not an easy task. And then later, when he was in the, the front office, he traded for Rasheed Wallace, who was the most volatile player in the NBA. And, and then, an NBA legend actually called him and said, don't do this. This guy is gonna, he's just gonna destroy the vibe on your team. And I think Joe understood something that I didn't, which is, he said, "Look,

• 41:11Speaker 01

  this guy's got a hot temper. And instead of trying to reject that, I can accept that." And so in his first conversation with Rashid, he picks him up from the airport, he says, "Listen, I understand that you're going to fly off the handle if you think a ref makes a bad call. And I accept that. That's okay. You can do that. What I can't have is you getting a technical foul in the fourth quarter. I cannot have you getting kicked out of the game when the game is on the line. And so can you contain whatever outbursts you're going to have to the first three quarters?"

• 41:41Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  And Rashid said, "I got you, Joe D." And he proceeded to have not only an amazing half season, but helped lead the Pistons to the NBA championship. And I think this idea of saying, "I accept your personality. I accept your preferences. I understand that you have these tendencies, but let me contain the damage. Here are behaviors you might engage in that are not okay. Here are situations where expressing that aspect to your personality is not okay." It's such an effective way to deal with people's vices, to say, "I'm not going to eliminate your vices, but I can put them in a box and make sure that they don't cause a lot of harm."

• 42:17Speaker 04

  There's also a lot that goes into how you communicate that message so that it can be received and accepted by the person who's hearing it, right?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think when psychologists study how to get people to change in marriages, they actually find that if you communicate acceptance, your partner is more likely to change. And so my wife, Allison, does this very effectively with me. She used to try to get me to stop being late for everything. And now what she says is, "I understand you have a habit of running late. I understand that you get into a flow state and you lose track of time. I understand that you don't mind if people are late and you expect the same of other people. Here are situations where that's not okay. We cannot show up late to a dinner party where the food is either going to get cold or get burnt. We can't show up late when a bunch of people are waiting for you. An event can't start without you." Like, those are situations where it's really important to be on time.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  And I react so much less defensively when she starts with, "I accept that this is part of you."

• 43:16Speaker 04

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• 46:09Speaker 04

  This gets into how to manage disagreement in a healthy way. And I think what happens in most cases is we pivot to some degree of avoidance. There's a conflict, a blow up, and then we kind of recede into the background. We make a judgment call, like, "Okay, well, I don't want to deal with that person anymore," or-

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Or, "I don't want to deal with that issue. Let's agree to disagree."

• 46:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, right. And just kind of walking away from it. Too sheepish to engage with the idea. And a big call to action in the book is like, "Listen, we have to figure out how to fight in a productive way, in a constructive fashion, and have the hard conversations." And when we do that, we actually emerge from that. Maybe we still don't have a meeting of the minds, but there is connective tissue that takes place. But for many people, and myself included, being kind of an avoidant personality, like, this is a very difficult thing. Like, it's a very fear-inducing thing, you know? And underneath that fear is like, "Well, if I say what I really think, then, you know, I'll be abandoned," or, "You know, this is going to be very unpleasant, and it's not going to go well." And we're making

• 47:17Speaker 04

  our own judgments about a future that has yet to transpire.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a lot of people struggle with this. And I think I would put a few things on the table here to try to change, at least, here's what's helped me think about this differently. First of all, if you look at the research on marriages, it doesn't matter how often you fight. It's how constructively you fight that predicts whether you stay together or split up, and also how satisfied you are in your marriage. And so we don't actually need to worry about, like, "Oh, no, are we arguing too often?" The question is, can we argue in ways that still show love and respect? And it turns out, this is not as hard as most people think. There are ways to fight that keep you on the same side. It's you and the other person against the problem, as opposed to you against each

• 48:04Speaker 01

  other. And my favorite, probably, demonstration of this is, there have been about a dozen experiments where people are encouraged to confront someone that they're currently biting their tongue and being honest with. And so it might be a friend, a coworker, a family member. You're supposed to tell them a hard truth. Some people are randomly assigned to do this. Others aren't. And the question is, what happens in a week or two afterward? A week or two later, on average, you feel closer to the person that you've confronted, and they feel closer to you, too. Because you have shown that you care enough about your relationship that you want to be honest with them. I think a relationship in which you can't be candid is actually not a relationship. It's a charade.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of us are afraid that we're going to damage the relationship if, you know, if we speak our minds. But in reality, those conflicts are more likely to strengthen the bond than they are to disintegrate it. And the reason for that is, when you have to work through a problem together, you are making a commitment to hear each other. You are making a real investment in trying to improve the relationship. We sometimes forget to convey that, or we make the mistake of saying, "Never go to bed angry." And then you only fight when you're angry and tired, which is not a good recipe for healthy conflict.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  But if you remember that what causes conflict to go south is not the message you deliver. It's often the motives that the other person perceives. You can make it really clear, "Rich, I've been actually worrying about having this conversation with you because I really care about our relationship, and I don't want to do anything to jeopardize it." Rich, I, I want to have the kind of bond with you where you can be honest with me. And I feel I owe you that in return. And I feel like I've been letting you down by not getting something off my chest, right? That, that kind of statement makes it very clear. I am, I am making, I am putting myself in a situation that makes me uncomfortable because I care about us and I care about you.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  You have this illustrated graphic cartoon in the book of, of like two people having an argument and in between is like a squiggle that represents the problem, but they're, they're going at each other. And then by distinction, you have them aligned and then they're both like looking at the squiggle as the problem, like we're together and we're going to solve this problem. So it's extracting the problem from the interpersonal dynamic. Another way, or maybe this is a related idea that was a big epiphany for me, is how to, how to engage in, you know, kind of a constructive disagreement in a way that, that isn't identity threatening.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  I think we, we, we kind of co-mingle our identity into these arguments and that's what's making them heated because we feel like the person is being attacked or challenged as opposed to, you know, an idea that the person has or a behavior that the person has. And this is a big piece in recovery also. It's like, the addiction is not the person. The person could be a perfectly good person. They have this condition that makes them behave in a certain way. Let's focus on resolving and solving and healing this behavior and what's caused the under, the underlying like kind of condition that is giving rise to the behavior.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  That's a great parallel. I think one of the things that, that people do constantly, I learned this actually about a quarter century ago, I went through conflict mediation training. And I thought if I could learn to help other people resolve their conflicts, I would be less avoidant myself. And it partially worked because as I helped people try to resolve their conflicts, I saw that that was a muscle they needed to build. And I was basically letting that muscle atrophy by never leveling with other people. And so the idea of, you know, just saying to somebody, hey, like, I'm going to tell you something that, that upset me about your behavior because I respect you as a person, because I care about you as a person. Like, oh, I can communicate that at the same time. What most people do

• 52:11Speaker 01

  is they say things like, I love you, but no, I love you and therefore I'm going to tell you this.

• 52:19Speaker 04

  On some level, this is illustrated through this roller coaster that you've been on with Brene Brown, right?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  It's been, it's been one of the best roller coaster rides I've ever been on.

• 52:32Speaker 04

  Like, like having this kind of colossal conflict and then feeling like the relationship was, you know, kind of irreparable to now you like hosting a podcast together.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Okay. So 2016, I wrote a New York Times piece critiquing the way that people respond to authenticity. And I think, you know, a lot of times people use, I'm just being myself as a smokescreen to be disrespectful or unkind. And I was critiquing that and Brene had the best definition of authenticity that I'd ever seen. And so I quoted her and I thought it was a shout out, only I quoted her out of context. And that's happened to her repeatedly throughout her career. And it did not land well for her and she came back swinging and then I responded swinging. And I came out of that very public fight with somebody I'd met once for five minutes in a green room before a speaking event. I swore I would never

• 53:25Speaker 01

  talk to her again. And I didn't know it, but she was also, she, she was very displeased with me.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Because you thought she was too angry or because you felt like you were too enervated by the whole thing?

• 53:38Speaker 01

  I, I was definitely judging and blaming her. I was like, wow, how, how could you, how could you take this intellectual argument and make it personal? And, you know, why did you go on the attack when I was trying to start an important, important conversation? And, you know, I think she looked at me, I now know, and said, like, here goes, like another quantitative social scientist, like misquoting and misrepresenting qualitative research and doing it in a way, by the way, that might do a disservice to women.

• 54:08Speaker 04

  And not realizing this is a perfect if then situation. In this context, she's going to react in this way, simply because she has a long history of this. And this is what, you know, really agitates her more than anything, but you not knowing that.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  I had no idea I was pushing one of her buttons and then she pushed one of mine back. I thought she was in kind of preacher prosecutor mode as opposed to thinking scientifically, which we talked about last time we were together. And that was, that could have been the end of it. We, we literally did not interact for four years. And in the interim, you know, people kept, people I like and respect kept saying, you know, I think you're really misjudging Brene Brown. I think, you know, she's brilliant. She's extremely generous and caring. She's humble. She's, you know, very eager to find out if she might be wrong because she wants to get it right. And I just rolled my eyes over and over again. I'm like, no, I don't think you know Brene.

• 55:00Speaker 04

  So much for the inner scientist.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. I was not curious at all about whether my hypotheses might be wrong. And then in 2020, I got a call from the US Women's National Soccer Team. And they basically wanted to work on their vibe and try to strengthen their, their team collaboration and culture. And it was, it was the middle of the pandemic and I didn't get as much onsite time with them as I wanted. And so I decided we're going to do a Zoom speaker series and we're going to try to, I'll bring in different experts who, you know, will, will really help all of us learn how we can become a stronger team. So I survey all the players and I say, if you could have anybody on earth speak to you, who would you want to learn from?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  The most common answer by far is Brene Brown. And I was like, my nemesis, no. But I'm all in for Team USA. I want to do everything I can to try to help them win a gold medal. And so I reached out to Brene and I explained the situation and I said, would you be willing to help them?

• 56:02Speaker 04

  Did you acknowledge the beef in that email?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  No. No, I didn't know how to bring it up. I felt like it had been too long and we didn't have enough of a connection. And so I just, I just asked, would you be willing to do this? She replied right away and said, yes. She showed up early. She went above and beyond to help the team and also me. And I saw a completely different side of her.

• 56:23Speaker 04

  At what point did you guys sit down and, and walk through what had happened?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  Like, did she just show up and you guys were both pretending like nothing had happened for a while?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  We did the thing over Zoom and we just, yeah, we didn't even talk about it. It was an elephant in the room. And then I invited her onto my podcast and she invited me onto hers. And I think I was on hers and at the very end, I said, it's up to you whether you want to run this or not, but I just wanted to apologize because I quoted your work out of context and I, you know, I didn't realize I was doing it, but my intentions are not relevant here. I understand the impact that it had on you and I'm sorry for that. And I'm committed to making sure I represent you accurately in the future. And she seemed to appreciate that. She thanked me. She apologized then for, you know, maybe responding a little bit emotionally, but that was the end of it. And we never really talked about it until

• 57:19Speaker 01

  we sat down to start a podcast together earlier this year and said, maybe we should, we should really dig into this.

• 57:24Speaker 04

  But at some point you did recognize that you had taken what she had said out of context. So there was that epiphany. Was that the result of the Zooms you were doing with this team? Because once you then realized that, then I would imagine at some point you're like, okay, I recognize like my side of the street here that needs some repair.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, yeah, I think what happened was we did the, we did the conversation with the soccer team. And then I was just so taken aback by, like, I knew how smart she was. I knew she was going to drop wisdom. I wasn't prepared for the complete rethinking of my opinions of her character that I was about to do. And it hit me hard. Like, wow, not only was I wrong about her, I, I was backward. And so then I went back and rewritten our exchange. And, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't pissed off. And I saw it much more through her eyes. And I realized, yeah, I, I dropped her into the middle of this with no warning. And I was not thoughtful at all about how I did it. And that was a mistake on my part

• 58:31Speaker 01

  and I need to own it.

• 58:33Speaker 04

  We've all had interactions similar to this where there's some kind of miscommunication. It creates a rift. Two people move apart from each other and generally like, it never gets mended, right? And you're somebody who kind of knows better than everyone, you know, like you should have, like you should have had, you should, you know, you should have been able to identify this immediately and go into reparation mode. You didn't, you went on this journey. It all ended well. But to me, what I see is this, this default setting that all of us have as human beings, even somebody who like studies this stuff and has such a, you know, kind of a, a wealth of knowledge and understanding about the

• 59:14Speaker 04

  way the human mind works. We just can't see ourselves clearly, you know, we.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  So hard.

• 59:20Speaker 04

  We, you know, we can identify where our friends and other people are kind of moving in the wrong direction or where, you know, hey, maybe you should think about it this way, or like, you should call that person and say this. But when it comes to our own behavior, we're just unbelievably myopic and we're also resistant to being told otherwise.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  That's so true.

• 59:38Speaker 04

  And we have our version of the story and we tell our friends that version and they affirm it. And then we become more and more entrenched in that narrative. And then it becomes this thing that can, you know, that, that becomes very, very difficult to overcome.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  I it's funny, I'm it's almost amusing how often I find myself violating the very things I study and teach. And I even noticed early in my career that in a teaching semester, I was less hypocritical than in a non-teaching semester, because I would teach a I teach a class on escalation of commitment to a losing course of action, where you make a decision, it doesn't work out as you hoped, but then instead of rethinking it, you double down. And it's not just a sunk cost issue. It's not just an economic problem, it's an ego and emotion problem.

• 1:00:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is identity threatening.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Big time. I want to prove to myself and everybody else that I am a good decision maker, and I am a smart, competent person. And

• 1:00:34Speaker 04

  And what would it mean if you were proven otherwise, given the position and the degree of authority that you hold over this like, subject matter?

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Devastating. Yeah. But, you know, I find myself teaching escalation of commitment. And then in the back of my mind is this, am I escalating my commitment to this feud with Brene Brown right now? Am I guilty of the very thing that I'm trying to warn my students about? Maybe. And, you know, this reminds me a little bit of, have you come across Solomon's Paradox ever?

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Tell me.

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  It's one of my favorite findings in psychology. So it's named after King Solomon, who, you know, apparently gave wise advice sometimes, but couldn't manage his own decisions at all. The finding is that we often give better advice to other people than we show good judgment when we're making decisions for ourselves. And so how can we be wise when we're advising, but foolish when we're choosing, is the big question. And study after study has shown, yeah, you you give somebody else guidance on their choice, and you are full of wisdom, but now you have to make your own choice. And you're kind of ignorant and incompetent. And the main reason this happens, from the data I've read, is that

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  when, when you're making a choice for yourself, you tend to be stuck in the weeds. And you're you're kind of zooming in on all of these specific criteria. Whereas when you advise others, you zoom out, and you can see the big picture and just say, look, here are the two or three most important perspectives to pay attention to here. And so I think one one thing we could take away from this body of research is, if you're ever struggling on a decision, or you're trying to figure out how to get out of a conflict, you should walk somebody else through your guidance on what to do. And then take your own advice, because the advice you give to others is usually the advice you need to take for yourself.

• 1:02:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, the antidote is surrounding yourself with people you trust, whose judgment you trust, and having an open dialogue about what you're going through, and soliciting their input to, you know, make sure that you are thinking correctly, and to hold yourself accountable to better actions. I mean, this is a benefit of like, being in recovery, I'm surrounded with people that are, you know, telling me when I'm off track, and I have a men's group, and, you know, we, we run our decisions by each other. Like, I have so many blind spots, and it's amazing. I've been doing this for like, 10 years, this men's group. And we're just all in these patterns, you know, and despite like, the feedback that we give each other, it's like, we'll find ourselves doing the same thing

• 1:03:08Speaker 04

  again, and again, and again. Like, it's so challenging to step off whatever that hamster wheel of of kind of embedded behavior patterns that, you know, we all are kind of blind to in our own lives. But I also I also think the benefit of that is learning how to receive feedback. And I think in my experience and observation, like, most people are not very good at this. Like, they don't really want feedback, they want affirmation of what it is that they want to do. And I think this goes back to the identity piece, like, negative feedback is identity challenging, as opposed to, here's a, here's a problem, or a creative project that I want to make better. Like, if you're a creative person, and you're writing

• 1:03:53Speaker 04

  a play, or you have a comedy routine, or you're editing a film, like, you bring people in, you trust, you're like, okay, what's not working about? It's not helpful for them to say, this is great. You want to know, like, okay, how do I fix this? And you're not threatened by that, because everybody wants the best for this project. And if you can think of whatever decision you have to make, or problem that you're trying to resolve as a creative project, and detach your identity from it, so you're not threatened by the counsel of other people, it seems like a much better way to navigate these situations and avoid stepping into, you know, potholes.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I think that's a great reframe. I think that's easier to do when you're more confident in your skills. I think often about this research showing that, that novices actually seem to rely more on praise, because they're just looking for encouragement to say, you can do this. Whereas when you become an expert, you're more interested in criticism. And you don't want to know

• 1:04:49Speaker 04

  You also become more calcified around your opinions. If you've been successful, you're like, well, I know how to do this. You know, far be it from this person to like, tell me I'm not doing it right.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  I think I think that's a both a risk, and unfortunately, a common trap that people fall in. And I think a lot of people get caught up in trying to prove themselves, instead of looking to improve themselves.

• 1:05:11Speaker 04

  I want to talk about messy relationships. We have our best friends, our BFFs, we have acquaintances, we have colleagues, all different types of relationships, to your point of, you know, not narrowly defining friendship. But most of us also have people in our lives that we kind of like having around, and we get something out of it. But also, like, there's a lot of drama there. Maybe they're a frenemy. Should I stay friends with this person? Should I create a boundary? What is your thinking around how to navigate this type of scenario?

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Well, several decades of evidence show that when it comes to both your happiness and your physical health, frenemies are actually worse than enemies. And I think a lot of people find this surprising. They think, you know, the most toxic person in your life has to be somebody who's always an adversary, and who's constantly putting you down, and bad mouthing you behind your back, and undermining you. But what the research shows is that ambivalent relationships, where you have mixed feelings toward other people, are actually worse for your well being. Because they're unpredictable. You don't know whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde is going to show up. You don't know whether you should like, move in for a hug, or brace yourself for a brawl. I think people have this all the time with

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  their in-laws. They belittle your parenting, but they're also really good to your kids. And so how should you feel about them? You don't know. You spend all this time and energy trying to predict what's going to happen, and to resolve your uncertainty about it. And that can actually take a toll physiologically. There are experiments where people are brought into the lab to interact with somebody that they have an ambivalent relationship with. And their blood pressure actually spikes more, their heart rate spikes more. And it's also true that the more ambivalent ties you have in your life, the greater your risk for cardiovascular disease, because like, these, yeah, these mixed feelings about other people, where like, you really like their virtues, but you can't stand their vices,

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  that that is an enormous amount of strain to put on yourself over time.

• 1:07:18Speaker 04

  You're in this low grade, stress situation perpetually.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Chronically. Yeah.

• 1:07:25Speaker 04

  So, the solution is identify your frenemies and break up with them? Like, what are you saying? I mean, this does, this can't apply when you're dealing with extended family and relatives, etc.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  I think the the zeitgeist response to that right now, I think the the ideas that are popular in our culture are ghost, no contact, cut them off. And I think sometimes that is a healthy response, if you have the option. But I think in other cases, if you like their vices, you could try to figure out, how do you minimize their virtues? Or how do you even find the virtue in their vices? I had a funny example of this recently. I met a friend of mine introduced me to her husband at an event I was hosting. And she said, I didn't bring him the last two years, because he has no filter. And I'm worried that he's going to offend a lot of people. But he's my favorite person on earth. So I immediately want to know, how is this completely unfiltered person your favorite

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  person on earth? And she says, I never have to wonder whether he's telling me the truth. He's incapable of lying. Like, whatever thought is in his head is going to come out of his mouth. And because of that, I know he's extraordinarily high integrity. That reframe can make a relationship less ambivalent, right? Instead of wandering around with this person who's constantly embarrassing you, you're walking around with somebody who's honest to a fault.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  What was the most surprising thing that you discovered delving into this world of connection?

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Oh, there's so many surprises, so many. Um, okay. Most surprising finding for me is we are constantly in settings where we meet new people or have the chance to meet new people, but aren't sure what to do. So you show up at a mixer or a dinner party or a conference and we think that we're going to build bridges, but most people actually just hang out with their old friends. People don't mix at mixers because we're afraid of getting rejected. We're afraid of having an awkward conversation and so we just play it safe.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  This experiment I read sort of blew my mind, Rich. It's a, it's an experiment where people are going to an IT conference and they're given a list of people to meet. 16 people go and try to find these people. And if you follow them about a year later, they are significantly more likely to have gotten a new job because they met those 16 people and some of them had leads and they were able to, to change, to change shops. And that's kind of neat, right? We give people a little bit of structure and direction and all of a sudden they make friends and allies and pals that they wouldn't have otherwise. What I did not see coming in this study is the 16 people were chosen at random. There was no matchmaking here.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  It wasn't, well, let me, let me find the Michigan swimmer who also has overcome addiction for Rich to meet. It was literally, we've got a list of a thousand people coming. I'm going to pick 16 arbitrarily. And it didn't matter who was on the list, just having that little nudge, knowing, okay, there's somebody that was suggested for me. And also they're, they're expecting me to come find them was enough to help people overcome the barrier of introducing themselves.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  So the takeaway from that is what specifically? Like it's not necessarily about some preset shared set of interests. It's about the, the sort of environmental dynamic and context that is creating the conditions for a greater degree of intimate conversation and therefore connection.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Jackpot. Compatibility is not something you have to select on in advance. It's something you build.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  And if you have just that little bit of motivation to go and meet somebody, you can find common ground with almost anybody.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  One of the things that was interesting for me in the book is what you had to say about some of our deepest and long, most kind of important longstanding relationships. And as somebody at my age, like I know what it's like to like lose touch with these people that you care about. The phone gets heavy. You really want to connect with them, but so much time has transpired and it's easier just to go another day and then a year passes. Then we have that experience when we do pick up the phone or we're at some event and we see that person and we pick up right where we left off. And there's no like small talk. You're just like right where you were 20 years ago, you know? And it's amazing and you feel deeply connected to that person, which speaks to this idea

• 1:11:52Speaker 04

  that you talk about, which is depth is more important than like frequency or, or duration.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people hesitate to reconnect because they think it's just been too long. And they, they think they violated some imaginary standard of if we haven't, if we haven't texted at least once a week, we haven't seen each other once a month, we're no longer friends and.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  Or that person's angry or stewing in resentment.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you dropped me.

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  Right, yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. But those are unspoken norms and it turns out a lot of people don't subscribe to them. And it doesn't matter how often we've been in touch. What matters is how much we care about each other, how much we respect each other, whether we have a foundation of common interests or experiences together. And a lot of people, even in some of these studies, people are asked to write a note to reconnect with somebody that they would love to get back in contact with. And still many people don't send it because they're just afraid that it's not going to go well. And one of the, I think, one of the best things that I've learned from actually trying to live this myself is oxytocin, the, the love hormone or the bonding chemical that, that we all experience.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  It's released when you hear people's voices, but not when you read their messages. As a one of the, I think the easiest things you can do, if you want to reconnect with somebody that you've lost touch with is record a voice note and send it to them. You don't have to deal with then the anxiety and awkwardness of, are they going to answer my call and what are we going to talk about? You just record a little message that says, hey, I know it's been a while. I miss you. I've been thinking of you. Here's why I appreciate the role you've played in my life. Here's an article I read that I thought you would love. I just watched a movie that was, that I think would be right up your alley. Would love to catch up and then see how they reply.

• 1:13:41Speaker 04

  I've actually been practicing that recently. And it's been a really cool experiment. I do it in, in the gym in the morning. I'll like reflect on somebody I care about, or maybe I saw some posts they left on social media or I got some update or I saw them in something and I just leave them a voice note saying, oh, I saw that. I thought it was really cool. I was thinking about like no expectation of them getting back to me and completely detached from any expectations of anything coming from it, just out of the generosity of spirit and heart.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  And not because it's their birthday or there's this occasion or this, this sort of socially imposed obligation, you know, like, oh, I just genuinely like woke up and I was thinking about you, blah. And it takes like five seconds and I try to do at least one of those every morning, if not two or three, and it's been remarkable.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  What are you hearing back from people?

• 1:14:38Speaker 04

  I mean, some people don't get back or they're busy or they'll get back later. And yeah, it's just, it's, I mean, everybody, I think fundamentally, I'm curious what you think about this. I think everybody just wants to be seen and understood, honestly. Like that is what's animating all of us, right? If somebody would just understand me, if they would see me the way that I actually am, and to the extent that you can kind of find a way to see that person and let them know that you see them and understand them, like that's so, that can be so meaningful for somebody and to do it, not in a transactional spirit, but just out of pure generosity. Like I feel better, like it, it doesn't even matter, like if I'm, it's like when you,

• 1:15:20Speaker 04

  it's the inverse of that is like making your amends and recovery. Like you make your amends, it's not about how they react to it, you know, like you're doing it for your own sobriety and how they choose to receive that is totally their business. Similarly, in a positive fashion, like I do that and like I'm totally detached for how they receive it. I know it makes me feel good. I know that I want to be seen and understood and not taken out of context or misinterpreted. And to the extent that you can do that for somebody, it's, it's like a beautiful gift and it's so easy.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

  It really is. And yeah, I think even, even though the, the written message is sometimes less powerful, it can, it can still make a huge difference. I remember my first semester of grad school, it was 2003 and the winter holidays came around and I just, I started feeling lonely. I felt like, like I had left college where so many people that I really liked and enjoyed were within walking distance and now everyone had dispersed. It felt like my community had fallen apart and I hadn't yet found my niche or my people in grad school. And I, I remember I was just, I was sitting, I was sitting in, like at my desk one day and I thought, who are the most important people in my life?

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  And I started making a list of them and I started writing each of them an email about why I appreciated them. And I just started sending a few a day and it's probably the most immediate mood boost I've ever gotten from anything I've done. Just the act of sending them. It was, it was meaningful to me to say, hey, I don't think I've ever told you why you matter to me. And the responses that came back like were from a bunch of people that I kind of now I would say they were allies and pals and it opened a whole channel of companionship.

• 1:17:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's cool. We're running out of time. I gotta let you go here, but I'm not going to let you go without two last things. The first thing is, given your understanding of how to create and foster understanding between individuals and now everything you have to say about how scaling that understanding into greater connection. What would you do if you were given the opportunity to, let's say, solve an intractable social problem?

• 1:17:44Speaker 04

  Like you get a call from the White House, come to the Capitol and help us resolve brinksmanship so that we can pass laws and legislate and get over ourselves and, you know, reach across the aisle. Like what would you do in that context? Or perhaps you're being flown to Camp David and you're going to help broker a peace treaty in the Middle East. Like we have decades of, of, of like our inability to resolve these problems that have, that have so many kind of downstream, you know, very real world implications. So with your expertise, now you're in charge.

• 1:18:26Speaker 04

  How are you constructing a dynamic that could be conducive to solutions that, you know, we have yet to kind of implement in our, in our kind of like systemic institutions that are, that are creating all these issues for us?

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  I don't have a silver bullet. I wish I did. I, I think there are some steps you could take that would increase the probability of, of peace or of collaboration. But let's just be clear, like the, the base rate of success and intractable conflict is really low. And so even if we're improving the probability, it may still be low. I think where I would probably start is to say, we want to get people to bond on multiple wavelengths. And so I'm going to design some ally interactions, some pal connections and some companionship moments too.

• 1:19:17Speaker 01

  I think the, the best research on this that I've seen is a study of Seeds of Peace. So Seeds of Peace is a camp in Maine that brings together Palestinian and Israeli teenagers to actually talk about solutions to the conflict. And I don't think there's an expectation that anybody's going to resolve the major issues in the Middle East there. What they want to do is build lasting relationships between future leaders so that one day, if they have the opportunity to come to the table together, they're willing to sit there and hear each other and work together. And there is remarkable evidence from Seeds of Peace showing that if you happen to be

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  in the same discussion group as a Palestinian and Israeli camper, that you are 15 times more likely to become friends.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Just actually discussing the hard issues about like, who has this right to land? And who is responsible for escalating the conflict? That is more effective in building a real friendship between people who come from warring countries than eating together, bunking together, or socializing together. And what I would do is, obviously, that has to be carefully facilitated. But I think that we, we often just don't listen to the people that we fundamentally disagree with. And people will say, well, I won't listen to someone who denies my right to exist. I won't listen to someone who's an enemy. Like, how do we think not listening to Putin goes for us?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  You actually need to understand the people who are most opposed to you in order to figure out how to deal with them. And so I would say, we need to sit people down for hard conversations. And I'd set a rule, you're not allowed to interrupt each other. You have to listen to the quote unquote, other side, explain where they are and how they arrived at the point of view that they've arrived at. And then they need to listen to you, share that too. Ideally, we're reminding the clock, we're sharing our origin stories. What was the moment when this identity became important to you? And that's hopefully a little bit humanizing from, from the research on this. But then, let's think about, like, how do we, how do we build more of these, these real moments for connection into our interaction?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  So let's become allies for at least a little bit. I would put them on a sports team together. I would ask them to build a Lego tower together. And it seems trivial, but when you actually have to work together toward a common goal, you start to respect each other a little more, or at least begrudgingly, see a little bit of humanity in each other. I would think about trying to find a musician they both, both love and playing that music and seeing how they respond to each other, seeing that side of each other. And I don't think any of these steps are going to be game changers, but what I'm trying to do is chip away at decades of resentment. I'm trying to break down and dismantle stereotypes and I want people to look at each other and

• 1:22:15Speaker 01

  say, this is how I perceived your group. And I realized, not only are you more complicated than that stereotype, but maybe I'm taking a whole group of people who should be seen in 3D and I'm flattening them into only two dimensions.

• 1:22:31Speaker 04

  And everything you just shared is applicable to organizational conflict of any kind, or dynamics within an athletic team, or just general interpersonal conflict. I mean, I think all of those principles are suitable for navigating differences in those contexts as well.

• 1:22:49Speaker 01

  I, I hope so. And I think that, you know, it may, it may be a fool's errand. You, you might, I, I think you take on intractable conflict and your odds of falling flat are pretty high. But you know what will guarantee you don't resolve it? Never making the attempt in the first place.

• 1:23:06Speaker 04

  Yeah. All right, last thing, because I gotta let you go. To the person, perhaps it's a young person, who is feeling lonely and, and recognizing, like, they don't have any friends. We've all seen the statistics, particularly with young people, about the, the sort of decreasing friendship kind of quotient that exists right now. Young people, like, just don't have as many friends as they used to. What is the first thing or the message that you want to convey to that person to help them kind of get outside of themselves and make a friend?

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  I think for young people who are feeling lonely, there's no better first step than just joining a group. A club, a nonprofit, a volunteering opportunity. Start with something you're interested in. If you, if there's a sport you love, if there's a hobby you have, if there's, if you love birds, join a bird watching club and you're going to meet people who are potential pals. And you're going to start feeling like allies, looking for a rare bird. And some of those shared moments together open up opportunities for companionship too. There's great evidence from the UK that you can reduce loneliness and depression as

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  well, and also enhance happiness and belonging just by encouraging people to join some new groups and get more involved in their existing groups. Groups are the easiest place to find friends. They're also where we get a sense of community. And so I think, pick the sport, pick the hobby, pick the curiosity, pick the interest, pick the skill you want to learn. Join a pottery class. Sign up for volunteering for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Something that brings you together with other people who share your interests and your values, and there are friends waiting to be made there.

• 1:25:07Speaker 04

  Amazing advice. I appreciate you, Adam. You're a gift to the world. Vibe, everybody, available everywhere. If you think you understand connection and friendships, think again. Think again, like a scientist, perhaps. Pick up the book and hopefully we can continue this conversation. I know you gotta go, but it's been great to spend some time with you today.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. Pleasure's been all mine. What are we now? I mean, are we allies? Are we pals? Are we none of the above? Are we just associates?

• 1:25:39Speaker 04

  Well, we're, no, we're more than associates. Are we pals? I mean, I guess we, we participate in this, like, activity of podcasting, but, you know, maybe we can scale that into something else. That, which is, which is basically on me. So if you email me again about one of your events, I will be quick to respond with, with the affirmative to that. And maybe we can, like, take this to the next level.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  I look forward to it. Friggin' on.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  Thanks, man. Cheers.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Thank you.