467 — Decisions, decisions, decisions... by AI?

Hello and welcome to the Mind Tools L&D podcast, a weekly show about work performance and learning. I'm Gemma Tauzzi and this week we're continuing a discussion from a previous episode. In episode 463, The Empathy Problem, Balancing Emotion in Decision Making, our own Dr. Anna Barnett was joined by the two Rosses to discuss our new research intern managers.

But the team veered away from exploring AI's impact on decision making because they felt it was worth a longer discussion. So here we are to have that discussion right now. To that end, I'm joined by Dr. Anna. Hello, Anna. Hey, Gemma. And by Ross G. Hi, Ross. Hello, Gemma. Hello, Anna. Hey, Ross. Anna, maybe you can give us a quick reminder. What is the impact of empathy on decision making?

In our report that we have just published, we confirmed what we had already been reading about in other people's research papers essentially, which is that empathy can either hinder us to make decisions or help us to make decisions, particularly when we have too little or too much of it. So in our report, we shared some examples and stories from managers who found it really challenging.

to show empathy without being completely led by it. So those that had very high levels of emotional empathy, for example. often over-identified with the people in their teams or projected their own kind of expectations onto them and in turn onto the decisions that they made on behalf of their people. So we unpack.

what this means in the context of the report, looking at how empathy can be used in really positive ways, but also what we need to be mindful of as individuals who have either high or low levels of empathy.

Ross, why did you think that AI has such an impact here? So when we were talking last time, we kind of brought up the increasing role that AI plays in making decisions that work. And then, like you said, Gemma, we just parked it. Because... We were approaching the end of the episode and we're like, well, this is going to take another 40 minutes. So we'll just do it as a completely different discussion. And I think the main thing is that AI makes decision making really easy.

It will give you an answer straight away to any question that you have. And human beings are super lazy as a trait. Now that laziness is a feature, not a bug. It's mental shortcuts. which is great if you're being hunted by a tiger. You don't want to spend ages considering your options and what you're going to do. The problem is that we apply those same mental shortcuts all the time in terms of how we make decisions about people. So we base decisions on first impressions.

uh we often make decisions based on uh are they like us or are they different from us and do they have a similar experience do they look the same are they part of the same social group all these kind of things um These are not good ways to make decisions because humans are constantly prone to bias. And so when AI comes along with absolute certainty about everything, we see a shortcut and the inclination is to take it.

Lots of people say this, but the AI is like your mate in the public that's got an answer to absolutely everything. But the AI itself is also biased. It is biased by what it's been trained on. It tends to be biased based on the instructions it's given, which in a lot of cases is to make you feel good about yourself. And it's biased based on how you phrase the question.

And you need to be aware of all these things. There's a tendency to see tools and technology as objective, but they're not objective. They have inherent flaws built by us and we ignore them.

at our peril. Anna, where does that human judgment and instinct come into this decision making? Human judgment is flawed after all. It is. I think the problem we have is that the decisions we make as humans involve things like empathy and context and that understanding and those instincts. These are things that we do actually need when we make decisions, but they don't fit neatly into an algorithm.

So this is where AI doesn't always help because it isn't thinking about that. AI is good at probability and humans are... Rubbish at that. What's appropriate though, if they know what's appropriate, you know, like let's, for example, let's take, let's go back to empathy because I think we started with it as a topic. So it's good to continue to talk about it. What we found in the research this year is that a lot of the decisions that managers make.

and I'm sure this extends to everybody, actually emotionally loaded to some extent. It could be your own emotions are interfering in the decision that you need to make. It might be that other people's emotions are interfering. So let's say you are a manager who needs to reply to an email to somebody in your team who's asking for time off. But you as the manager. that they've already had too much time off.

okay now the excuse for that time off might be very valid they might be going through something personally and but maybe you have gone through the manager skills assessment you know that your empathy is low or maybe you've got some sort of self-awareness that actually i don't have great empathy and i can't really put myself

in their position or I don't really feel what they feel. And so you think, well, how am I going to respond to this email? And so you go to AI and you say, right, this is what I'm going through. How might I respond to this person? Now, what the research shows is that AI can actually mimic empathy. so it's very good at sounding empathetic and even convincingly so so they have done some recent studies in like healthcare scenarios where um individuals will go on to like online forums and share like

their symptoms or things that they're going through. And they believe they're interacting with a medical doctor, but actually they might be interacting with an AI chatbot. And then they would, as participants of the research study, actually rate these responses. that they get in this context as being how empathetic it was, how helpful and all the rest of it. And what the research actually shows is that in some cases, AI chatbots can come across even more empathetic than the human doctors can.

It's very difficult to kind of work out who's who. But the catch, of course, is that for AI, the empathy isn't real. It's artificial empathy. You know, it's learning. what an empathetic response might look like. But it doesn't have an understanding of the nuances and the context and the person specifically that you're replying to or that you're dealing with. And it doesn't have true empathy. It can't feel like a human can feel and it doesn't have its own subject.

experiences that feed into what makes us uniquely human um and they're really important because we want ai sometimes to to help us you know like let's say make a decision about how to respond to somebody and but we don't want it to to do the work for us because we have to balance the the two things so we have to as humans also apply our layer of understanding context and all the rest of it in order to

to kind of work out what is going to be my best response here and because the other flip side of this is that of course if you say went to AI to draft you an email response and you wanted it to sound empathetic, that isn't your empathy. So it's inconsistent, it's not authentic. And that actually has been shown to have a really damaging relationship on the trust that you build with the people.

So the relationships that you have with those people, because you can't be consistent. You know, if it's true empathy that comes from you as an individual over time, it's a consistency thing. Whereas if you are going to AI each time, it gives you a response or an approach or a way to navigate a particular situation.

It's empathy could be quite different in the way that it displays it or shows it. And if you just take that and apply it each time, the people in your team suddenly start seeing quite a disingenuous manager, something that's someone who's quite unpredictable.

And it comes across like inconsistent. And I think that that can then be interpreted in all sorts of ways. If you're inconsistent in your empathy, then they might see that as inconsistent in how fair you are or how... well you make decisions for your people that kind of thing so i think it can be i don't know whether i'm for or against i think i'm more of a sitting in that very i don't think it's a for or against question

balanced place yeah i think i think it's that we can't lose what makes us human because that is so powerful in so many other ways but what we can do is get better at working with ai to sometimes when we are maybe biased trying to trying to have an opportunity to think, well, let me sense check this with something else that does, as I say, focus more on that probability piece as opposed to what's appropriate and what isn't, I guess.

Yeah, the decision example used there, Anna, was interesting because I'm not sure that I would classify it really as a decision. The decision that you're talking about is how should I respond to this person via email? And one option is to use AI. to respond for you and it'll do a very nice response and it that feels like the modern version of uh oh anna's been on a course you know when you have a manager who's a total nightmare and suddenly they act like a good manager

And you think they're just doing this because they've been told to do it. And next week, this is going to go right back to Anna is a very good manager, I should clarify. But as an example, this is going to go straight back. to where it was before. And it's that cognitive dissonance of how Anna is in this situation is not how she is when I speak to her face to face. And so I no longer trust either Anna, my mental model of what Anna is, is eroded.

I was thinking much more about, because I think you are right, Anna, about the relationship part is key. This is why empathy is so important. It's because a lot of work is relational, especially if you're a manager. So I was thinking about decisions like who to promote. on your team so you might have like performance ratings or that kind of data that you put into the AI and say like who here should be promoted but

What you're not providing is, for example, how many times has someone been passed over for promotion? Or how would they be in the new role? You know, from a relational point of view, maybe with clients or with other stakeholders, maybe you don't like one of those people, which is not a good reason to not promote them, but it is something that would factor into the decision.

uh maybe the maybe your boss doesn't like the person or thinks they're rubbish even though you think otherwise it is not enough then to present your data and say i've asked ai And this is the outcome because everyone's got their different perspectives and part of being anyone who operates in any social group is to navigate other people's perspectives.

to deliver the outcome that you're trying to deliver. And that requires a level of empathy and self-awareness and self-regulation and all the skills that we talk about all the time. You can't just say, there is an objective right answer here because there often isn't and you can't just ai kind of drags you towards um metrics and things that can be quantified while ignoring the subjective environment that you're making these decisions in

I think that's needed, though, because I think we do often have a more objective opinion, at least to... consult with while you make decisions. Yeah, I'm not saying you shouldn't promote someone because you don't like them. Actually, you should if they are in that position. And this is where the balance comes in. Yeah. And AI provides a very useful... a chance to check something before we make that wrong mistake, because sometimes we don't even know we're doing it.

um you know the fact that we is that emotion of liking someone or not liking someone is so embedded in us that sometimes we start to look for patterns in other places so we might you know let's say i didn't like you ross i might start you know more negatively barely imagine it yes but I might start looking for negative patterns in the way that you perform in the team and your outcomes you know I might always have like a bit of a negative slant or an opinion on

how you behave, what you do, what you achieve, you know, and that isn't fair. But over a period of time, I start to lose sense of what is me just not liking Ross and what is me seeing that Ross isn't doing well in his job, which isn't true. It's just been tainted.

by my inherent dislike for you. So then you become, over a period of time, you start thinking, well, this is then really challenging because I think I'm being objective because I've seen Ross's performance and I don't think it's very good. But actually I love Gemma and Gemma, I think, has done all. similar things to Ross but

I really celebrate all of that about Gemma because I really like her as a person. So I think then it becomes really tricky because you think you're being objective. You think, well, Gemma's performing better than Ross and that's how I'm seeing it. The reality is that that might not be true at all. It could be the complete opposite. they're actually performing very equally.

If there's a way to interact with something like AI where you can present some data and actually say, look, what would be the right outcome here? And it can challenge or just interrupt your natural human pattern of thought. I think it's a perfect.

opportunity to do that because when we don't do that we of course risk making emotionally charged decisions without even knowing that it's happening and that i think happens too often um so it's getting into those routines of doing something differently

But that can happen even with AI. So this is where my concern comes in, is you can... That bias can still exist within your conversation with AI, though. I think that's the thing that we really need to be aware of, is what we bring to AI we then get back to us, is this concept of AI mirroring. So if I am chatting to AI because I need to make a promotion decision and I'm saying, should I promote that sloppy ne'er-do-well Ross? or that world-class performer Gemma.

I don't even think about it. I mean, that's obviously an extreme example, but how I characterise, how I shape the question and structure the question, how I word it, can then get played back to me. And because, exactly as you say.

uh anna we were open to confirmation bias and you know halo effect uh we think someone's good at one thing so then we come to believe that they're good at everything and we just see evidence of that everywhere whereas for someone who has annoyed us on one occasion now we see evidence everywhere that they are terrible at their job If we then just funnel that bias into an AI system, it's going to get reflected back at us and tell us that we were right, which is great. I love being right.

validation for my decision that's definitely what we should do and and this is why this is why it's so difficult and i actually think it's so um tricky to use ai as a as a therapist there's a lot in the media just now but a good therapist is not a yes machine

Sometimes I do ask AI stuff and my wife asks AI stuff and sometimes we swap phones to see if we get the same responses. Interesting. No. no we don't i wouldn't say we've had anything that's been like catastrophically like that's just really bad advice but the um you do get different responses based on the conversations that you've had in the past yeah i guess it's how you then

okay so let's say you're going to use ai to support the decision making process it's then how do you do that so you could ask ai then to present you with multiple perspectives on something or multiple perspectives plus potential risks, you know, so actually don't give me just one option and don't tell me, you know, what you think is the best choice that I have here, but actually to say, look.

I'm dealing with two people, Ross, who, in my opinion, isn't performing well, and Gemma, who is, and I want to promote somebody. It's then like, well, okay.

asking it well tell me what what could happen if i go for one versus the other or what what might i not have considered and i should have considered or where could i you know and maybe using it in a bit more of a strategic way so thinking about different perspectives as opposed to just let's just have a conversation and you confirm what I already think and therefore I'll go away happy because my decision has been validated.

It's more about actually give me some options of what could happen or what might happen or, you know, what the risk is or how I might handle this. Let's say I went against my gut instinct. What might that mean? Given what you know, challenge me back, ask me a question that maybe I hadn't considered and let me see if I can come up with a response to figure out.

this as a as an approach i think it's i think there's a bit of an art to it actually in terms of to try and get the most out of using ai while making decisions because then once you have all your options on the table then you go back you need to apply that human judgment to be able to interpret those results

then it's back to you as the person that knows those people, knows that business, knows the context, knows how this will work for you, for your team, for those as individuals, for those in the wider organization. That's where you come back in because you can't just pick.

Pick A, B or C and go with it. It's not going to work necessarily. We have our... our Mastering AI for Managers skill bite presented by Dr Marcus Bernhardt from our product advisory board is that he talks about this one of his techniques is to say to whichever ChatGPT, Claude, whatever it might be who are the five best experts in this domain about which I'm going to make a decision and what advice would they give for this particular challenge and once you've got that then

follow it up, don't just leave it there and say, where are the areas of overlap between these five experts and where do they differ from one another? And there's another piece that I once heard when Alan Sorkin was writing The West Wing. He would have, you know, he has a certain political persuasion. And so he would be writing dialogue for the West Wing, the TV show. And he would have a team of researchers. And he would say to the researchers,

What would the smartest person in the world say in response to this thing about which I believe? And then he would put those words into the voice of whoever the antagonist was in the West Wing episode. I think that's quite a nice way to do it. as well like um very explicitly why am i wrong about this thing that i'm about to do and then just see what comes back and i i use this um in a very different example but on a quite practical levels we use this when we code

for purposes of data analysis. So I will put coding, you know, a piece of code into the likes of, I don't know, ChatGBT, but actually say, imagine you are, you know, the best. our script writer in the world like how would you have improved this um and if you don't ask for that and you just ask for some improvements to the code that's already there without asking them to you know shadow as this

incredible R script writer, you get very different results and the outcomes of those can be quite different. And so then you think, well, by just being able to clarify what you want from... ai in order to get the best outcome um is important so it's what as you said rightfully earlier ross it's what you're putting in is what you're going to get back out so it's how you practice i suppose but also going through things like

the skill bite and learning actually how to do that properly, I think is one of the most effective ways that we can get the most out of it, particularly when we're in the moment making a decision and we need to, you know, make it relatively quick.

What do you think, Gemma? Because Anna and I have now just rumbled on down this track together for 15 minutes. No, no, I mean, I think that's incredibly useful. So you suggested... taking a perspective of experts giving you multiple viewpoints and perspectives to so you're not just here's one option you can use it then to I guess

ask you challenging questions about so you use it as a coach what thing should i think about so you could generate lots and lots of questions and so you've got a checklist to check yourself then there's the layering on the relational context And then projecting forward and back as well. So what are the future consequences and helping you to think through those as well. It's really fascinating. The other piece I think is, and you just referenced it there, Anna, is...

If you're a leader, in any form, you can't always stop to go and ask AI what to do. People are looking to you to make decisions. One of the... fundamental parts of your job is to make decisions and if it's a crisis you often have to make those decisions quickly um but that's where you're instinctive um you can check your instincts but perhaps that speed is necessary.

i mean unfortunately for humans i mean i would say a huge percentage i don't want to put a number on it without having it being fact checked but a huge percentage of decisions we make are just automatic in the moment we don't we don't even realize we're making them which is why this becomes tricky because we make these decisions. And then once we see the outcome, we then reflect back and go, oh, I should have done that differently. Or I wish I had stopped myself and gone and, you know.

gathered more perspective or spoken to somebody or thought this through a little bit and so it's actually capturing that little moment in time i think is where it becomes really tricky so when i talk to managers or clients who have gone through like the manager skills assessment for example when they come out the other end of it and they ask me okay which of the skills do you think i should prioritize and often i'll say look you know you might have gaps in these areas but actually

always polish your ability to be self-aware because that can help us find those moments to pause before we slip up and before we just automatically make the decisions that we've always made because I mean It works in our favour. We can't make every decision thoughtfully, slowly, gathering all this data and perspectives. We can't. It's not possible. And in the moment, like Ross says, one of the skills you need as both a leader and manager is to be able to make great decisions.

those that do that well are in these roles and are successful because they make great decisions. So there is always, and I hate to use it because it makes, I think it sometimes feels a bit wishy-washy, but there is always a balance, like there is always a balance. But I think...

with greater self-awareness, we sometimes can just be a bit more alert to the fact that, okay, we're now potentially going to make the mistake of just leading with emotion in this particular situation. And how do we intercept before we do that?

On the things that matter, you can't do it for everything. So you also want to be a bit selective. There are some decisions that you can make that can be a little bit more led by emotion without having huge... repercussions and some that definitely can't so i think it's trying to also be selective in how you start practicing some of this because it takes practice it's like habits

You know, the more we practice stopping ourselves and pausing and reflecting and that sort of thing, the more it just becomes natural in the way that we approach stuff. And I think that's what good decision makers probably do more of than others is that they have. built up a habit that becomes more so it feels natural to them it's automatic to them to pause to reflect to you know consult with others whether that's ai or another human um

But yeah, it's part of what makes us human at the end of the day is that we do rely on what we call heuristics, these rule of thumbs that just allow us to make quick decisions in the moment and quite often to good effect. You know, it's not always bad.

um either so it's not like it's a negative thing to be relying on rules of thumb it's what we've done since the beginning of time and there's i mean there's something there as well about trusting yourself and not second-guessing because they're more i guess there's the self-awareness but there's just not being so self-aware you're too self-conscious to then make any decision and then you're stuck in like a paralysis situation um so there is that balance isn't there it's knowing which decisions

You need to stop, yeah, without taking it too far. Yeah, and I think sometimes you need to demonstrate confidence in your decisions that you might not feel because if you're going to lead a team or an organisation. There often isn't a right answer. This goes back to the probabilistic thinking. There's things that you can do that may or may not work and the chances of them happening will be greater for some options than for other ones.

but it's not the most motivating to your team to say well we're going to try this thing and it might work uh give it a go um you kind of want to set a direction uh and maybe sound more confident than you are

As I'm saying this out loud, I'm not sure if it's good advice at all. It depends. I think we're just going to keep coming back to... But that comes back to authenticity, doesn't it? Because if you really genuinely aren't sure, then... Maybe it's okay to be authentic about that. It depends in so far as you have to avoid paralysis. A decision has to be made and big decisions tend to fall to the most senior people.

And if those people refuse to make a decision, I think we found this in the report, didn't we? In the interviews that we had with the managers was overly empathetic managers sometimes delayed difficult decisions. Yep. because they didn't want to upset people, basically. And it would have been better for everyone to have made that decision, even though it was painful earlier on.

and to stand by it. Because then you remove all of the uncertainty and the ambiguity from at least the decision-making process. But I think that's why reports like what we publish are important because you don't learn that lesson. until you read about stories of people who have done this and things haven't worked. I often think you need to experience it for those kinds of things. So very well reading it or listening to us wang on about it.

Yeah, I agree. But you don't always get the opportunity to experience that before it's too late. You know, just having that understanding that sometimes like you just you're in your example, Ross, where. by delaying a difficult decision actually you might do more harm than good you know even though your intention is to not upset somebody or to not hurt somebody's feelings you know there will be a time i'm sure in all managers or leaders

careers where they will have to make a difficult decision that they know people aren't going to like. So actually hearing that some of the managers gone through that and actually the delaying bit wasn't helpful to them.

might just allow them to think well okay when the time comes i might remember that little nugget of insight and rely on that to just help me speed up what i'm doing so i this is i'm just saying this is why i think the reports that you know that actually look at the stories unpack those experiences from managers are really important because when we only rely on our own experiences

We just keep repeating the same mistakes that everyone else are making around us. And then, you know, once you've done it once, you might not do it again. But that one time that you do do it could be catastrophic for your team or your people or the business.

It could be the difference between something going really horribly wrong or horribly right. And I think that's the problem. So in terms of, you know, so we don't just always sit in this gray area of there needs to be balance and, you know, every decision, you have to think about it in the moment and it's all, everything's different and it always depends. I think you need to give.

managers and people need something more practical okay so what can they do you know it's they can't just sit in that gray area all the time we need to think about how we can support them so one thing we can do is

peer support we can talk to each other we can understand what experiences others have been through particularly if you're a new manager and you've not been enrolled for very long chances are you haven't had those experiences yet so let's speak to those that have and how did they what worked for them what didn't but be mindful

that that's their experience and you know what applied to their team might not apply to yours but so always be conscious of that but learn from each other you know sense check decisions big decisions you're going to make a decision on behalf of your team or your people run that by

somebody close to you whether that's another manager that you trust or you know a leader in your organization but you know sense check your mentor yeah a coach or a mentor just sense check what you're thinking you might do before you actually take that step. So maybe start applying that to those bigger, loftier decisions that you think actually will have potentially an impact. Or start trying to gather different perspectives before you're making these sorts of decisions.

the likes of AI or a chatbot or even just going in and reading content around this from experts who have studied this and understand this far better than any of us do. They can go in and they can... understand you know what that process might look like what steps should be taken so it's trying to just

And I go back to habits because I think that a lot of decision making is automatic and unconscious and we just do it and we go through life like that. But building into these little habits of reflection and pausing and all the rest of it become more practical. and give us something to actually do differently. Because if we don't do anything differently, we're just going to continue to have managers who make the same mistakes and then learn and only then learn. But that's not, it's not helpful.

Okay, before we move on, just to say that our report, The Empathy Problem, Balancing Emotion in Decision Making, is available from our website. We just heard some of the dangers of outsourcing decision-making to AI, but that isn't to say this powerful new technology doesn't have its place. AI is great for providing highly contextualised recommendations to common problems.

And that's exactly what our Ask M-Coach feature provides in the MindTools Content Hub. For example, ask it what to do about a difficult colleague and it'll offer a suggestion along with a curated list of expertly crafted MindTools resources that can help. Ask M-Coach also offers on-demand coaching support, which puts the decision-making focus back on you. No instructions, just great questions to prompt your thinking and help you decide.

Get in touch now to find out how Ask Endcoach can equip your people to be better managers. Or if you're already a MindTools customer, get in touch to explore how we can add Ask Endcoach to your subscription. Now back to the show.

Okay, let's move on to our regular feature, What I Learned This Week. This is where we each share something we've picked up over the past seven days. Anna, what have you learned? Mine hasn't technically been learned in the last seven days, so please forgive me. But it has been... You're always so honest with this. You're always, every time we do this, you're like, oh, technicality, can I use it? It hasn't. I make it up.

i have a i have a spreadsheet of stuff that i keep i always reflect every time on my last seven days and i genuinely study to figure out what is it i've learned now this is not this isn't something that I have learned in the last seven days, but it is something that has been used, and I'll come onto this, a huge amount in the last seven days. So we have just returned from a walking holiday in the Cairngorms in Scotland. So we've had...

wonderful days out walking our little legs off to try and enjoy all the best that Scotland has to offer. And I have an awesome website. that basically provides you with ordinance survey maps. It is in the UK only, unfortunately, so I apologise for that. But if you are in the UK and you love walking, it provides you with an audience survey map that you can then lay over.

with um like you can tack on your roots and it will spit back your miles the how long it'll take all these things and it's these really cool people have created this yeah very interactive map that i absolutely love really cool people they are really jemma's nodding and i know that jemma will either have either heard of it uses it or appreciates it possibly built it what is it what is it it's called maps the hug oh yeah oh okay so it's new to you jemma okay

We'll share a link to it because if you are keen at one walking, running or anything of that kind in the UK, it's fantastic. It just gives you, yeah. the ordnance survey essentially but in interactive form where you can map your routes and get all the details you could possibly need and so yeah we use it all the time and have taken yeah taken it

with us to Scotland for our holiday recently. Brilliant. I think we were all in the Kangolms at the same time. We were, because we were in. We were, the three of us were all there last weekend. That's a great tip. Cool. Ross, what have you learned this week? So I have, wink wink, learned this week. Or at some point recently.

It's a nerdy space thing that I just was blown away by. I saw it on Instagram and then I went and fact-checked it and that can't possibly be right. Now, nerdy space things are always about how big something is. and uh numbers at a certain point uh become meaningless i think in this case you're just like oh it's very very very big that's what ross is about to share something that's very very very big so i'm going to start small because i think this is

The easiest way to think about it. So our planet orbits the sun. So there's a gravitational pool between the sun and our planet as there is between all of the planets within our solar system. So they create a system and the planets spin around the sun.

okay so far so good and we understand that that's the case now the that that solar system sits within uh the milky way galaxy uh now there is a gravitational pull within the milky way galaxy the stars hug together around a central mass and and it spins and if you look at a picture of the milky way it's got the spiral effect you have these sort of arms so our

Our system is on the outer edge of one of these arms. So we understand that the galaxies stick together a group of stars. What I didn't know is that galaxies... also stick together and form these much bigger structures. So it looks like they're really really far apart and they are really really far apart.

But nonetheless, they are attracted to one another. So if you picture a universe of galaxies, they are not randomly distributed. Like you look at the stars in the sky and it just looks like a bunch of dots. It's actually not random. They're actually all... pooling on one another and you end up at the universe level with superstructures or walls of galaxies, also called galaxy hyperclusters.

The biggest of which is called Quipu. Quipu is an Andean knotted textile that the guy who saw this thing had seen in a museum. recently uh but if we'll put a picture in the show notes we'll we'll link to what what a quipu is but it captures this idea of galaxies being this like um although far apart very very tight

cluster of interwoven strands. The pictures of what the universe looks like when you can see these strands is absolutely amazing. And the largest one, Kweepu, is 200,000 times the mass of Ur. Galaxy. It is the largest structure in the universe that we know of so far. Yeah, that is wild. So do these, I mean, you might not be able to answer this, but I suspect these structures of galaxies also perhaps are related.

Presumably so. I mean, when you see a picture of what the universe looks like with these sort of superstructures of galaxies, it looks like a web. It doesn't look like a bunch of dots. It looks like a web. I think that's the... Everything's connected. Oh, incredible. Yeah. Amazing. What do you learn, Gemma? Well, mine's got something bigger than that. No, absolutely not. No.

So I actually cracked a practical skill that I've been trying to crack for years. So I've been going swimming three or four times a week for years. and that um as i've been following a program that builds up your skills um and it starts off with very simple things like your body position floating breathing And then the fifth thing, the fifth and final thing that brings everything together is what's known as the Serape effect. Have you heard of that?

It's the cross. So when you're reaching on one side, the muscles that connect your shoulder to your hip, they are tense. And then when you release, they snap.

And if you can coordinate your arm with the kick down on the same side, you get that effect and that basically propels you. And the amount of force you can get is... is much higher than if you don't use these this tension um but returning it well it's taken me a long time but this morning i cracked it and i knocked off nearly 20 seconds over 100 meters

Wow. Unbelievable. And the effort drops in an extraordinary way as well. So suddenly I wasn't panting for breath, but I was flying through the water. So that's what I learned.

representing GB no no still an amateur swimmer but but it was um the minute that clicked everything fell into place wow yeah whether or not i can do it tomorrow it's the memory isn't it because i think once you've done it i think sometimes like once you've done it once your body can remember like how to then therefore do it against the more that you can do it

eventually it'll just become how you swim gem and everyone will just be so impressed watching you it's definitely not impressive 20 seconds a phenomenal difference that is like uh i'm i'm picturing sort of like flames coming like through the pool like

slow to begin with but yeah I couldn't believe it it's just practice now but there we go okay well that's it from all of us if you'd like to find out more about ask mcoach the ai companion built into mind tools content hub get in touch now by visiting mindtools.com or just get in touch with one of us and we'll come back to you

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