Friederike Fabritius || The Neuroscience of Leadership

to be speaking with today's guest, Frederica Fabricis. Frederica is co author with Hans Hagemann on the new book The Leading Brain, Powerful science based Strategies for achieving Peak performance. Thanks for being on the show today. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Really enjoyed reading your book, The Leading Brain. It's a really fascinating for me to see how you apply the latest insights in neuroscience and neurochemistry to the business and leadership world. That how often do you see

kind of a marriage of those things. Not very often, because you know, I used to work in management consulting before, and nobody there wanted to hear about neuroscience at all. I think they're now catching up. But when I worked there and I said something from my perspective as a neuropsychologist, they were just rolling the eyes. They were like, we

don't care, you know, get back to work. And then when I was at the Max Plunk Institute for Brain Research where I started out, I always looked for applications and people were not so very much interested in applications either, I found. So, you know, it was a real I don't know how to call it, but for me, it was an epiphany. When I was finally able to combine

those two. It was a dream come true because when I wanted to work with leaders, but I realized that lots of the insight it's that people are giving to leaders, So lots of the advice that is given is not science based, and I think there's a lack You can just go out and tell people to do things differently if you don't have any evidence that supports your advice. Oh, I completely agree, And anyway, you're doing a great job

with it. And I wanted to discuss some of these ideas from your book, starting with the you that motivates us. What is this you, this mysterious you that you talk about. Yeah, well it's the inverse U curve of peak performance. I also call this concept or I like to call this concept DNA of peak performance. It's about three substances that

you need together in order to perform really well. And those three substances are dopamine or adrenaline and as you'll call it, and you need all three of them in order to perform at your best. And the key thing is I also like to call this maybe it's easier for our listeners to understand fun, fear, and focus. So you need the fun when you're and then dopamine is released.

And I'm not talking about after work fun having coffee with your colleagues or you know, celebrating somebody's birthday at the office, and more about you know, you should enjoy what you're doing in order to be high performing. And then you have the fear part. You know, imagine you were to interview the same person every single time you do your podcast would be probably very maybe a little bit boring. You know, I don't want unless it's a very very interesting person. But you don't want to get

too bored or too routined in a task. You always need a challenge. So this is about the fact that in order to get the au adrenaline and flowing in your brain. You always need a challenge, you need to be slightly over challenged, and then you have the focus. In order to get into flow. You need the focus. You really need to not multitask. You know, you shouldn't be checking your text messages while we're talking. I should, you know, we should be able to fully focus. And

that's when it. See, Colin is released and I still colon is a substance that helps us to learn better. It helps us to concentrate in the here and now. Babies have it, you know, they are always in the presence. They don't think about tomorrow, they don't think about yesterday. They're always fully experiencing. So you need the fun, you need the fear, and you need the focus in order to perform well in order to get into flow, fun, fear, and focus. How does this relate to the four e

fs of stress. I'm not familiar with the four apps of stress, but I think if I can tell you how it relates to stress. What you need to know is that, yeah, sometimes you know people, let's say you're having I know you're doing a lot of talks and keynote speeches, Let's say you're invited to do a keynote speech and you're you know, a little bit nervous, and it's a very exciting, big audience, and then you know, you know, very important people are watching and you're really

a little bit nervous. That's good for your performance. But then let's say a minute before you're on stage, you realize that your data that you were going to present from your research is totally wrong. Somebody from your lab calls you and said, oh, Scott, we noticed all of the data is wrong. So you know, you're just about to go on stage, that would probably push you over the edge. It would make you nervous to a degree

where you can't really perform well anymore. And that's what you can call you know, this state is called over arousal. There's a correlation between the degree of nervousness you should be having and your performance. And maybe what puts you over I don't know you so well, but maybe for you it happens when all of your data is wrong. And I'm not saying this will ever happen to you. I'm just saying, you know, imagine for you it would

be happening. Then for somebody else it could be already that they wanted to have a coffee before, and then there was no coffee and they're already totally nervous. So it depends a lot what makes people nervous. But everybody does perform well anymore when they're overly stressed. So you need to understand where your personal comfort zone is and you need to always be slightly above that in order to perform well. Yeah, I actually was going to say that I reached that when I have too much coffee,

not when I can't find my coffee. It's probably good that I can't find my coffee sometimes, yeah, And then you know, it's also happening too many people that they have very boring jobs or they've been in the same job for a very long time. And then what happens then is that you go through the motions, you do your job, but you're a little bit bored. People might think you perform well, but in reality you're underperforming, and that from a you know, a psychology term would be

called under arousal. So in order to get into peak performance, you need to be not underperforming, you know, not bored out, and not overly stressed. And the artist to get that, right, and to stimulate yourself at your work so that you can get into the zone. Yeah, it's not easy, is it. No. You know, research has shown that people are five times more productive when they get it to flow. So it really pays off to have that experience. But I think

about twenty percent of Americans never experience flow. They probably have jobs that don't enjoy or that don't match their strength. You usually get into that stage more easily if you're very skilled at what you're doing and when you enjoy what you're doing, and that's where the fun aspect comes in. Yeah, I like the fun aspect. So dopamine doesn't guarantee that

you'll experience pleasure though, right. It's all about anticipation of pleasure. Yeah, right, So you should anticipate that something positive is going to happen, So anticipate that something's going to be fun, yeah, and then hope and pray that it actually will be fun. Well very often. I mean, it doesn't guarantee you, but I think that very skilled people who are in jobs they enjoy and that they're good, they also enjoy it while they're doing you know, when you are on stage

and holding a keynote I'm sure you enjoy it. You enjoy the moment. You're not just thinking, oh, this will be great afterwards. You enjoy it while you're doing it. So I think it can be in the presence as well. Absolutely. I thought of this question as you were talking. Have you heard of new tropics? What is that interesting? Tell me more, well, people that are trying to create safe smart drugs to enhance your production of these various neurochemicals

that you're talking the very ones you're talking about. Ah, so, in order to perform better work. For example, so you're taking dregs a little bit like the I don't know, you know, the retelline that people use with attention deficit disorder. Yeah, sure, really, but yeah, but these are not over the counter. These are things that are just you know, like herbs and vitamins. Okay, yeah, I haven't seen any of those around. I usually think

it's well, I don't know about this. I mean, you can do a lot in order by having good nutrition. You know, you know, the building blocks, the precursors for the your transmitters. You take them in through your diet. But I think actually it's more about changing your environment. I think if you're in the right environment that helps you perform well, you don't need any drugs. I think

it's mostly people try to fix themselves. I think, actually think it's easier to fix your environment than to change who you are. So let's say you're in the wrong job or you're having difficulties with your coworkers. I think it's much easier to maybe change jobs or speak to the people around you, change the task you're performing, than

to always try to optimize yourself. I think a lot of things fall into place once you've found your passion and once you found the right place where you appreciate it for who you are. Yeah, and in an ideal world, we could kind of snap our fingers and appear in

that environment. If we're kind of stuck in a like I say, we have a contract or something, and still changing yourself can go a long way though, right right your attitude And also I think you know, it's very good to have healthy work habits, such as you know. I think if people exercise regularly, their resilience really improves.

So even if you have a stressful work environment, you will do better if you sleep well, if you exercise regularly, if you eat well, and if you also have a good attitude, you know, if you have emotional regulation techniques. And there are many science based emotional regulation techniques that people could use. Oh go on, I'm taking notes. One that I like a lot is called emotional labeling. You know.

Research has shown that if you, let's say, you're very angry and annoyed at work, if you put a word on it, if you call it, you know, I'm angry, I'm annoyed, I hate my coworker. You don't have to say that to the person, you know, it's enough that you say that to yourself the moment you do that. It has been shown that the amygdala for processing negative emotions shows less activity, and your prefunto cortex for rational

thinking increases its activity. So just by the fact of putting a name to your feelings, you will actually calm down your negative feelings. That's really interesting. It sounds like it really could be really helpful technique. How does this relate to, like, you know, regular emotions, How does that

relate to people that are kind of feel imposter syndrome? Yeah, I think that's a real problem for people high up in organizations that very often, even though they have achieved a lot, they feel like they don't really you know, it was all just pure luck. So they're thinking, oh, I've achieved so much, but wasn't really me. It was just circumstances. And one day people are going to find out I'm not as smart I might think. And I

think one thing that really helps there is gratitude. If you can actually there's a technique where you can, for example, write a gratitude diary. So every day you take five minutes to write down five things that you're grateful for during that day. So this is not about wishful thinking and saying things that didn't happen that you wish for. It's more but saying like, I'm very happy that today I had one hour with my children that I really enjoyed,

or today I did well on this and that. So it's about writing down what you're grateful for on that particular day. And if you do this on a regular basis, it will make you appreciate what you have, and it will make you see all the positive things in your life, and it helps you to not feel so stressed about the things that you can control. So even if it turns out you are a fake, like at least you have gratitude for your elier loved ones, like at least they love you, at least they love to thank you.

I think it puts things into perspective. I think the problem with imposter syndrome is also that people put so much emphasis just on their jobs and everything else is empty maybe no family, no friends, no hobbies, because there's so much, you know, so busy in their careers that if something bad happens at works, the entire world crumbles. That is always a problem if you don't have other

areas of your life that counterbalance that. So gratude sort of helps you get outside yourself transcend yourself a bit. So now I think so ego driven, Yeah, sounds good. Can you tell me a little bit about what is cognitive jiu jitsu? Yes, that's about the fact that you know, most people, when they have an emotion they don't want to experience. They suppress it. They use cognitive inhibition rather

than saying I feel jealous. As we just learned for emotional labeling, what you should be doing when you're jealous. They will pretend that they're just fine, and they will try to suppress any negative emotions. What you should do instead, is use other techniques so work around that. Rather than trying to inhibit and fight against your emotions, you should work with your emotions. So one example is gratitude. Another

would be emotional labeling. There's also research that shows that your body influences your emotions a lot, so you can use your body to change your feelings rather than using your prefrontal cortex your rational mind to inhibit them. Ah that yeah, that's interesting. This idea of the rational mind as not always being the best tool for us actually leads to you what you talk about in your intuition chat. You have a whole chapter on the unconscious. Right, So

what is the difference between focused thinking and insightful thinking? Yeah, rational thinking and insightful thinking. Well, you know, rational thinking, you just concentrate hard on a task. Can you go through it step by step and then you come to a logical conclusion. Many of our everyday problems are built

on this. If I look my clients, they often sit and they have an Excel sheet with a strategy and they just have to work through it, you know, and identify areas where they can improve the company or you know. It's all a very logical business. But some problems. They have to be solved by creative insight. You know, they come through you as an AHA moment when you're not thinking about it, when you're maybe taking a shower or

taking a walk or feeding your dog. That's when you suddenly realize, oh, there's a different solution to it, you know, that I haven't thought of before. So this can't be worked out logically. It's about the occurrence of AHA moments. Yeah, absolutely, And you cite some of this research by John Kuneos and Mark Beeman. Yes, exactly. The brain areas associated with insight, so those the neuroscience areas associated with insight are different

than the neuroscience is associated with controlled rational thinking. Is that right? Exactly exactly. And also I think the most interesting thing about this research is that your mood again influences your occurrence of a HA moments, as I've seen it. You know. For example, they showed participants funny videos prior to letting them solve difficult creative tasks, and it showed that when they had left a lot before and had you know, the possibility to see funny videos prior to

solving the task, they would perform a lot better. So the key in takeaway I take from this for my leaders that I'm working with is that it pays off to be in a good mood in order to be innovative. There's this interesting lot of research suggesting that actually mixed emotions are most conducive to creativity. Oh so a little bit of good at the same time, having kind of ambivalence, being excited but also being fearful, you know, kind of like the more complex our emotions can be seemed to

be more related to creativity. I'll set an article on that, but maybe the point you're making positive emotions can be conducive to a particular stage of the creative process, like insights coming up with insights. Yeah, I'm just talking about aha. I know there's different kinds of creativity, and you know it's a very complex area. The one that I was focusing on here is just you know, the aha moment. How can you get to aha kinds of insights that

you know you can solve logically. I'm not talking about all kinds of artistic creativity, and you know it's a wide area, very wide. The whole creative process is your life, right, That's the whole process of life is creativity. So there's much more to creativity than just a high insights. But I think you know, there has been some very strong studies that showed that if you want to have more high insights, it pays off to be in a good mood.

And I think that's interesting because in the business world, very often people are very stressed and there's no laughing and no fun. It's all very serious, and I think many emotions are just neglected, and it's good for executives to hear that it's sometimes detrimental to not be in a good mood, and it does help productivity to actually also experience positive emotions at work. Right, But how does that relate to your point about it? With self regulation,

you don't always want to inhibit. So sometimes when someone feels a negative emotion, you'd want them to express that, right, Yes, you want them to express that. You don't want to suppress it. So you can say to your coworkers, if you have a good relationship, first you can say, you know, I'm very stressed out, but this will already be a relief. So the mere fact of labeling it and calling it

out helps. This doesn't mean that you have to dwell on your negative feelings all day and put everybody else in a bad mood. I think if you use emotional labeling, then you get over it more quickly. And then I also advise to physically exercise in order to get that cortisol, the negative stressformon out of this system. And I think there's many things you can do to feel better. Emotional labeling does not say that you have to sit there all day at your desk and saying I'm stressed, I'm miserable,

I'm tired. I think you get tired of saying that to yourself after a while, and then you switch to different mode. Yeah, I was just looking up this research. It does suggest there's some environments that when they bring out what's called emotional ambivalence, like the environment is unusual or it taps into a wide range of seemingly contradictory emotions that actually can lead to greater creativity in the workplace. So that might be something interesting to consider. Absolutely, I'm

always interested in new things. You know, they never reach the business world otherwise, I think you know they don't. There's not much connection. So I'm always looking for new stuff that I can use and that I can brint to life. Awesome. Yeah, we can swap articles and stuff. I'll send that overther circle called The Emotions that Make Us Creative for Harvard Business Review, and I'd be happy to share it with Oh wow, yeah, I'd love to

have that. So let's go on our habits because that's a big topic on the Psychology podcast that we talk about a lot. And what has your own research suggested about how we can adopt better routines? Well, I don't have any own research on that topic. When I was in research, I actually worked on monkeys and the visual cortex, but very far from any application. And that's also a way I was frustrated because it didn't give me any answers to my big questions. I'm looking at other people's

research always, that's still research. That's still research. I mean, you're researching. You know, what does research I have to say about the stuff. So, yes, that's what I'm doing, and looking at everybody's research and new studies coming out and try to pull them together so they become applicable for business leaders. I think that's the job I'm doing. I'm building the bridge. I'm not doing any research anymore.

I work with executives and I really you know, I'm constantly checking the literature for new stuff that could actually be applied. And when it comes to habit change, you know, ninety seven percent of all your's resolutions fail and people really are looking for new techniques to make havage stick. I really like the implementation intention research, you know, I

think that works very well in the business work. When you rather than saying, you know, during Christmas holidays, I will work out more often, you say, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I go on my treadmill, So you make a win then connection. I think that's very effective and that can be implemented so easily in the business world by just, you know, finding a trigger that makes you go into your habit. Rather than just

having these very vague intentions, you make them pragmatic instead. Yeah, Gabrielle Otigin, I think she might be a fellow German. Yes, I've seen that you had her on the podcast, and I think, you know, that research nobody in the business world knows about. It might be widely discussed in psychology, but these leaders have never heard of her and her research. So what I'm doing is I'm bringing these things to them. And another thing I think that helps a lot with

procrastination is to take very small steps. So rather than saying, oh, I'm going to lose twenty pounds and from tomorrow on, no more chocolate, never ever again, and I will just eat kale soup, which is the approach most people are taking to have a change, they just overwhelm themselves with

these perfect, big goals. Instead, you make a very small goal, you know, of eating maybe one piece of chocolate less than the day before every day a little bit less, or you know, one tablespoon of sugar less into your coffee each time you drink a coffee. Things like that make a real difference if they accumulate over time. But most people, when they want to change something, they make these very drastic, absurd, challenging ideas, and it just overwhelms us.

I think nobody can endure this kind of new life any more longer than two weeks. I mean, each sprouts for two weeks and then you're just going back to chocolate cake. Yeah. And also, it's not really active in your fun your fun system. There no, And I think you need quick rewards in order to make a habit functionable. You need quick wins in the beginning it cannot just be a long, miserable path to change. You need to build in some small rewards right in the beginning, and

you need to well, how do you put this? You know, rather than inhibiting unwanted behavior, it's better to create new neuronal pathways. So you should think of not only what you not want to do, but also about what alternative behaviors you want to display, and then make those alternative behaviors fun. Because what most people will do is they say, oh, I will stop smoking, and it's that I will eat salary sticks. How much fun is that? Not so much?

So you need to find an alternative behavior that actually giving you joy, because otherwise you're depriving yourself from all the rewards and you're just getting a ranch instead, and that is not going to work longer than two days or two weeks. I like your method. I like to hear that again, rid of akin of the fun. But it is smoking fun though it's addictive. But is it actually fun? Well? I think it gives you a relief

in the moment that you smoke. Yeah, I think smoking builds up nervousness in your system, and then when you smoke, it's a little bit like you relax, so you know, you need to find different ways to relax what you're getting like meditation, mindfulness, meditation. But that also doesn't work in the moment if you do it for the first time. The problem with that is that you have to build a certain practice in order to make it work. It won't work the first day you sit down to meditate.

It can make you just think of I want a cigarette, I want to cigarette. You know, imagine that the first day you quit smoking, you sit down and you meditate, and said, it might just make you very obsessed thinking about your cigarette. Well can't you smoke and meditate at the same time. Well, don't think it's very effective for getting rid of your unwanted habits. Well no, I don't

think it. No, But just to begin and then you slowly get rid of it, Well probably you could fade it out and then associate the reward you or you know, the relaxation you get from the cigarette with a meditation, and then you make more and more meditation and less and less smoking. You could do small steps of first smoking the entire cigarette, next day you smoke half of it could work. Well, I'm not a smoker, but I think that this could be very valuable information for my

smoker listeners of a psychology podcast. So that's great. Yeah, So you know, you talk about habits and I am interested in this link between the habits and of conscious thinking. They seem so yeah. I mean, habits are by needs, are kind of unconscious, right, because there are patterns of behavior that we go through, Like you know, we all have our things, right, My smoking is my picking on my nails. You know. That's why habits are so power

bufful there's unconsciousness. And when I was still in brain research, I worked with Wolf Singer who you know on the visual system, and he said to me, and that really sticked to my brain. He said, you know, most of our thinking is unconscious, and we just use the remaining conscious parts of our brain to justify what we did afterwards. And I think that's a very important to acknowledge that most of our brain activity is unconscious and to use

that to our advantage. Rather than going thinking, oh there's no free will, Oh my brain is just doing what at once I have no control. That's not very helpful. I think it's helpful to build powerful habits so that they unconsciously guide us towards the path of our success. So you know, it's easy for our brain to engage in habits. You don't have to think about brushing your teeth in the morning. You don't have to think about the things you always do eating your cereal in the morning.

It's just a habit. You get down to the basement, you know, and you start eating your fruit or your cereal or whatever. So it's important and I think very useful to install good habits because you don't have one to think about it. Every time you do something positive. You don't have to think, now, I need to exercise. If you have an exercising habit, then you will automatically exercise every day without even second guest in your activity.

Or you know, if you have a habit of treating other people, well, then you don't have to think about it. You know. If it's just an ingrained habit of appreciating other people, respecting other people, and you make that part of your nature, then you don't have to think, oh, now I need to praise my employees and give them

a few compliments. That usually doesn't work so well because they will feel that you just did this in order to make them work harder now, you know, I just think installing good habits makes your life so much easier because it takes a lot of energy from your brain to make deliberate decisions. You know, there's something called decision fatigue.

You're just ego to please and if you're all day busy making lots of decisions, and the most executives I work with, they are very busy people, and you don't want to deplete these resources by constantly having to think about things from you know, use your brain research for the important stuff. So if you really want to make important decisions, then you can, you know, maybe use a

quiet moment to really think about that problem. But all the other stuff you're doing on a daily basis should be put into habits so that you don't have to waste your energy thinking about them too much. Right, So, you want to hone your intuition in a way where your intuition is actually helpful and not hurtful to your goals. So what are some ways people can increase their intuitive

decision making skills. Yeah, that's a very good question. I'm basing this on the insights of gird bigger answer from the Mustiplunk Institute in Berlin. You know, I asked him, what's the key takeaway from your research? What are you really bringing to people? And he said, when you have experts, give them limited time and give them limited information and

then make them have a quick decision making process. Don't ask them to justify themselves, don't ask them for a million reason why just make them have a quick decision making process. And that makes a lot of sense because experts they use their basil ganglia where a lot of experience is stored for decision making, whereas beginners and people who are not experts will use the prefunter courts for

a lot of the analyzing of the situation. And when you're I think it's important to understand are you an expert or not. Your brain has stored a lot of information on the topic, and then you can just access your basic ganglia to make a decision. And if you're not an expert, then you should actually go and do a lot of fact finding and soul searching and asking a lot of people and interviewing people and trying to

look at the facts. So I'm not saying you should always use your intuition, because for a non expert, what you expec sperience is gut feeling. Could also just be a bias. They say, you think you're interviewing to work candidates and one seems smarter than the other. If you're not an experienced recruiter or not an experienced interview you might just have a woman and a man, and then you just think the man is smarter, for example. That's a very obvious one. But I'm just saying intuition truly

works when you're an expert at the topic. So you should thrive to become an expert things, and then you should trust your intuition not think too hard about why you're making that particular choice. Cool, but don't trust your intuition blindly, yeah, because it could also just be a bias, yeah, or a habit, A bad habit, A bad habit, Yeah, a bad habit. And you know, I'm thinking about this sometimes. I compare this to car driving. The first time you

get your driver's license. You're concentrating, right, you're driving, and you're thinking, how do I push the brake, how do I turn the wheel? Oh, I need to look in through the mirror, and all of these things are process by your prefone to Cortes, you really have to focus and take in all the information. And you wouldn't even think in your dreams of having a phone call while you're driving or having a burger while you're on the road, and then ten years later that's what you might be

doing because you're driving with a different body part. You're using your basil ganglia to drive. It's become a habit rather than a deliberate cognitive task to drive. And with decision making, you can make good decisions if you have good stuff in your basil ganglia. And that's why I think training is important. You know, in the military, they really train people for emergency situations because when you're in stress, your pre phone to cortex doesn't work so well anymore.

So you're accessing the habits your basil ganglia for decision making process. And then you want to make sure they have the right kind of information in there. You don't want them to access a bad habit. You want them to pull out exactly the right the right way to pull the trigger, the right way to deal with an emergency situation. And that's why the police, the firemen, the military, emergency doctors, they all use a lot of drill in order to assure that the right kind of stuff is

in your basil, Ganglia. Yeah, when you said a lot they use the right drill, do you mean practice. Yes, I'm talking about practice, and in particular, I'm talking about overlearning. So you want to make sure that the right kind of information is in your basil, Ganga. Let's say I get into an emergency situation on the street and somebody is almost dying, and I rush, and I am also not going to sit there and think about it for

ten minutes. What's the best approach. I'm just going to do whatever comes to my mind first, since I'm not a trained doctor, not a nurse, intuitively seems right to me. But that is just wrong. And that's why people who need to make very quick decisions, quick intuitive decisions need to have the right kind of training and very deep training in order to access the right information in very short time when an emergency, for example, because it will save somebody's life if I have the right stuff in

my basil Ganglia. Yeah, and yeah, and as you said, yeah, Giger answer has done some good research on that. Yeah, there's similar researchers. Klin Colin, Yes, has shown that as well. Yeah, great, that's a great point. So let's talk about let's go into the very last part of this interview and talk about teamwork. Yeah, what are the brain chemicals that make us different? Oh, you know, I'm thinking a lot of

Helen Fisher to that respect. I think her research on and I think she was on your show as well, and she's she's a friend of mine. You know, you you complete the dream team here of the psychology podcast. No, And she has done such wonderful research on that topic because she has shown that there are four neurochemicals that are important for distinguishing personality. One is dopamine, and we

talked about dopamine before. It makes you look for novelty, makes you a very curious person, It makes you excited for challenges. Probably people with a very active dopamine system, they're always looking for the next new challenge, interesting things, interested in culture, in art or in mountains and hiking. They always have something going for them. And then you have the serotonin, which is more important for mood stabilizing.

So people who have a very active serotonin system, they're very loyal, they respect the rules, they enjoy a more structured work environment with you know, if we relate that back to the you we talk to about in the beginning when we talked about peak performance. The people with a very active serotonin system, they actually don't need so much external stress to perform well. They actually have a

very intrinsic motivational system. And then we have the testosterone and I'm not just talking about men here, women have it too. And that is about logical thinking of being very tough minded, interested in systems and structures. So the people who have a very active test restaurant system, they are also very interested in going up in the hierarchy. They want to become bosses. You know, it makes you

there's a certain power drive behind that. They also have very good spatial abilities, whereas people who have a very active estrogen system and not just women, have a higher verbal fluency and they are more of a netthinking, so they can connect topics that are not usually connected and see the big picture of things. And they usually very empathetic and care about other people and have very good relationship,

very deep relationships with other people. So you have these four brain systems, and she has really shown how they are connected to our personality, and I think that's amazing, and you can use that a lot in the business work. She's now applying it in the business world as well. And you know, she's moved away from applying that for matchmaking and now she's applying it in the business world.

And I think it's so important to understand that there's a genetic basis to personality and that you shouldn't change the way people are. You should rather acknowledge each other's strength and work with those. Yeah, I'm so glad that you drew in that research. And I'm wondering, like the point there in terms of the importance of diversity for teams, are you saying you need or you will literally need a mix of these systems to be I think it

depends on the task at hand. If everybody in the team has the same job, Let's say you have a bunch of journalists all writing, then you probably want to have people that are very high in estrogen and all of them are good with words and writing and interviewing people,

and then you don't need variety necessarily. But then you might have somebody else that the US paper who has to talk to the advertisement people and get other you know, get the newspaper to perform financially, and then you might want to have a person who's more structured, who has a high activity in serotonin. I think when you put a team together, you have to make sure that you get the right kind of person for the right kind

of task. Great point, great point. Yeah, I don't think diversity considerations are taken into account as much as they should. So when you personally go into work, into the workplace to consult, for instance, do you give people on the team's assessments personality assessments? How do you say, yes, if the client wants that, I actually give them Helen Fisher's neurocolor tests. And then you can see where people fall in each of these four categories, and then you know,

it's very helpful. When you have a team of people who work together, you can really see them having a comm moment. They will say, oh, that's why you always ask for the numbers. You know, he's very high, probably on either testosterone or serotonin, wants to have all the facts. You understand why somebody else always turns in his material right before the deadline, because some people really need deadlines and a lot of pressure in order to work well.

It's people with a very active dopamine system. They need a lot of pressure otherwise say well, you know they're underperforming, And I think it helps for people to understand that we're all different. And there's also a concept that I think is very important that's intraversion and extraversion. You need

to understand people's needs. And some people work very well in the home office and perform better if you just leave them alone, and other people perform best when they have the open office space and lots of chatty colleagues around. It depends on who you are, and that you know. It doesn't have anything to do with intelligence. People are just different, and I think a workplace environment needs to

respect these different I certainly agree with that. I wonder could there be any potential danger in labeling people though in a sort of unchanging way that kind of sets you know, like, oh, that's the high testosterone guy on the team. Oh that's the high you know. Could there be costs as well as benefits of that approach. I think this can happen with the old school approaches like the MBTI that have been used a lot in the

business context. I think with Helen Fisher's research, if you use it right, she's saying type is dad or actually also her partner David Glopno is saying that type is dad. She's talking about neural signatures. So it's much more complex than just looking at your two most active systems. Let's say you have a high testosterone activity and also high dopamine activity, so probably your sensation seeker. She looks at

all four systems and how they interact. Because you can be high on both testosterone and estrogen, for example, it's something most people don't know about. And you can also be high on serotonin, so it's not about just the one substance you're high in or that is very active. She actually looks at all four of them and how they combine to make you unique. And I also think her research is very appreciative of differences. I think there's

no style or signature that could be considered bad. You know, there's none that you could look at and say, oh, I don't want to be associated with that. Mostly when I give the test to people, they are very happy about their results. They feel like they want to show it to everybody. It's more wow. Now, finally somebody gives me an explanation why I feel the way I do

and why I behave the way I do. It's a you know, if you know the people around you, you can make it easier to give them what they really need and what they really want. And that's a relief. Sure, And Susan King's Quiet Leadership Institute, for instance, particularly has been looking at that and poor of the introversion extroversion dimension. But there certainly are other dimensions, so that's good. Could

you take them into account. At the same time, I want to make sure we don't stereotype people as well or let them know. And also I want to make sure we let people know that they can change. You know, these are dimensions, not type. So like you said, you know that through the course of our day we can fluctuate back. There are moods where I'm more testosterony after coming from the gym. Yeah, there are moods where I'm more serotonin in the you know, it fluctuates in all

of us. I think it fluctuates and people can change. I think, you know, there's a genetic component, but as we know, genetics is never one hundred percent. There's always you know a mix of genetics and environment that makes us behave the way we do. And it's important to understand that you need both to understand a person. So there's a genetic component, but you can influence that a

lot by how you know, interact and how you challenge yourself. Absolutely, what's the difference to a talent and a strength, Well, my talent is more of a trait. My talent is more about what you're born with, so your genetic disposition, whereas a strength is those talents put it use by

the accumulation of skills, for example, and training. So let's say you're very talented with music, okay, but nobody knew about it, and then one day you start by trying to play an instrument, and then you really train that, and then you have a strength once you really combined your genetic disposition with training. So talent and skills become a strength. And I think in the business world it's so important, and not just in the business world to

play by your strength. You don't want to, you know, I would kill myself if I had to have the work of an engineer. I could never be really successful. It's just not the skill set that I have by natural position. So I could train a lot, and I could do a lot of training, and then I would probably pull it off. Somehow, but I would never experience the flow and the joy of really being very successful

and very good at what I'm doing. So it's best to know where your talents are and then put a lot of practice in those areas of talent, because very often in organizations, what they do with executive coaching is that they take somebody's problem areas. They say, oh, you know this person, he doesn't know how to present in front of an audience. So now we're sending him to a hundred different presentation skills workshop and we coach him

on how he can present data. This person will probably never become a truly brilliant presenter, whereas he might or she might have a different talent, for example, in an artistic area for graphics and putting together beautiful presentations on in a graphic way, not by standing in front of people, but maybe by you know, making illustrations or presentations on PowerPoint or something like that, and then this person could become the best possible expert at that in the company

and really add value to the company by putting more hours of practice into that skill. So interesting, it is just interesting how different people define the word out in different ways, right, you know, like, yeah, you know, it seems like a lot of people have different definitions that, And of course nothing is purely genetically determined, as you know, even our talents are all developed to a certain extent through the experiences. So that's just a really interesting way

of looking at the difference between the two. Can I end this interview today by asking you do you see a new era of leadership? Well, I think companies are realizing now that people have needs and that it actually pays off to allow people to sleep and to take breaks, and to exercise, and to to be treated well by their employer. And I think it pays off to create a brain friendly work environment which people enjoy what they're doing.

I think people are catching on to that. That's great. Well, I hope that your ideas proliferate more of the leadership community, and I wish you good luck with your new book. Thank you so much, thanks for having me, Scott, thanks for being here, Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott Barak Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this

episode or hear past episodes. You can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com