Dominance vs. Prestige, Human Skills, and the Science of Leadership Influence | Dr. Benjamin Granger (Pt. 2)

🎧 Episode 209: Dominance vs. Prestige, Human Skills, and the Science of Leadership Influence | Dr. Benjamin Granger (Pt. 2)

📝 Show Notes

What does evolutionary biology have to do with your leadership style?

More than you think.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Sonnie and Dr. Benjamin Granger go deeper into the science of leadership, from the two paths humans use to gain social status, to why your physical environment shapes behavior in ways you never see coming.

Benjamin unpacks the difference between dominance and prestige as competing leadership strategies, and makes a compelling case for why prestige-based leadership is not just the ethical choice, it is the most effective one for navigating the future of work.

They explore why humans are far more susceptible to their environments than they want to believe, why negative feedback is actually a sign of a healthy team, and what science says about the direct and indirect ways leaders shape behavior every single day.

One concept from this episode will stop you cold: choice architecture. Every leader is designing the decision environment around their team whether they know it or not. The question is whether they are doing it intentionally.

Benjamin closes with a final piece of wisdom from Stephen Hawking that will stay with you long after the episode ends.

🔍 In This Episode We Cover:

• The two evolutionary paths to social status and what they reveal about your leadership style
• Why dominance-based leadership is still alive in modern organizations and what it costs
• How environments shape behavior gradually, and why no leader is immune
• Why negative feedback from your team is actually good news
• The body language habits that silently signal whether people feel heard
• Why human skills and metacognitive skills are the most critical leadership capabilities in the age of AI
• What choice architecture means and how every leader is using it whether they realize it or not
• Why the physical environment of your workplace sends a message louder than your values statement

🔑 Key Takeaways:

• Leaders who earn followership through prestige outperform those who rely on dominance, especially in times of uncertainty and change
• No one is immune to their environment. The most self-aware leaders ask: is this environment healthy for me?
• Negative feedback means your team trusts you. Silence should concern you far more
• Hard skills are being commoditized. The ability to learn, adapt, and lead through ambiguity is what differentiates the best leaders now
• Every policy, artifact, and physical space in your organization is a form of leadership communication
• Mankind's gre

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Transcript

The Environments You Choose

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I can almost guarantee everybody listening to this has gone through this at some point in their career. So here's a new personal responsibility for us. I like to challenge us all. What environments are healthy for you? What environments are not healthy for you? You have a choice to enter and stay in those or to remove yourself. That's something I'm much more aware of now after studying for this book is.

Body Language That Builds Trust

Meeting Overload And Feeling Valued

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Welcome to Evoke Greatness, the podcast for bold leaders and big dreamers who refuse to settle. I'm your host, Sonny. I started in Scrubs over 20 years ago, doing the gritty, unseen work and climbed my way to CEO. Every rung of that ladder taught me something worth passing on. Lessons in leadership, resilience, and what it really takes to rise. You'll hear raw conversations, unfiltered truths, and the kind of wisdom that ignites something deeper in you. Your courage, your conviction, your calling. This show will help you think bigger, lead better, and show up bolder in every part of your life. This is your place to grow. Let's rise together. What if the environment around you has been quietly reshaping who you are as a leader and you didn't even notice it happening? That's where part two of my conversation with Dr. Benjamin Granger goes. We get into the two evolutionary paths to leadership, why the one most people default to is working against them, and what science actually says about how leaders shape behavior directly and indirectly every single day. He also drops a concept that I've not stopped thinking about. Every leader is a choice architect. You are designing the decision environment around your team, whether you intend to or not. And he wraps up with a fantastic quote from Stephen Hawking. Part one was the foundation. Part two is where it gets real. Let's hop into it. I hope everyone right now is reflecting on how they show up, whether it be it on video, be it in proximity inside of offices. I think so often we don't think about our body language. And so we may have some, again, who knows what happened, like right before you go to meet with someone, right? Or right after. And so all of those things are woven into like the energy that we're bringing in and how we're showing up. And if we just almost put ourselves on the other side for the eyes that are viewing us versus us viewing out of our own eyes, because we know all that's going on and we know the distraction and all the things that are in the back of our mind that might add context to what we're saying or how we're saying it. But if we put ourselves in the position of the person who's receiving that message, that might really shift how we're how self-aware we are about our messaging. Because it really is. I mean, I how often now, I mean, I pick this up, but how often do we have our phones sitting right in front of us? How often are we just responding to a quick message where it shows complete disinterest in the person that you're having a conversation with? Yes. We're going through something internally right now where we have meeting overload. We had done my executive executive team and I, we had done an exercise sometime last year, really cleaned up our calendars, had some dedicated heads-down time. It was, they looked so nice. And now we're back to it looks like someone threw up meetings all over our calendar. And so we're going through this process right now because what I want to do is I don't want to have a person who's getting their meetings moved all around to feel less valued. And if we are listening to, I had a recent conversation where someone felt like they weren't really being valued. And so I just was like, there's something more to this. Like, tell me, tell me a little bit more about in what way do you not feel valued? And and it was interesting as we got down to it, it was the meeting that they had set with me on a regular basis, it's supposed to be a one-on-one that they can count on every single week, gets moved all the time. And I think when someone else handles our calendar, we have an executive assistant. So when someone else handles our calendar, we're not so aware of it. But when someone shares, hey, I'm I don't feel like my time is viewed as important because this meeting always gets moved around. And I was like, okay, big old light bulb. Big old light bulb. That I frankly, you know, uh, I have an everything is my fault mentality. I'm like, I should have recognized this a long time ago. I really should have. And so my commitment was here's what we're gonna do moving forward this weekend. We take an inventory of what our calendar looks like. We get rid of the meetings that should be phone calls or emails. We have meetings that we commit to our team that we will show up for in respect of their time and whatever they bring to the agenda consistently every single week. And so I have shared with our executive assistant, we get a 20%, you get get 20% meeting variability. Only 20% of meetings have the opportunity to be moved if something is urgent. And so putting in kind of these new constructs because one person shared really honestly, it opened up something bigger for us to consider as leaders. Those things sometimes we just we just don't see, or we're not self-aware, or we've got too many meetings to recognize. But it really is in tapping into what fundamentally matters to people, right? And how you communicate with them, picking up on things that are maybe just a little off than than how you're used to communicating with them, enough to like pull the thread to say, hey, hold on. I feel like there might be something more to this. I would encourage people to take the opportunity to ask those questions. And frankly, I will be very honest with you, you're gonna get answers you don't want to hear, right? You're gonna get answers where you've got to do a little bit of of a self-reflection or an inventory of how you're handling situations to say, how can we do this better? How can we show up in a way and create an environment where people feel like no matter what, I really do feel valued. I know that you're respecting of my time, I'm respecting of yours.

Practical Listening Cues Leaders Miss

SPEAKER_01 6:27

There's so much love about what you just said, Sonny. One thing I will say just on your last point, not only will you hear things you don't want to, but if you don't, you should be concerned. Because if you don't, if you put it to you this way, negative feedback tells you a couple of very important things, especially when when it's a through a survey or it's a one-on-one or whatever, it tells you that they trust you enough to be honest with you. That means you have a really good starting point to build from. You got a foundation there to build a nice house. That you can build on that. If you have people telling you what you want to hear, then you should be concerned. Then you got a real problem because you've got some blind spots and you're not gonna know where they are because they don't trust you enough or they don't feel safe enough, to be real honest with you. So I like to frame it that way because you're exactly right. If you go ask those questions and you have a good psychologically safe environment, they're gonna tell you some things that are hard to hear. That's good news. That's really good news because now you can go do something. One of the things you talked about, well, firstly, secondly, I should say, Sonny, good for you for aware being aware of that, like coming to that awareness and saying, okay, we got a problem here. I missed that, we're gonna fix it. Good for you. That I mean, that's not every leader does that. So I love hearing that. And then you talked a little bit about some of the ways that people can perceive or feel being heard. And this is, I think, a really important point. Going back to the body language point, you know, how often do we, and I'm gonna say I, because I'm I'm notorious for this in the past, I'm getting better about it. But okay, you're having a meeting, let's say you're having a one-on-one with your subordinate and or video conference, even maybe, and you're typing on your computer, or oh, hold on one second, let me just take, I'm listening, I'm listening, you know. Maybe you are, but does the other person feel like they're being heard? Right. And so one of the things I challenge leaders to do is don't just hear people, show them through your body language and through your behavior that you're listening. And I'll let me give you some really practical tips here. If you're meeting in person, remove any physical barriers from you and the person meeting you. In other words, don't sit across the desk from them. Because the desk actually creates this physical barrier that leads to an unconscious perception of there's there's something in between us. That's real. Simple thing you can do. Put your desk against the wall so that when you meet with anybody who comes into your office, there's no barrier there. Or if you if you like it the other way, just leave your desk alone. But when you have a one-on-one, have two chairs sitting off to the side where there's nothing in between you. Don't pull up your laptop in between you, don't pull your phone in between you. Second thing, don't cross your arms. Even if you feel like it's comfortable, if you're like, oh, I'm cold or it feels comfortable, I'm gonna cross my arms. Don't do that. Because what that does is again, it puts kind of a barrier in between you and the person. And it could lead them subconsciously to feel like you're not really hearing them. So when you really want to be open with somebody and you're having a good critical one-on-one conversation, make create the physical, take the physical form of somebody who's open. Don't put anything in front of you and between you and move your arms to your side. And what's gonna happen, and this is this has been a lot of research on this, you're actually gonna hear them better if you do that. There's been research on studies of people that are sitting in classrooms, sitting in conferences that are crossing their arms versus not. And they've even artificially induced them. They've said, All right, you're in the crossed arm condition, you're in the open condition. The people who cross their arms get less information than the people who don't. So I often when I'm when I'm on stage, I do like to make fun of people a little bit, you know, pick on them for crossing their arms because a lot of people do. I do the same. But you kind of call them out and you say, like, hey, not to call you out, but you're gonna retain less if you're doing that, and it makes everybody self-conscious kind of a fun thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

That's great. And and again, I think it just calls some self-awareness to it. Because I think sometimes it becomes a habit that we don't even maybe it's a little bit of a nervous thing, and sometimes it's a protective mechanism that someone is using for themselves. They don't mean for it to go outward. It's more of an inward thing, but it doesn't matter. Perception is reality. And if someone feels like there's a barrier or something's closed off, that's how the experience is gonna go.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Exactly. And I want you you bring it up, I'm so glad you said this because I want to be clear. When you do, if you're like, oh my goodness, I do that all the time, this does not mean that you have bad intentions. This is an unconscious thing that we do. But the important thing is that as leaders, I think we need to be, we need to upgrade our ability to bring those unconscious tendencies to consciousness. And if you do, you can gain a huge advantage in making people feel heard, making people feel respected. Your intentions could be the same, but you need to understand exactly to your point, Sonny. It's not necessarily what's really true, it's what they think is true that matters. Because if they perceive they're not being heard, then effectively they were not heard.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Right. Right. And for the curious folks who want to learn, want to lean in, this is a way to challenge yourself to take in more information, to actually take in more of the experience that's unfolding before you is to try that. That's how I was thinking. I thought, oftentimes, yeah, sometimes we do things with our hands. Certainly, I've developed habits just through speaking where I used to not know what to do with my hands and I used them all the time. And so now I really I have a concerted effort to just try to steady my hands and not have them be the focal point. But that even sometimes does still create a barrier. And so it makes me a little bit more self-aware of like, okay, let me observe my own habits here in a minute.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yes. And it can get, I do the same. Sometimes I feel like I'm overanalyzing myself, but it it's a good sign. It's a good habit of self-monitoring, understanding, and starting to be more thoughtful about how you're showing up, how you're showing up in other people's minds.

Dominance Versus Prestige Leadership

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Right, right, absolutely. Well, your book is titled A Leader Worth Following, which is such a powerful phrase. I think words are incredibly powerful. And sometimes we don't even pay enough attention to that. And so when I see a leader worth following, I value so much the um sense of responsibility that I get with being a leader. I think there's a really big responsibility to that. And so I love just the actual language that you're putting out in your book title. What does it mean to you to be a leader that people genuinely want to follow?

SPEAKER_01 13:32

I think it starts with exactly what you just said. It's being thoughtful about the fact that we all follow leaders, all of us. We're born with that. That's it's in it's innate in us as a social species. Leadership is a social adaptation to solve the problems associated with group living. So we're born with that. And we all follow leaders, some of us because we have to. It is also true that we follow people because we want to. And what I got really interested in this is when I was, you know, for a while, I've I've been working on this leadership book and doing research on this, but one area really got me down a rabbit hole, and that was the research that looked at the different paths that social species use to attain social status. So, a couple of obvious premises here. It's better to be on the top of the hierarchy than on the bottom, right? That's universally true, not just for humans. But the higher you are on the social status, the more resources you have access to. You go back in time tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years ago, it was it was adaptive to be at the top of the social hierarchy. You're much more likely to survive, your kids were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. And here we are today, those who are the offspring of those who were successful in these social environments. When you were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, or you got kicked out of the group, you were essentially doomed, you know, doomed to death and to not passing on your genes over evolutionary time. So in these social species, humans, primates, crawfish, because I'm from Louisiana, crickets, any known social species that I have studied or looked at uses a form of social status striving called dominance. And in other words, you have the alpha of the group or the alphas of the group. And it's not to say all alphas are bad or ill-willed, but in the path to dominance, basically the alpha uses force or the threat of force to get to the top. So in the past, that used to be the biggest, strongest animal in the group was the one who ascended to the top. And then you either make friends with that person or you enter a relationship with that person or that group of people, and then you had a good until somebody came over the top. And that eventually happened inevitably in every social group. So dominance is a path, and still to this day in business, you you find leaders. You know, I often think of Mike Judge's office face, and I think of Bill Lumberg, right? He's not using physical force, he's not using kinetic force. These leaders don't go around and beat people up today, for the most part, but they do use social threats, they do use political threats. They, and they can be very damaging, not only to the individuals they use them against, but actually to group performance. But the good news is that there's this other path that humans use to achieve social status, and that's known as prestige. And so prestige you might think of as servant leadership, inspirational leadership. So this is person in the group, let's say, you know, because I I think modern organizations are really the same as 10,000 years ago when we were living in tribes. They're just much bigger today. But we have a group of people that are working together to achieve a common objective. That's always been true about humans. So some humans in the group are really good at foraging, some are good at nursing, some are good at telling stories, some are good at with music, whatever it might be. Today we have engineers, we have coders, we have keynote speakers, we have podcasters, we have authors, and these individuals share their gift for the betterment of the group, and everybody else confers status upon them. Those are the leaders we follow because we want to. And the question that nagged at me is okay, you have these two paths, competing paths to social status. Both can work, to be clear. There's many, many examples of leaders who use dominance and they're successful if you ascribe to a narrow definition of success. But my question is: as we move into this future where we have AI everywhere, we have intelligent technologies taking over, we're sitting side by side with them, things are getting increasingly uncertain, the pace of change is increasing. How do we get groups of people to work effectively together to achieve a common mission? What approach do we need? Do we need more dominance or do we need more prestige? And I think the answer is abundantly clear. We need the latter.

How Environments Rewrite Your Values

SPEAKER_00 18:33

Yeah. It's funny immediately when you talked about that that kind of stereotypical, like I I think back to um, I guess it wasn't all that long ago, but 40, 50 years ago, when um it was kind of the picturesque leader was very dominant, sometimes lost their ever-loving bananas in meetings, slammed their fists, uh, got very grass, you know. I think, and so it's interesting to see the evolution over time. And I'd like to think that it was organizations were no longer willing to accept that, but I don't think that's a hundred percent the truth, the truth. I think there are still organizations where that probably exists because behavior constitutes outcomes, oftentimes. And so these behaviors and what someone is able to execute on is what creates the outcomes. And so if you've got that dominance that's way too far to that side that isn't necessarily a healthy environment, but they're creating outcomes. I think we still have organizations who are like, that's okay. Okay, quick pause to tell you about my partners at Roe Nutrition. I came to them as a customer first. I have both Hashimoto's and I am smack dab in the middle of perimenopause. Their liposomal supplements have been a game changer for my brain fog, fatigue, and inflammation. I'm currently taking their NAD plus, glutathione, and curcumin. And I recently added in both collagen and creatine. Anyone who knows me knows I only put my name behind what I actually use, and Roe has earned it. You can use the code SUNY15SONNIE15 for 15% off at ro nutrition.com, or you can click the link in the show notes and it'll take you right there. All right, let's hop back into the episode. And then we have organizations who are leaning more towards the bulf and I think we can have a good, solid, healthy leader in there and get the desired outcomes that we hoped for. And I think that's kind of the evolution, but it is interesting to think about there, there are still some organizations that say, no, it's we're gonna go ahead and continue on this path.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, exactly. And there are many that actually adv advertise and embrace that. They're abundantly clear about that, even to this day. And I have to say, at least they're honest about it. Sure. That's better than not being aware of it and doing it. But I also think, too, to your point, Sunny, you mentioned the environment. This is a really important point because when you put people in an environment that is, let's say it's very aggressive, and maybe that person who's entering the group isn't particularly aggressive. Well, if you put them in that group for long enough, what's gonna happen? And we all like to think we're stable. We all like to think, oh, I would never do that. You know, let's take politics, for example. I don't want to get too much into the world. Right. So let's say a lot of people look at politicians and like, man, I voted for that person. I thought they were a good person. Why are they now what what's going on here? Why are they involved in all these scandals and what are they doing? And we were like, oh, I would never do that. Well, if I was the governor, if I was a senator in college. Congressman or whatever. We like to think we're stable. We like to think no matter the environment we're in, we would be solid. I hate to break it to us, but that's just not realistic. Humans adapt to their environments. So I don't think a lot of people challenge me on this and they say, well, that's a cop-out. You know, what about personal responsibility? And I like that challenge because I agree with that. We do have a choice. But I what I would think is a lot of times those environments are very slippery slopes. It happens gradually. We don't notice the internal change until it's too late, until it's dramatic and somebody calls us out on it, or we lose, you know, we lose a relationship because of it. And we're like, whoa, what happened? But I think back on this. I can almost guarantee everybody listening to this has gone through this at some point in their career. I've I've been through this multiple times myself. So here's a new personal responsibility for us. I like to challenge us all. What environments are healthy for you? What environments are not healthy for you? You have a choice to enter and stay into those, stay in those, or to remove yourself. And so that's something I'm much more aware of now after studying for this book is I have become much more appreciative of how powerful the environment is at influencing my behavior and my mindsets. And I think we need to have a better grasp on that. None of us are immune to this.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah, what you said there, Ben, about specifically hit the nail on the head. Think about politics as such a good example because these are people who go into this because they want to affect change. They desire a different outcome. They're like, you know what? No one else is stepping up to it. Like, I'm going to go in and I'm going to create this change. And you're right. How often, almost all of the time, do they get sucked up into the environment where they're then supporting things that they probably didn't go into office initially supporting? And it's interesting. I still feel like there are some people who haven't lost their voice, a very rare few. And they probably stand out amongst their peers who still hold on, they anchor to something. And but it's consistent. And oftentimes they face a lot of opposition because that is not that's not what that environment thrives on. That environment thrives on you going with the herd mentality and not necessarily questioning it, but hey, as a party, as a whatever, like this is the initiative we're going to support. And so heads down, like let's just support it. And so it's so interesting. And I think that is uh I have a interest in politics and an interest in going into politics. And at the same time, that is actually the one thing that that is the arms crossed in front of me, the the pause of because I know how humans are. I know how capable and susceptible we are to getting swirled up in our environment. And so then it does become a personal choice and sense of responsibility before you ever even make that decision.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Exactly. I have friends in politics. One of the things that they often say, and I think this is genuine, by the way, is if you don't learn to play the game, you can never attain your long-term goals. And so this becomes a justification. That's what I was talking about with the slippery slope. God bless those people who stay true to those values that anchor to those values. But even those individuals are susceptible. They're less susceptible than the rest of us, right? We're all in this sort of this bell curve of susceptibility to the environment. Some are very, some are less so, but we're all susceptible. And so I think you're very wise, Sonny, to, you know, and we, by the way, I'm not saying good people with good intentions don't go into politics. Please do, because we need that. Right. But what I'm saying is we have to be aware of how powerful the environment, the environmental cues are, and to be constantly vigilant about is that a tactic? Is this something that's influencing? Am I veering off of my values? So I like what you said earlier, knowing what those values are that you're aligned to and being consistent, consistent behavior and what behaviors are consistent with those values and constantly evaluating yourself and your behavior against those, those absolute standards.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

You talk about human skills being most in being the most important leadership capability for the future. Why are these skills becoming so critical right now? You know, amongst all of the AI and all the automation in the world, why are the human skills most critical?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

I firmly believe this because we have done dozens of studies looking at consumer behavior, what drives their behavior, what are their attitudes, positively or negatively, dozens of studies on employee behaviors, attitudes. We were doing a study, we're right in the middle of a study at Qualtrics about the future of what we call experience management, the future of the field, how it's going to evolve. All of it points to we're living in a world, and okay, this is more so going to be true in the near future, where a lot of the traditional hard skills, coding, let's say, even some manual physical labor activities, things that you would learn a trade for, those things are quickly becoming automated. Now, this isn't new, by the way. This is if you if you zoom out a bit and you look at the Industrial Revolution, for example, is similar in a lot of ways where you know you went from handcrafted stuff to um assembly line manufacturing. So this is not new in that sense. But a lot of those traditional hard skills, and a lot of companies still promote people based on advanced hard skills, these are the things that are quickly becoming commoditized. And so one of the good things that I think AI is doing is it's really forcing us to reflect on this question, this existential question of what do we contribute uniquely? And also from a leadership perspective, what is it that differentiates the best leaders from the worst? Is it do the best leaders, are they the ones who have the most advanced hard skills in a trade? Not in my experience. Not based on the data I've seen. It's the what we used to call soft skills. And I would, I think, is more appropriately called human skills today. And I would go even further than this. I think what we sometimes refer to as metacognitive skills are becoming even more important. Metacognitive skills would be things like being agile, learning how to learn effectively. Because can you can any of us project, hey, what's going to be the most common job in 2035? You know, I got a hundred bucks for anybody who can nail that one. And hold me to it, by the way. I'll I'll Venmo or use whatever currency we're using in nine years from now, whatever.$100, if you can nail that. But the fact is, it's very difficult to project that. It's very difficult to predict that. But one thing you can predict is change is gonna happen and change is gonna happen faster. So if you can learn to be more agile, if you can learn to learn, you're gonna be well suited for whatever's gonna come, versus I'm gonna learn this particular set of skills, which might be obsolete in five years. That's a very real possibility.

Leaders As Choice Architects

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Your background in psychology gives you such a unique lens, and I think your curiosity and your kind of passion for what you study really comes through. What is what does science tell us about how leaders actually influence behavior?

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Hmm. I would say firstly, leaders have a massive direct and indirect influence on people's behavior. We talked about some of those subtle unconscious cues, right? Their body language, their words, how they use it, the inflection of their voice. There are so many things that come across in communication subconsciously that our conscious brains don't pick up all the time. We got to get familiar with that. But that is clearly one of the things we see. But there's also an indirect effect that leaders have. Sometimes we might call this culture. I'll use that as a placeholder word here. But I like to define culture as the shared behavior pattern and mindsets of an organization. You know, some people say if the leader's away, what do people do? What are the shared norms? That's the culture. I think that's actually a pretty good definition, you know. So, but leaders, how they show up, how they don't show up, what they say, what they don't say, what policies and protocols they put in place or don't. The sometimes Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein and their classic book, Nudge, call this choice architecture. What environmental factors influence a person's behavior? All leaders are choice architects. That's uncomfortable for some people because some people are like, oh, I believe in free will, which is me. You know, like, why can't we just let people freely choose what they want to do? Because some decisions are so stinking complex that there's no way. One of the examples I use in the book is, you know, do how many of us really understand the ins and outs of our K program as an employee?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

I'm not many raising their hand.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

I mean, I don't. Maybe a couple people out there do, but those are the types of decisions, or of a funny or more fun example, when you're on an international flight and you got the in-flight movies and there's like 500 to choose from, how long does it take us to pick a movie? It takes me like an hour to pick a movie, and then I'm almost there, right? So the this choice architecture and thinking about leaders have a huge direct effect on employee behavior, influence on behavior. A lot of it is unconscious, unconsciously driven on the part of the leader and the employees, and also the customers, but much of it is indirect. And back to the environment, those choice architecture, what architect or artifacts exist in the environment that reflect a leader's attitudes or behaviors? Great example of this is a company that believes in the value of transparency and then holds closed-off meetings with, you know, high cubicles. There's a misalignment there. So one of the things I do talk about, and I have a whole chapter on the power of the environment. One of the things I talk about in that chapter is the when you're looking at cultures, really being mindful of the artifacts, the physical, perceptible, visual artifacts, because those are the things, those are the cues that tell people we do believe in this. So if your values transparency, I qualtrix, that's one of our big, that's one of our first, that is the first. We call it tacos. Transparency is the very first principle. When you come into our offices, every office room has glass walls. That is a visible, perceptible artifact of transparency. So long-winded answer to your question, Sunny. Sorry, I get on the I get going, but I think that's the really crux is think about the indirect and the direct effect that leaders have, and most importantly, that indirect effect through artifacts, through culture.

Final Wisdom And Where To Find Ben

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Yeah, I love that. I had to write it down. Choice architecture. There's again, like words are meaningful to me. And I just think about oh, like, how are you architecting that? How are you creating? What does the creation of that look like? And so I love the the the power or the insinuation that words create out of putting these words together. I I could geek out on this forever. I we're already at our hour and I can't believe how quick this has flown by. As we wrap up, um, I always like to ask everyone a question at the end of the, at the end of the show. And that is if it were your last day on earth and of all of the lived experience and the research and the everything you found out about humans that you've studied and their minds and their behaviors, um, if you could only impart one piece of wisdom or guidance to the world, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Oh man. Um Okay. I'm gonna steal a quote, my second favorite quote of all time from the great late Stephen Hawking, and that is Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, its greatest failures by not talking. All we need to do is keep talking.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

I love that. Absolutely love that. I want to make sure I'm gonna put everything in the show notes, but where can people find you, follow you, pick up a copy of your book?

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Great place to go would be benjameng.com. And a fun little thing on the on the website that you can access my book and all the different online platforms. By the way, Sonny, I'm very excited to say that the book has already hit uh three bestseller lists as of this week.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

So I hit the USA Today and the Publishers Weekly. So I'm very excited. I had no idea it would resonate that widely and quickly, so I'm very excited about that. But one of the things I did, and this is available on the website, is I created a companion playlist. So if you could spare 30 more seconds for me, I have a fun story for you. Please. When I wrote my first draft of the manuscript, I so I'm a I'm a music geek. I got my guitars right here on my right side. So I'm a music geek, I'm a huge rock fan, and I find music very inspiring. My first draft of my manuscript had like 30 song quotes in it. I'm a first time author. I don't, you know, you're you know where this is going. I sent the manuscript to the publisher and they were like, hey, this is fantastic. You got the permissions for all these songs? What's a permission? So, needless to say, Dr. Ben learned a hard lesson about copyright law that day and had to take all the song quotes out, unfortunately. But what I did instead was I created a companion playlist for the book. So there are songs that are broken down by each chapter, but each song carries an important connection to the lessons in the chapter. I think it'll be a fun little journey for people, a little scavenger hunt to find the connection. But also I find music, at least for me, helps me remember key lessons. And so that's really one of the reasons is to help anchor some of those important lessons. Next time you hear that song on the radio or you're jamming out to the playlist or whatever it might be, you're like, oh yeah, I remember that lesson. That's a good little nudge for me going in to my next meeting or my next little thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:24

That's perfect. Well, thank you so, so much for your time. Like I said, I I am such a uh I have such a love of psychology and human behavior and just the whys behind what people do. And so I could go on with you for hours and hours, but I appreciate your time. I appreciate your willingness to share your new book. Guys, make sure you pick up a copy and just thank you. Thank you for what you're doing from a leadership perspective, because I think there's so much growth and so much learning that we all have to do. And so I would encourage everybody to lean in, get a little more self-aware, and get a whole lot more curious.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Thanks so much for having me, Sonny.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Okay, stay with me for just a second before you go. Living with Hashimoto's and being in the middle of perimenopause means brain fog shows up in the middle of conversations, decisions, and moments that matter. And I refuse to stay there. I'm very selective about what I put in my body. Intentional. So when Meraki Blue came to me wanting to support this community, I said yes because I already believed in what they do. Methylene Blue, mitochondrial health, cognitive performance, mental clarity. It works for me. I want it to work for you too. Meraki Blue is giving the Evoke Greatness community 20% off. Use the code EvokeGREATness, all caps, no spaces at checkout. I promise you, your brain isn't broken. It's just waiting on the right support. If today's episode challenged you, moved you, or lit a fire in your soul, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with somebody who's ready to rise. Can I ask you to take 30 seconds to leave a review? It's the best way to say thank you and help this show reach more bold leaders like you. Because this isn't just a podcast, it's a movement. We're not here to play small. We're here to lead loud, one bold and unapologetic step at a time. Until next time, stay bold, stay grounded, and make moves that make mediocre uncomfortable.