What Behavioral Science Reveals About Human Connection - with Shirin Oreizy

In this episode of The Space In Between, Leigh hosts behavioral science expert Shirin Oreizy—founder and former CEO of Next Step and noted coach to leaders — who shares practical tools for holding firm to our values and bridging divides. We explore behavioral science insights including why fear of loss can loom larger than potential gain, how smart framing of issues can unlock connection, and why building something together first can lower defenses and open honest dialogue. We also explore “above vs. below the line” leadership, and the slow, steady work of cultivating trust over time. Leigh and Shirin share personal examples from their lives and go deep in exploring how to feel empowered during polarized times. Listen for practices you can use today with your team, your family, and your community. 

Transcript

Leigh Morgan 0:01

Hello and welcome to the Space In Between Podcast. I'm your host, Lee Morgan. This podcast is for listeners who are fed up with the hyperpolarized nature of the world today, and who craves spaces where current events can be discussed in constructive, enlightening, and delightful ways. Let's get started. Hello everyone. We have another great show. Today. We will explore key principles in the field of behavioral science and the relevance of those principles to a core theme of the podcast, how to hold firm to our convictions, and also bridge divides in a time of hyperpolarization and a lot of uncertainty. In a world where taking sides and wanting to change opinions of folks who disagree with us often takes center stage. Making time to deeply understand what motivates and influences decision making can be liberating and help us enact change that we care about. So understanding behavioral science can help us do that. After all, knowing what motivates people to act, make decisions and communicate effectively are capabilities we all need to influence effectively. My guest today, Shireen Rezi, has deep expertise and very practical insights to share. Shireen is the founder, former CEO, and now an advisor to Next Step, a very successful behavioral design agency that brings behavioral science expertise to clients who want to drive transformational growth and impact. This past year, she turned her focus to a new venture as a life coach and a speaker focusing on supporting clients who are navigating big life transitions. She's also affiliated with the Conscious Leadership Group whose frameworks and tools are centered on helping people and organizations reach their highest potential. Shereen is inquisitive, warm, and brings a keen intellect to her work and shares our passion for finding ways to empower individuals and teams to bridge divides that keep us apart. Shereen, welcome to the Space in Between Podcast. Thank you so much, Lee. I'm super

Shirin 2:36

excited to be here today.

Leigh Morgan 2:39

Glad you're here and we've had so many fun conversations leading up to this podcast, and I mentioned you have this beautiful ability to balance deep awareness of the science of behavioral sciences, which is really about how people behave, coupled with a strong intuition and an ability to connect deeply with people. So my first question for you is, where do these capabilities come from?

Shirin 3:06

I think I'd like to give credit to that, to just this lifelong story that I've had of really being able to bridge divides. I was actually born in Iran and we immigrated to the US at the age of seven, and between the ages of seven and 18, I went back and forth between Iran and the US every summer. I spent grade school here in the US middle school and high school in Iran, and so I had this basically front row seat. To two countries that were literally at war with each other. And I still remember that as a child going to Iran and seeing these Death to America billboards in the streets. And at the same time, that same week sneaking MTV. Video tapes into our house and dancing to Madonna's Vogue. So,

Leigh Morgan 3:52

well she said she's everywhere.

Shirin 3:54

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and so even as an adult, you know, I started my career as an electrical engineer. Uh, very different. And really this commitment to logic and precision. And then when I later on founded Next Step at Behavioral Design Agency, I was working with both researchers who really wanted to. Quantify everything and creative designers that just wanted to make everything beautiful. So this classic left brain, right brain battle, so to speak. But I think all in all my life has been really maybe this one long experiment in trying to understand human nature. And what we do and why we do it, where there's common ground. How do we seek happiness? How do we ground ourselves in better understanding of each other in, in a world where we do have different viewpoints and different ways of thinking,

Leigh Morgan 4:42

well, you're in the right space. I'm in the right space with you. Virtual space today. And I wonder, in terms of your family, I mean you, there's a lot of transition and you gave some examples. Mm-hmm. You had to go in and out of different cultures. Mm-hmm. And did that help you with your ease with people and building relationships?

Shirin 5:04

Absolutely. Yeah. I think, I think it actually forced me. Much more to really listen to environments. Especially as a kid, I didn't have that safety mechanism of feeling like I, I could just voice any opinion, any thought, especially in, you know, environments that were so radically different. And so I started to tune into like really listening to the environments and what. Not only being said, but what, what really wanted to happen in environments. And I think that ultimately is a skillset that I feel like I carry now and this ability to really deeply try to understand the deeper layer of motivation that people have and then figuring out, okay, how do we connect at that deeper level?

Leigh Morgan 5:51

Well, this notion of motivation is so core, right? Also to the whole field of behavioral sciences, and I think I shared with you, I, my master's degree is actually in the applied behavioral sciences. Your experience having led this firm and this bridging you do between the science and the art. As you mentioned, your experience in this field is so deep, and so I'd like to start by exploring what you've learned about behavioral science and how people make decisions. And so can you start by defining what the heck is behavioral science? Right? And what are some core concepts that we should be aware of for those of us who wanna. Enact change and not lose ourselves in the process.

Shirin 6:36

Absolutely. So I'll just say behavioral science or behavioral economics, and I'll kind of use these terms interchangeably today. It's simply put the study of how people. Really make decisions. And notice I put the emphasis on the word really here we say really, because we recognize that people's emotions, their environment, whether it's a physical environment that we're in or a digital environment, and then social factors, all of these actually heavily influence our decisions and sometimes we are. Rational, we like to say like Spock, but oftentimes we're not. We're irrational and we lovingly like to say in our agency like Homer Simpson. And so as, as behavioral scientists, we're always thinking about, okay, what are the ways that Homer would respond to this situation? And I'll give you just, uh, your audiences. Simple example. Hopefully one that we can all relate to. Let's say if I wanted to get you lead to exercise, uh, as a behavioral scientist, I definitely would not be. Lecturing you on the importance of exercise, giving you all the facts, giving you lengthy marketing pamphlets, et cetera. Okay, well,

Leigh Morgan 7:43

thanks for that. Thanks for that.

Shirin 7:45

Yeah,

Speaker 3 7:47

I, I have a feeling this podcast would lose a lot of viewers right about now if you went into that.

Shirin 7:54

But instead, as a behavioral scientist, we would think about, okay, how can I design maybe an app that donates$10 to a charity that you don't believe in? Every time you skip a workout.

Leigh Morgan 8:06

Say that again? That I don't believe in every time. So it's like a reverse motivation.

Shirin 8:11

Exactly. So I'm tapping into your fear of loss. And by the way, fun fact, we did this as a theme because we were trying to get our team to be healthier and I missed one workout and I had to do it. So my name is in a database, uh, that I cringe. And ever since then, I have not missed a so, so this obviously taps into this, a fear of loss that we have as humans. It's called loss aversion and or fear of losing something is about twice as strong as gain. So losing a hundred bucks feels twice as painful as like finding a hundred bucks on the sidewalk. This would be kind of the ethos or the way of thinking about the world. And I'll just give a couple of more examples of biases that we have and that have been studied in the behavioral science world. And so one really well known other bias is called the framing effect, and this idea that as humans will respond, differe. Based on how something is actually presented to us. So if we go into the grocery store and you see two pints of frozen yogurt side by side and one says this is 80% fat free, and the other one says this is 20% full of fat, chances are you're gonna grab 80% fat free. That's what I would know. Yes. Right. We know to Spock, those things are literally the same thing. But to Homer Simpson and the rest of us humble human beings, there's a difference. So. These are just some examples of some of the biases that in our world as behavioral scientists, we get to really play with to affect behavior change in different environments.

Leigh Morgan 9:49

Wow. I wanna go to. This thing you said about fear of loss?

Speaker 4 9:55

Mm-hmm.

Leigh Morgan 9:56

Is a bigger motivator than gain sensing. You have something to gain. Talk more about that because I think this principle or awareness of that gets to why there's a lot of divides in the world today.

Shirin 10:09

It's a very strong motivator in US and humans and in, in terms of, if you think of like, so many of our decisions are really about preventing losses, so we tend to be more prevention oriented than promotion oriented because we really are trying to. Prevent negative impacts and losses in our lives. And so a lot of that context, for example, in in my marketing agency, we would use it in this context of like, let's say we're trying to get a user that has like lapsed on their membership. Okay,

Leigh Morgan 10:40

in,

Shirin 10:40

in some context, and we can tap into, instead of talking about the benefits of that solution that, you know, they won't be getting, we talk about, okay, what are all the things that could go wrong if you don't have your subscription, et cetera. So we're in a way tapping into that fear loss or regret even.

Leigh Morgan 10:59

So, fear, loss or regret. Can you gimme another example from your firm? How you leveraged behavioral science to further your client's goals. So I, I get that one, which is. Kind of. Saying bad things are gonna happen to you if you, if you don't sign up again for that a hundred dollars for your annual membership. Right. What's another example?

Shirin 11:18

Right. Just some background context. The application of behavioral science that we use at NEXO was largely in a marketing context, marketing customer experience. So really trying to figure out how do we shift decision making. Towards like, you know, uh, different brands, et cetera. And so this other example is a client of ours. They were a real estate tech company. They were really going up against the traditional model of realtors in terms of people wanting to buy a home. And if you're familiar with, with that model, usually a realtor will charge you 3% to buy or sell a home In California where we're based, the average. Home value, unfortunately is about a million dollars. So quite expensive. So that like roughly translates to thousands of dollars of money that's spent on the realtors. And so with our client, because they were using tech, they were able to radically reduce that cost and so they could save people, let's say on an a million dollar transaction, like$20,000. Now, if I wanted to market that to Spock, I would say, Hey, use our tech Save$20,000. Everybody should like using. That's a rational,

Leigh Morgan 12:25

logical way of we're gonna save you money. So you want to give our, give business to us. Don't be stupid kind of thing.

Shirin 12:33

Exactly. Now, the challenge that we know as behavioral scientists is we are not running around making$20,000 decisions every day. Right. And so this concept of understanding what$20,000 means is very hard for, for us to process. And so what we did in our ads was we actually used that framing effect that we talked about earlier, uh, and we did what's called the hedonic reframe. So we changed that frame of the$20,000, which is ambiguous into actually using our tech. You could save enough money to remodel your kitchen.

Leigh Morgan 13:11

I see that is a powerful thing. To say, oh, because a new kitchen or whatever you decided to do, and I would guess you had some analytics about who your customers were and the sort of things they would spend money on. So a kitchen is more tangible, especially if you're buying or selling a home at a million dollars, first of all,$20,000. That's a lot of money. And it's actually a very small percentage of a million dollar purchase, so it might actually feel like not worth paying attention to. I know it's crazy to say it, but it's Right. That's the understanding you and your colleagues, right? Due to behavioral sciences.

Shirin 13:52

Absolutely. Yeah. And so think of it, the kitchen idea is you are already in the mental mindset of making a big transaction, and so using that money to. Improve the home or save on your mortgage is what we call a much more relevant benefit, um, that would motivate you to, to use something different.

Leigh Morgan 14:12

Okay. And relevant benefits matter to companies who are trying to get higher margin on their work. Mm-hmm. And so for a new company that's tech based, they're looking for volume. So that the smaller margins that they can get actually expand quickly. And you're not gonna say the name of the client, I'm guessing, but I'll just say the one that I know is Redfin. There's others out there, but they're tech-based and they have a lower cost basis. But their challenge was to get people to give up with this very traditional model. I'm working in this way with someone who's gonna help me sell my home.

Shirin 14:50

Absolutely. And, and think of it as it's very hard to displace your traditional intuition. For most people, this is the largest transaction that they will have. Right? And so this idea of replacing a trusted realtor. With the technology based solution, it's a big leap in terms of, uh, kind of choice, and I'm happy to speak to, uh, you know, in the be science world, there's also like great real world applications of how behavioral science has helped in a broader sense society, and we can kind of get into like contexts outside of marketing.

Leigh Morgan 15:21

Yeah, I totally, I wanna shift there in, in just a minute. I do have one question though. Mm-hmm. You mentioned behavioral economics earlier, and so can you Yes. Weave that in. So behavioral sciences, economics, what is the fine distinction there? You're using them kind of interchangeably, but I'm curious what you might offer.

Shirin 15:40

Yeah, yeah. We use them kind of as practitioners. We use them interchangeably, but behavioral economics is really, it's the core of what we're doing is behavioral economics, really probably the correct way to put it. And it's really around cognitive decision making. And then behavioral science is technically broader in nature, and so it takes into account psychological factors like other like social environmental factors that make it a little bit broader. So think of it as like behavioral economics, almost like a subset of behavioral science.

Leigh Morgan 16:11

Okay. That's super helpful. And I did not study behavioral economics, which is why I'm a little nerdy and wanted to ask you that question. Yeah. I would like to shift a little bit to the dynamics that we're experiencing in the world today. That sounds so big, but really in society. Well, we know a lot about some of the dynamics, and I've talked about that a lot on many of the podcasts. You know, there's an increasing sense of fear. There's higher rates of distrust. We see polarization across the political spectrum. Just many of our elections tend to be really close. Not a lot of people are winning by large margins, which says there's a split electorate, and so this feels very real for many of us. How can we think about these dynamics of really considering behavioral science principles to bridge divides?

Shirin 17:02

Great question. So I think as we shift kind of more from this, say, defined context of marketing to societal applications or broader like organizational applications, we see both the promise and actually the limits of behavioral science. And I think it'd be helpful to talk to both of it. But as far as strengths, I would say what's really nice about, you know, behavioral economics is that we're really grounded in this. More honest understanding of humans and human behavior. And we're very good at designing nudges in defined environments where we can measure change. And I think there's a couple of critical things in what I just said. So we're designing nudges in defined environments. Where we can measure change. And I think one thing worth noting for your audience is that behavioral economics. Behavioral science was born out of academia. So it was really born out of research institutions and doing like research on different scenarios and then measuring, you know, how people deviate from rationality. But I think in this context of a more politically divided world, I'd love to just share an example that leveraged some behavioral science in it. There was actually a study in 2023 that came out of University of Rochester, and basically it was like a mega study because they collaborated with. Many behavioral scientists, sociologists, like just folks from different principles, and they actually assessed probably over 250 different ideas on how do we solve for like political anonymity. And they ended up testing ultimately, I think 25 different interventions to really reduce this partisan animosity. And one of the things that works is actually a fun example. Maybe we can put a link to this in the podcast for people that wanna watch, um, the actual video.'cause I think it's really fun to watch. But basically they use this four and a half minute Heineken commercial called Iken,

Leigh Morgan 19:03

as in as in the beer.

Shirin 19:05

Heineken is in the beer. Yeah. Okay. It was called Worlds Apart. And I'm gonna explain to you how the commercial runs'cause it's quite interesting. But I want you to picture that two strangers walk into a warehouse and they have no idea that they've been paired because their beliefs are actually polar opposites. So say one is pro climate change, one is anti or gender roles, et cetera. They're first given a series of tasks to do together, so carry some heavy materials and then build. A bar, like a bar that you would drink on from scratch together. Now there's no politics, it's just cooperation. And so over the course of building this bar, these two strangers really start to get to learn about their commonalities. And even you see them talking about traits that they see and admire in each other person. And so they're really getting to know each other. Separate from these beliefs that they might have, which are different, and it's only after they've finished and you know, shared a laugh around building this, this bar that they then get to watch a video that shows each of them prior to entering this experiment, revealing their differences. And so, and you see this like, this shock, you know, in their faces, right? Well, it's this person I just had a good time with. Exactly. And then they cleverly bring the two beers, the two Heineken bottles, put it on the bar, and then they tell them, you can either share a beer right now and just talk about your differences. Or you can leave. And every single person stayed. I like that, and they talked

Leigh Morgan 20:49

beautiful. We should build bars together and offer beer. Exactly. This such, such a good story.

Shirin 20:56

Yeah. So I think one, one of the things that this shows is this power of collaboration. There's actually an effect in behavioral science. We call it the IKEA effect by the way, which is that if you build IKEA furniture, they, they did it actually based on IKEA furniture'cause it's such a sometimes pain to build them. So if you build that, you actually have more value for it. And so this notion of collaborating first. Then discovering our differences and then sharing something that's really human. IEA beer, uh, it proved to be remarkably effective in reducing polarization scores basically immediately after. So that was really, yeah. I love that. That

Leigh Morgan 21:35

is such a great study to do. And the conclusions reached are. Applicable actually, when we want to bridge divides of find shared interests, find things to do that might be outside of the scope of the evocative or motive beliefs or policies we believe in, and from that connection, then there's an easier time. Talking about the perceived differences that there might be. And that's powerful. And you know, I had a guest, Memay Fox, and she shared a story similar to this about Van Jones. Mm-hmm. Who from Oakland, and now he is, uh mm-hmm. CNN and does community work. Mm-hmm. But he did a thing where he brought people together at, during the beginning of the presidential election last year, and they were. Polar opposites like big Trump supporters and maybe Biden at the time, and just really from different walks of life. He knew that everyone had someone in their family who had died due to opioid addiction.

Speaker 4 22:44

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leigh Morgan 22:45

And he brought them together to talk and they somehow discovered that they had this shared experience, a tragedy, something that was personally. Very meaningful and for their families, and they connected at that level so they had that shared interest. I think that's another version of what you just described.

Shirin 23:05

Absolutely, and I think I, I think it's absolutely critical, this notion of. Seeing our commonalities through shared human experiences that we have, whether it's tragedy, loss, divorce, you know, all of these things that happen to us regardless of our political beliefs. And also the joy, you know, the having the beer, the, you know, like watching a football game together, like all of the, the things that bring us joy. And those are much more connective tissues that we can leverage to then, you know, build trust on it. I'll just briefly say this and we'll, we'll cover probably a little bit of my Conscious Leadership group frameworks as well, but in my Conscious Leadership group, I am in a forum, and I've been in this forum for six years now, but for the past two years with another forum mate that has very different political views than I have. Polar opposite and. We have shared the truth of our lives and the truth of our struggles together, and I know that she will put down anything to come support and help me and vice versa. And I think as a result, we've even entered our lives. In, in ways of supporting each other, even though I might have contrary beliefs to what she might believe in, but she, she'll host nonprofit things based on her belief system. I'll go there to support her and vice versa. I'm able to see the human and and be connected to the humanity and that it really connects us all. So I think that's incredibly important.

Leigh Morgan 24:53

I'm curious about your view on. The level is levels of stress in society today. So we talked about levels of fear and distrust, and certainly we're seeing levels of reported mental health concerns really going off the charts. And so there's stress. And for me, I feel it in my body. I feel it somatically. And so often stress is induced by stress hormones. So when we feel fearful, we we can shut down. And what role do you think. Stress plays in keeping us apart. And the examples you've given help to reduce stress.

Shirin 25:34

Yeah, that's a, that's a really thoughtful question. I think this is a beautiful, actually transition into my work with the conscious, uh, leadership group because to, to me, stress is likely an outcome of fear that is unfelt or even anger. That is unfelt. And so I think societally, one of the issues that I see is that there's a lot of suppression of our feelings or true feelings of fear and anger. And I, I'll just say like one of the things I discovered early on is like how much suppression of like my own anger I've done and like just cultural kind of programming that that's not good. And so one of the things that we talk about, and I'll use the term CLG, it's shorthand for conscious leadership. Is this importance of actually feeling our feelings? And so when are we are feeling this symptom, anger, or fear pattern to, instead of letting it die off, to actually go through it. Expressive. And so if we're feeling sensations of say, anger and just from body cues, you know, anger a lot of times shows as a, you know, in your jaw it's a kind of clenching of the jaw. You might feel tension in your neck, muscles, your shoulders. You might get tension headaches. That is a sign, it's a body intelligence that there's anger to be moved here. And so. Some of the things that we would recommend is actually I do this and it's really funny because my husband, I tell him like, I need to move anger right now. I'm gonna go in the room. So I go in, go in the room, lock up the room, and I just scream into a pillow.

Speaker 4 27:14

It comes out,

Shirin 27:15

I, yes, it comes out. Or, um, I know I, uh, we have friends that have like little baseball bats and they just go somewhere safe, obviously and just do baseball bats, et cetera. And so, or you can do it in the context of like writing, but I think the important thing is that it's an expression. Of anger that you're able to release. I'll just say that anger, we call it a jacket emotion a lot of times for our sadness because once we've been able to feel how much anger we have around a situation, then our actual sadness it can come through. And so I think thematically, I would say anytime we're feeling these sensations of these emotions, whether it's fear or anger, et cetera, working through them. Then coming to understanding what is the intelligence of that emotion?

Leigh Morgan 28:06

Say that again, because this is so important.

Shirin 28:10

Yeah. The

Leigh Morgan 28:10

intelligence of that emotion,

Shirin 28:13

right. What we like to say is that each of our emotions are valid and they each have intelligence associated with them. So the intelligence of our anger, is that something or someone? Or a situation is no longer serving me or my people. The intelligence of our sadness is something is wanting to be mourned or let go of here so that I can move on. And the intelligence of our fear. That kinda rumbling sensation where it feels like you've got the dishwasher Yes. In your stomach, that is something is wanting to be known.

Leigh Morgan 28:56

This is so important. And you know, it makes me think about a phrase you said earlier, which is unfelt fear or emotions. When they're unfelt, it means we're constricting ourselves in some way. Right? Emotional constriction. And I think it's important to make a distinction between times in our lives when we may have literally felt unsafe. Right. Threatened, let's say as a kid or even, you know, as an adult, being able to compartmentalize our fear or dissociate from it

Speaker 4 29:36

Yeah.

Leigh Morgan 29:36

Can be very helpful coping mechanisms in at a time of trauma. And I think the important thing that you're saying is that. The fear, it can be become a coping mechanism used during our daily lives when it's not needed,

Shirin 29:56

right? Absolutely, yes. And then that

Leigh Morgan 29:57

becomes stagnation and instead of maybe just being triggered, we might actually really constrict our ability to deeply connect. With ourselves or someone else. It might mean that we can't have as intimate friendships or even relationships as we might otherwise want, because that dominant coping pattern keeps surfacing. So we have to unlock that fear in order for it to dissipate.

Shirin 30:25

Exactly. So I love what you just brought up because basically we call it looping.

Speaker 4 30:30

Looping. So you,

Shirin 30:31

you're just looping the emotion and, and, and the reality of emotions is that once we're actually able to feel them and express them, they typically are under a minute. So if you notice yourself. Stuck in a e mode of a loop, it probably means that there's a part of your identity that's just wanting to replay that vision scenario, whatever is scaring you, to keep you in that loop. And so that's part of why it's really important to do that expressive work, to move that motion out. And then it's almost like your body kind of clears out of it, so to speak. And from that place now you've shifted. You are able to both listen to the wisdom of that emotion.'cause we're not saying like, just feel the feeling and then, you know, move on with your day. But it's really about how do I now act and operate in what we call an above the line, uh, versus below the line. And this is a, it's a really important concept that I think would be. Probably helpful for me to just explain for a second to the audience. So in terms of whether it's leading our lives or engaging with others, are we leading or engaging from trust or from threat? And most of the time, most of us are leading. Threat whether we know it or not, because we are perceiving that there's a threat to either our security or control or our approval. And one of the things that we know is like most, some people get triggered more by, you know, threat to their security control or approval, one or the other. But when we are in this state of threat. There's physiological response that like our body had, like when we talked about like that kind of body intelligence. But then you also could have thoughts, and thoughts could be things like, should it be this way? Things should be different. Anytime you're kind of using the word should or when you have this way of thinking of that there's a black and white, there's a right way, there's a wrong way. When you have this desire that you wanna be right about the situation, uh, what's happening, et cetera. Or they don't get it. I get it, et cetera. By the way, I will add apathy and avoiding conflict is also a way in which we're below the line.

Leigh Morgan 32:58

I think that's So Trina, I've had people in my lives, friends who are like. Really good at compartmentalizing. So they literally don't feel they put things aside. And that's a kind of a cousin of the apathy of like, I'm not gonna deal with it because I have a really well developed coping skill to not deal with it. Yeah,

Shirin 33:17

exactly. It's a form of suppression, so, absolutely. And then in contrast. How do you know when you're above the line? How do you know that you are operating in the world from a place of trust? And the kind of body sensations are feeling a lot more like physical openness in your body. You're just feeling abundance. The thoughts that you have is like you're actually curious, like, I'm here to learn something new from you. About how you think or operate, et cetera. I'm not here to prove that my way is right and your way is wrong. I am here to actually see how there might be more than two ways to look at this. One of the analogies that we use in CG, which I really love is. When you're below the line, it's like, I can only have chicken. If there's no chicken, I'm in trouble and above the line. It's like you're at the buffet and you're like, well, I could have chicken, I could go vegetarian, I could have some ve.

Leigh Morgan 34:15

Exactly. Choice and agency, isn't it?

Shirin 34:18

Exactly. And

Leigh Morgan 34:19

part of my words. Well, the space in between podcasts. Mm-hmm. We have designed this to be a space where we can stay above the line where there is that spirit of curiosity. And it's a funny thing because when we are above the line, we can hold two things to be true. One is that spirit of curiosity and openness, and also not feel like we're giving ourselves away. Meaning that we can do that and we can also have confidence, be at ease with the things we believe. And you described that with your. Colleague who has different political views and yet you have an easiness with her, an ability to connect because they're striving to be above the line with each other as much as possible.

Shirin 35:13

Absolutely, and I love what you just said there, Leah, because the way I think about it is this, it's ultimately this ability to hold two opposing truths as equally valid. And to be able to see where there is truth in this idea. And yeah, I'm drawing my left hand and where there's truth in the right. And so from that place is where we get to co-create a new outcome and solutions that are what we call win for all. Because I think we've gotten so used to creating win loss. Situations like I, I win, you lose and vice versa. As opposed to how do we come to the table together to have me stand for what you need to happen in the world and you stand for me. And that is how we co-create, you know, much better outcomes.

Leigh Morgan 36:06

That's a powerful place to be. And I wanna move us to societal level dynamics and try to stitch together a few things that you've shared with us today. Early in the conversation you talked about. Fear of loss as being a much more effective motivator behavior than hoped for gain. And that also helps explain why Facebook and a lot of these social media platforms, why amplifying what I would call fear-based ads and actually makes them more money. Because it's addictive, it creates fear, and when we have fear, we want colleagueship kinship. We scroll more, and then when that happens, Facebook can sell ads. So that's the business model. That's bad for division, it's SO'S division and polarization. But on the other side of this, what you're inviting us to do at an interpersonal level is stay open and curious. Mm-hmm. The above the line, what lessons can we apply when we think about. Dialing down the temperature and polarization in say, team settings or in family settings when we're with more than one person.

Shirin 37:25

Yeah, I love that. So I think to me, uh, and by the way, you know, just what you just mentioned about Facebook is this is the challenge of our brains. We have a negativity bias built into our brains. This is why we negativity bias like we, because we're always scanning the environment or threat because you know, back in the day, like that's how the bear would come and you, but we don't have bears anymore, but we are still doing that. And so the antidote to that to me would be. What we talked a little bit earlier about like how at the same time we have this kind of mental health crisis happening in our nation. I really feel like, to me it's actually about leveraging the like me effect, which is this behavioral science principle that we tend to gravitate because we're, we're ultimately kind of tribal nature. Like we, we wanna stick to, you know, our tribe and identity. And so finding tribes and identities where we do have those kind of shared. Connections I think is incredibly important and at least my vantage point of having been sort of in this behavioral science world of like running experiments and seeing the efficacy of that and then kind of being in this conscious leadership environment where it's frankly just a messier. What I see as this opportunity is let's focus on how do we create more community. With people of differing viewpoints and how do we really design that community to be able to share our humanity and our human experience. And so going back to Lee, what you mentioned with people that had had, you know, a family member die of opioids. Like there's, there's so much connectivity. This human experience that we are just choosing not to see that I would beg to think that yes, I might differ, you know, from a religious perspective or climate, et cetera, but there's so much that connects me to another human and, and we're simply not taking the time to be with that. The other thing that I wanna add, and this is where I do believe, like behavioral science has a little bit of a limitation here because behavioral science is much more around environments that can be measured and real life is. Societal problems are quite messy. There's Interdynamics, et cetera. Yeah. Is, let's not forget that in the context of human connection, trust really matters and what we know from the research. Trust is not a one-time interaction trust between two humans. To develop trust, we have to have continuous interaction and it is built over time. Yes. So I think you have to design new models of being in connection with one another that goes past a short interaction and more. How do we develop mechanisms where we get to really know? Trust each other over time and, and have it where you come and stand for me and do something to support me and vice versa. Because guess what? That's another way that trust gets to be built.

Leigh Morgan 40:37

Yeah. You know, I've always said that trust is easy to lose and important to cultivate over time. Right? So you can break trust quickly, but cultivating or growing trust, I think that's the work of our lifetime. Correct, and it's important because it really is the only way through trust. And trust is built one person at a time, one story at a time. It's increased when we have greater self-awareness of where our boiling points are when we're about ready to drop down and two below the line. Right. That's a great place to say, I need to do a quick timeout or

Speaker 4 41:20

Right.

Leigh Morgan 41:20

I'm gonna go. Into the other room and put a pillow over my face and scream because I have every right to be mad right now. Whatever that story is. And one of my episodes that will come out before this one is called the illusion of polarization. Mm-hmm. And Dr. Todd Rose studied the. Distance between what we privately believe and aspire to and what we say in public settings. And it turns out they're really far apart. And his encouragement to reduce the separateness, right, which is he said, you really just need one small act a day and find community, or in my words, seek other seekers. Right, exactly. Folks who, who wanna listen, know your boiling points. And then we need to tell our stories. Just like the two guys that told stories while they were building that bar that helped bridge differences that they later discovered. So I have two last questions for you. The first one is, what bolsters you these days? What gives you hope even amidst a lot of uncertainty and division in the world?

Shirin 42:37

I'll say one of the things that I've just realized and sort of my own inner work is so much of my life has been really tuning into what the environment wants out of me. And then I perform to that and, and, and as I've gotten older, a couple more rotations throughout the sun, I realize that what's actually much more important is how can I share more authentically. About who I am and my struggles just as much as I might about my accomplishments, because it's in my vulnerability and in my struggles that I get to create a deep connective tissue to another human being, regardless of their belief system. And so my path right now is just show up as authentically as I can and, and reveal. The truth of all my stories and really try to hold spaces that are free of judgment as much as possible for myself and for others so that they can share the same.

Leigh Morgan 43:48

That's inspiring to hear and that really is being in the space in between, isn't it? And it requires that commitment to being your authentic self inside out matches you all the time. So the last question. Yeah. I love this question. I ask it of all of my guests, if you had a magic wand and whatever wish you had for listeners would come true. What is that one wish for listeners who like yourself, care about building a more vibrant, a more connected and i'll authentic world?

Shirin 44:26

I love that. Um, so this, this comes from years of me running a business and I, you know, they always say in the business world that you do business with people that you know, like, and trust. And when I think about that, to me, my wish or magic wand would be that we. From a knowing perspective, we step outside of what's familiar and we seek out people with different views and different ways of looking at the world. And for me, this is from my origins of living between Iran and the us. I was, I, I consider myself lucky and to have had that, but like really coming out of my comfort zone to get to really deeply know and listen to people. But really how do we find that shared human experience? The joy and the losses that we all carry, and even the simple pleasures of booking and gardening and whatnot and the like, me effect, and then ultimately recognize that real change. Happens with time because there's trust that is cultivated. And if I can circle back to that Heineken ad, I would say the lesson is to keep building bars in between the spaces and share more beers across our differences and go from there.

Leigh Morgan 45:40

That's a great way to end our shows. Shireen, what pearls of wisdom you have shared today? Step out into the places that aren't familiar. Seek others. Look for shared experiences and that there's a cultivation that needs to take place to nurture trust. And trust is really the bridge across divides that we have without feeling we're giving ourselves up in the process. Thank you for a wonderful and delightful conversation today. I'd love to have you back because I think we're just. Scratching the surface of some really, really important practices that are important for all of us to do on a daily basis so that we can be the spark that bridges divides. And once that spark is led, I'm a hundred percent certain we're gonna turn the tide on the polarization that that we feel these days. Thank you so much for being on the space in between.

Shirin 46:41

Thank you so much, Lee. I really delighted and enjoyed being on the podcast together. This was so much fun. Thank you.

Leigh Morgan 46:48

Bye for now. I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Space In Between podcast. If you did, please hit the like button and leave a review wherever you listen to the show and check out the space inbetween.com website where you can also leave me a message. They good care.