Dr. Robert Livingston is a social psychologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on the science underlying bias and racism in organizations. For two decades, he has served as a diversity consultant to scores of Fortune 500 companies, public-sector agencies, and non-profit organizations. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School in 2015, he held professorships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the University of Sussex, where he was the chair of the organizational behavior area as well as the founder and faculty director of Centre for Leadership, Ethics, and Diversity (LEAD).
His research on race, implicit bias, leadership, and social justice has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Psychological Science, and Leadership Quarterly. Dr. Livingston’s work has also been featured in popular press outlets such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. His article “How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace” was the winner of the 2020 Warren Bennis Prize, awarded to the best article on leadership published in Harvard Business Review each year.
His groundbreaking and influential approach to combatting racism is detailed in his newly-released book The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations published by Penguin Random House. The book debuted as a national bestseller in February 2021, and has received high praise from media outlets, book critics, and industry executives.
In his spare time, he enjoys jazz, wine and whiskey tasting, gastronomy, philosophy, interior design, real estate investing, and hiking.
Quotes from The Conversation
Dr. Livingston's Website
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Dr. Robert Livingston is a social psychologist and one of the nation’s leading experts on the science underlying bias and racism in organizations. For two decades, he has served as a diversity consultant to scores of Fortune 500 companies, public-sector agencies, and non-profit organizations. Prior to joining the Harvard Kennedy School in 2015, he held professorships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and the University of Sussex, where he was the chair of the organizational behavior area as well as the founder and faculty director of Centre for Leadership, Ethics, and Diversity (LEAD).
His research on race, implicit bias, leadership, and social justice has been published in top-tier academic journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Psychological Science, and Leadership Quarterly. Dr. Livingston’s work has also been featured in popular press outlets such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. His article “How to Promote Racial Equity in the Workplace” was the winner of the 2020 Warren Bennis Prize, awarded to the best article on leadership published in Harvard Business Review each year.
His groundbreaking and influential approach to combatting racism is detailed in his newly-released book The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations published by Penguin Random House. The book debuted as a national bestseller in February 2021, and has received high praise from media outlets, book critics, and industry executives.
In his spare time, he enjoys jazz, wine and whiskey tasting, gastronomy, philosophy, interior design, real estate investing, and hiking.
Quotes from The Conversation
Dr. Livingston's Website
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
Connect with Scott Allen
Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.
Scott Allen 0:00
Good evening. Good afternoon. Good morning wherever you are in the world! Today on Phronesis, we have Dr. Robert Livingston. He is a social psychologist, and one of the nation's leading experts on the science, underlying bias, and racism in organizations. Now for more than two decades, he has consulted fortune 500 companies. He is at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Before that, he was at the University of Wisconsin, Northwestern, he has served at the University of Sussex. He is a gentleman who has published in the world's best journals, Academy of Management Journal, Leadership, Quarterly, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And today, we're going to talk about his latest book, The Conversation, how seeking and speaking the truth about racism, Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations. Robert, if you would fill in some blanks, sir...what do we need to know about you before we jump into our conversation about The Conversation?
Robert Livingston 1:04
Hmm, well, first of all, thank you, Scott, for inviting me on this program. I'm excited to be here to talk about my book. And one thing to know is I'm currently on a beautiful island overlooking the bay. I'm in Bermuda at the moment. So I've taken time out of my vacation to have this conversation, which I think is both engaging and important. And yeah, what can I tell you about me, I'm just the ordinary guy who's trying to tackle an extraordinary problem in a different sort of way.
Scott Allen 1:38
Well, and I said to you, before, we jumped on the conversation today, Ernest Boyer and I will put a link to them in the show notes, who wrote about the scholarship of discovery, discovery, the scholarship of integration, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This book integrates so many different branches of thinking, whether that's sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, leadership, I mean, it's just expansive, your command of these different disciplines? Have you always had this perspective of integrating seemingly disparate bodies of literature and putting them into one place to try and understand something? It's really remarkable.
Robert Livingston 2:24
I think my life in many ways, is an integrated disparate body of literature. So, you know, before I got my Ph.D. in social psychology, I was actually getting a Ph.D. in romance literature and linguistics.
Scott Allen 2:40
Really?
Robert Livingston 2:41
So I was at UCLA, studying a Ph.D. in romance literature and linguistics, and was looking at themes of oppression in 19th-century Latin American literature, which is, you know, why some people say when they read the book, you're, you're a really good storyteller. Why read lots of books, literature. So, and, you know, I happened to be hiking in Joshua Tree and became good friends with a graduate student who was in the psychology department and he said, "You know, there's a few where you can study this in the real world, not just in literature," and I didn't know anything about social psychology. So I audited a class and I was hooked in and that sort of led me in a different direction. And I think that's kind of been how I lead my life, even in terms of my academic jobs. You know, you mentioned Wisconsin, and the different places Northwestern and England and now Harvard, they were also different types of appointments in different departments. So at Wisconsin, I was in the Department of Psychology and African American Studies, and at Northwestern I was in the Business School. Yeah. Now I'm in the public policy school. So, you know, I just, I guess my life, in many ways, is one of a free spirit, at least intellectually, that's open to exploring the world from lots of different lenses in lots of different disciplines and lots of perspectives. So that's kind of been my life for the last 35 years. And it's great that you see some of that, in the book
Scott Allen 4:12
I see so much in this book, and like I told you before we started, I've spent the first part of my summer with you, whether it's, you know, you tell a story in the book about Geauga Lake, my wife worked at Yaga lake and I told her kind of your narrative and, and she worked in the pearl exhibit, so she would, you know, open up oysters and give someone a pearl. And, and, and she said, something similar to what you said, I can't believe I was a part of that. I didn't know any different. I didn't know any better. But I couldn't believe I was a part of that. And so it's really, really interesting. You're an incredible storyteller. And there are some things that you say, I often think of, maybe M. Scott Peck, the opening line of that book. "Life is difficult." - The Road Less Traveled Or you know, Collins with Good to Great - "Good is the enemy of great." You have some lines in this book that will just forever stick with me and one of them. And we're going to talk about a few of them today. But one of them, I think is just beautifully said. And it's - "when it comes to performing mental gymnastics, most of us are Olympic athletes." And I think that kind of gets to a piece of this conversation that we can tell ourselves, we are masterful storytellers. And at times, we tell ourselves some pretty fascinating stories. And so you dig into some of that, and talk about denial, ego defense, threat, need for power. But would you talk a little bit about that phrasing? I love that phrasing "when it comes to performing mental gymnastics, most of us are Olympic athletes."
Robert Livingston 5:55
Yeah. So I think I can explain that from a variety of different perspectives. I think one of the goals of that sentence was to de-pathologize delusion. We tend to think of delusion or what we call more specifically "motivated reasoning," as being something that crazy people do, or that I don't know, weak people do, or that devious people do to rationalize their misdeeds. And what I was trying to say is two things. One, all of us do it. And the second is all of us do it really well. So think about a time when maybe you were in love with someone who may not have been the best person and everyone around you is giving you evidence, to the fact that this person is someone you maybe shouldn't be with? And you're saying, "No, no, no, you misunderstand. There's this." You know, everybody has done that, or with people's children, when you have the little demon in the teacher said no, and you're like "my angel? No way!" So you know, it's not just with regard to racism, it's with regard to life, that it's part of what we do, you know, Shelley Taylor, who's a social psychologist at UCLA, has a kinder expression for it, she calls them "positive illusions." And we create positive illusions, illusions, because they're not accurate or real, positive because they make the world rosier than it really is. And that's sort of how we cope with the hardships of life. And so I just wanted to, you know, raise people's awareness of our tendency as humans to do that, and how it might interfere with a more accurate perception of the world. Because when you say, you know, racism doesn't exist, or the world's a good place, or, you know, bad things don't happen to good people, you really have to step back and wonder whether that's the truth, or whether that's some belief that you're invested in holding. And that's why the subtitle of my book is, you know, the conversation because we should talk about it, how seeking and speaking, the truth about racism can radically transform individuals and organizations. So there are two parts to that. One is you have to seek it. Because you know, the truth is not just something that falls into your lap. It's a constant journey. And it's a changing journey when you're in search of the truth, but that should be the endeavor. And then you should talk to people about it. So that's kind of at the core of solving this problem is beginning with the truth. And our mental gymnastics, in many respects, even if it's a normal part of our cognitive functioning, can get in the way of that pursuit of the truth.
Scott Allen 8:48
And actually, early in the book, I think I wrote (Robert) Kegan on one of the pages. And then, of course, you mentioned Kegan's Immunity to Change, which is dancing around a similar concept that we oftentimes engage in behaviors that are not in our best interest. But we have some masterful ways of telling ourselves stories or justifying our behavior, and not acknowledging some of those competing commitments, or just the realm of the brain continues to be a fascinating place. And you also have this really, it's just a pointed sentence, in the book that stood out for me that again, I'll never forget - "If we summarize the origins of racism and sexism in us into a single word, its power. the desire to maintain power and the fear of losing power." And I think again, you just synthesize it so beautifully there. Would you talk to that a little bit - power?
Robert Livingston 9:50
And, you know, later on, I write another sentence that kind of builds on the one that you just read, which is "The heart of racism is power. And the soul of racism is fear, with the heart striving to protect the soul."
Scott Allen 10:10
Wow.
Robert Livingston 10:11
And, and so, you know, when it gets down to in many ways is that we as humans, we want to be special, we also want to be safe. And so in many ways, we have fears. Everyone has fears in life. And one of the ways that we deal with being afraid, is trying to be powerful. You even see this in the animal kingdom, there are lots of animals, you know, if you look at a blowfish, right, when it's afraid, it puffs itself up to say, Oh, look at me, I'm so powerful, right? Or lizards that have a hood that comes up that says, Wow, look at me, I'm twice as big. And it's because they're scared and a lot of the posturing and even when you look at little dogs like Chihuahuas and Pomeranians, you know, they just bark like crazy, but you don't get that from Great Danes and St. Bernard's to the same extent, because, you know, something goes down, they can handle it. So they don't have to posture it away. And so I think people have to realize the inextricable link between fear and power, or at least desire for power. And I think it's important to realize how when people feel good about themselves, and I talk about this a lot in the book, it drastically reduces the likelihood that racism will occur, it drastically reduces the likelihood that sexism will occur. So much of racism and sexism is grounded in people's ego, people's desire to feel better than, in fact, you know, a lot of historians argue, quite convincingly, that slavery was not in the best interest of most white people. It may have been in the economic interest of enslavers plantation owners, but for most white people, it actually drove down wages, and it made them more impoverished. But what it gave them in return was a certain social capital to say you're special, you're white, you're better than, you know, X or Y group, whether it's indigenous populations or African groups. And they took it it was this egotistical salve, for a really miserable life. And we've been paying the price ever since. And I think when people get away from this need to feel better than, to compete with other people rather than cooperate, you know, feel superior, which is all grounded in insecurity. That's what I mean by fear. So when I say fear, I don't mean mortal fear, like the kind of fear you experience when you know, a lion is right in front of you. I mean, you know, a more ego-based fear that you're "not enough" or that you're "less than," and the power sort of assuages that feeling of inadequacy, or impotence, or insignificance. And so that's kind of where I was going.
Scott Allen 13:09
When you say beautifully, that "feelings of insecurity and certainty and insignificance, fuel racism, and a more secure and happy person is a more tolerant person, you can reduce prejudice simply by feeling good, calm, and secure." And you mentioned also what I would kind of leap to challenge me if this is an incorrect leap, but that hold, quote, the very powerful quote by Lyndon Johnson, I had never seen this that low road capitalism, and of the concept, I'd never heard of this concept, but Johnson's quote, "if you can convince the lowest white man, he's better than the best-colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. He'll give him somebody to look down on and I'll empty his pockets for you." So does that, align with what in some ways you just said about it's not in the best interest of anyone, except for maybe these plantation owners?
Robert Livingston 14:03
Exactly, it that absolutely aligns with, you know, not only what Lyndon Johnson said, you know, several decades ago, you know, over 60 years ago, but also what we saw on January 6, this year, and a lot of the seemingly irrational behaviors, that, you know, political scientists and social scientists are, are struggling to make sense of when we see people not acting in their own economic interest by empowering politicians that give tax cuts to the rich or, you know, people say, "why would they do that?" Well, you know, you have to take more of a social capital lens. When you try to examine this problem, rather than just thinking about what's in your own economic self-interest. And, you know, often people will pay dearly for their ego, and we see it in lots of different circumstances. So I think that's what we're seeing. And I think savvy, rich, white people are exploiting it, as they always have, but the last 400 years. And you know, here we are. And, you know, Heather McGee wrote a really fantastic book a few months ago called The Sum of Us, where she's actually making the case that there is a large collective interest involved with eradicating racism, that most white people would actually benefit tremendously if we, you know, eradicated racism from our politics, and everyone had access to good education, and everyone had access to colleges. And, you know, she uses this metaphor of the swimming pool and how there was a community that would rather drain the swimming pool where no one can swim, rather than integrate the pool. And so I'm going to "cut off my nose to spite my face" kind of thing, you know, and it's all based on pride, there is no other explanation, and people are willing to pay dearly give up, you know, precious resources for the sake of their pride and a false sense of superiority. And, you know, in many ways that defy logic. But as economists have learned, people are not rational and have never been Academy or, you know, Nobel Prizes. One, Daniel Kahneman is one such person who's dedicated his whole life to showing just how irrational people can be and how driven by emotions and illusions they can be when making judgments and decisions about the world and others.
Scott Allen 16:36
Well, and the, in the book, you define racism. And I would love to, explore this definition a little bit because I think it's important, I think it's very, very important. "Racism occurs when individuals or institutions show more favorable evaluation or treatment of an individual or groups based on race, or ethnicity." Would you talk a little bit about that definition?
Robert Livingston 17:07
First, let me start with, you know, most people's lay definition of racism, they think it necessarily involves hatred, or malice, or some intention to treat another group more negatively than their own group. And I'm saying a couple of things. One, I'm saying racism is just disparity. So it doesn't have to be negativity, it can be more positivity towards your own group relative to another group. So if you're neutral, towards an out-group and super positive towards your own group, and that creates a disparity in how the two groups are treated, then it's racism, even though there is no not only is there no hatred, there is not negativity. The second thing is, you know, it can be based on one's evaluations, or thoughts. Or it can be based on actions or decisions. It can be either or, you know, I think this is important, because when you think about racism as disparity, and I'll tell you a story, there was a police department I was working with, and the chief of the department and I were talking about, all the problems that had been experienced in this community. And he was saying, I don't think I have any officers that are racist. And, you know, he said, If I had to estimate the percentage, I would say, it's like, 1% of officers that are racist. And I said, interesting. So let me you know, kind of paint a scenario for you imagine there's a group of teenagers around 14 or 15, who are just horsing around, you know, you've got cones set up in the road, they're moving the cones, putting them on their head, acting silly, as teenagers do sometimes. And in one world, those teenagers are 14-15-year-old, white teenagers, and in another world, they're 14 or 15-year-old black teenagers. Imagine you could transport you know, all your officers to these two worlds which is already a metaphysical sci-fi experiment, but imagine they could experience those worlds. How many of your officers do you think would deal with those black teenagers differently than they would deal with those white teenagers? And then he said about 85% would treat the black teenagers, probably differently, you know, he said, they may not, you know, shoot them and kill them, but they would be harsher on the black teenagers than they would be on the white teenagers. I said, Well, that's racism. That's treating people differently. That's a disparity in treatment. And similarly, with Ma'Khia Bryant, you know, the young girl that was shot in Columbus, Ohio, and many people said, "Oh, she was carrying a knife and he had no choice in shooting her, you know, save the life of the other girl that she was about to attack." And so, therefore, you know, that's what officers do. That's not racism. But the real question for me is, would the officer would he have responded in the same way? If the scenario had involved all white people? And if the answer is "yes," then there is no racism if he would have responded in exactly the same way, but if the answer is "no," if you tried to tackle the girl or somehow, you know, knock the knife out of her hand, or do some other action, besides, you know, pumping three or four bullets, or however many times he shot this young lady, then it would be an act of racism, even though it's "quote-unquote," justified. So I pretty much say racism resides in the Delta, not the bayou delta, but the Delta meaning the change, or the difference in how people are treated. If you give a black person a ticket, for jaywalking, it is racism If White people don't get a ticket for jaywalking, despite the fact that it's against the law to jaywalk. Yeah, and that in the law, they call disparate impact, I believe. So that's kind of what I'm getting at. And when you define racism, in that way, you see a lot more of it, than if you define it as just hatred or malice, or intent to harm. And then in subsequent chapters, I go deeper, because this is starting off with a rudimentary definition of racism. And then I talked about how it's embedded in systems, and how laws and, you know, policies are created to produce this disparity in how groups are treated in ways that are invisible because it's so deeply embedded in the system.
Scott Allen 21:48
Well, and at least as you're speaking, it makes me think of another piece that really kind of stood out for me when it comes to, you know, some of the thought experiments that you in a very beautiful way, at least I had to read three or four times, just to "okay, this is what he's communicating." And it's and it literally, I believe, created some new neuronal connections in my brain. So you've done that, sir. Some things that weren't connected all of a sudden connected you said this...I mean, it's a really interesting statement. It's a beautifully thought-through statement. Is there an act committed by a US-born white man, no matter how heinous that could get Americans behind a band of white men from the country? No. And we have example, after example, after example, after example of that. Right. Yeah, we have those conversations about other populations that aren't fair, appropriate, isolated, when there's so much data in front of us about white men and the heinous things that they have, did they have perpetrated? Right. And that double standard?
Robert Livingston 23:18
Yeah, which, you know, speaks to two things. You know, one is, you know, many politicians debated whether the Muslim ban was racist. And I think, you know, most people realize it is but if you look at it this way, then it certainly is because you're saying, you know, my perceived propensity of something happening, even if it's true, you know, even if there are I, which we know, it's not the percentage of the Muslim population that is engaged in any sort of acts of terror or mass destruction against the United States is minuscule. But the fact that these rare actions could lead to a ban on an entire population of hundreds of millions of people. Despite the fact that white men have done the same thing, they've blown up government buildings, they've killed people in the enemy, we've got Timothy McVeigh, we've got lots of examples of, of white domestic terrorists who hated the United States that were anti-government or, you know, more mundane examples of mass shootings. The Vegas shooter, for example, you know, is still the greatest mass casualty on American soil. And the conversations revolve around "Oh, well, you know, did he need help" the people and there's, there's even this bizarre compassion. Yes, that you see, when white men commit these very despicable acts of violence and murder. It's "Gosh, wish we could have helped him," you know, the, you know, the deeper message being "He sure he was a great guy" that just needed Right. So there's this inherent benevolence of whiteness, but this inherent evil of people of color when they perpetuate the same actions, and I think people have to stop and think about that for a moment.
Scott Allen 25:13
Well, you know, well, "he was a veteran and was suffering from PTSD." So it's explained away in a very different manner, an unfair manner, that once you start seeing that, it's kind of disgusting,
Robert Livingston 25:30
It's really disgusting. And, you know, it's often "Oh, he was stressed, because, you know, he lost his job." And couldn't, you know, there's always a, an alibi of sorts. Yeah, no matter what happens, even for this man who murdered in the supermarket, a grandmother and her two-year-old or three-year-old grandchild, and, you know, there was all this effort by the media to sort of uncovering what went wrong with him, right? And you don't see that same amount of grace, or effort to understanding what would drive certain people to extremism, or wanting to, you know, commit some of the acts that they commit against the state, you know, how desperate is their situation. And again, it's not justifying either of these examples. It's just a really marked difference in people's attempt to understand what's driving the behaviors. And when you have outgroups, there's no effort to understand what they were thinking, it's just, "that we're bad, they're evil, we need to get rid of them, we need to ban them." So that in itself, based on my definition, because you're treating people differently, is racism
Scott Allen 26:45
In this one group, but we need to explore the complexity of this whole challenge. In this other group, it's "their bad." Yeah. And, and you said another statistic in the book that really, in this kind of gets to stereotypes, but you said a statistic, or you wrote about a statistic that really just floored me, of the 26,000 rolls featuring black people 60% of the roles had them as gangsters or thugs 60% in Hollywood, in Hollywood, again, I find that just, it floored me.
Robert Livingston 27:21
And it's even more appalling when you consider the fact that most gang members so if we're looking at reality, are not black. Yes. So, you know, it would be one thing if they did it, and Okay, 60% of people who are in gangs are really black, but you we continually see in the media, and in Hollywood, so both, you know, news and fictitious representations of bad events, whether it's shootings or criminality, or gangs, we see an over-representation of black people, people of color more broadly. Same with the LatinX population, and underrepresentation of white people. So in other words, you know, you see black people depicted as criminals more often than their actual occurrence of criminality. So,
Scott Allen 28:17
Robert, you spend a lot of time in the book, really nicely, providing some definitions and helping the reader really understand how you're defining how you're thinking about these things. Whether it's discrimination or prejudice, you have you really define these, and then you do a wonderful job of again, looking at these very different bodies of literature, and providing the listener with the facts. Right. And I think it's a core tenant of yours is that how do we begin these conversations with some of those definitions and with some of those facts at our disposal, right? What suggestions do you have, or what insights do you have about then creating a space where that dialogue occurs in a really effective way? What are some mistakes you see occur? And what when it works well, when the conversation really, really gets to a positive place, a place of understanding and empathy? What are some ingredients there?
Robert Livingston 29:20
So I think the very first question that people should ask themselves is why am I having the conversation? And for some people, it has no relationship to the truth whatsoever. So let me give you a different example courtroom example. Okay, which is, you know, if we have a criminal trial, we have a prosecutor, we have a defender have jurors, we have judged, one could argue that the prosecutor or the defender is not really interested in the truth. That's not their job. Once they get to court. It might be their job before they get to court. They might want to under And in many cases, the defender might know my client is guilty. But once you get to the courtroom, it's not about the truth. It's about what we would call advocacy, rather than inquiry. And actually, the Latin word for lawyer is "advocatus," and in French "avocat." Even so, there's something baked into this advocacy role when you when you assume that, that, you know, occupation, at least in the courtroom, that your job is to advocate for your client. It's not really to explore the truth or have a "think tank" session on what really happened, that's the juror's job, and that's the judge's job. So when people come into conversations about race, often they adopt a strong advocacy position, their job, or their objective is not to listen to anybody. It's to go in and like a lawyer argue for your case, selectively choosing evidence selectively doing and that's why our society has become more and more polarized is I think we've become more deeply entrenched in this advocacy role. Rather than as a community sort of listening to one another. So what I think would help the conversation or two things, one, learn the facts on your own. So what makes it even worse is that many people who have strong advocacy positions have very little information about anything. And so that's a wicked combination to be both headstrong and ignorant, then you're not going to go anywhere. So you're going to bang your head against the wall. And I think there's going to be little progress. So the first thing and I mentioned the book, you know, education, conversation and action in that order, that's kind of the three-stage approach. And so learn about history, learn about, you know, what goes on in organizations, find out as much data as you can from as many different sources, and then talk to people about it with sort of a spirit of curiosity. Yeah, rather than conviction that you know, everything. I mean, I've been studying this stuff for a long, long time, and I learned new stuff all the time. So it cracks me up when people say, "Oh, I know all this stuff already." Because they don't. How do I know that? Because no one does. So that already, what were you gonna say, Scott? Oh, I
Scott Allen 32:24
was just gonna say, in fact, the educated person says how little they know. They're aware of it!
Robert Livingston 32:32
Absolutely.
Scott Allen 32:33
They know that they need to be curious because there's a lot out there.
Robert Livingston 32:37
Exactly. You know, you're 100% right. So I think, you know, there are many things I can talk to, I can give you, you know, five different things that would facilitate a productive conversation. But I think one of them is how you approach it. And I would encourage people to adopt more of a spirit of inquiry, rather than advocacy, you know unless the goal is to tell someone off, or just win, you know because then it's not learning. It's something else like I want to humiliate someone or I want to target, you know, express aggression towards people. Okay. You know, again, I tried to be very agnostic and non-judgmental in this, but at least know that you're not having a conversation, you're actually doing something else. So I think when you have a conversation, you both inform yourself, and you approach the situation with a certain level of inquiry.
Scott Allen 33:34
Yeah. Well, and so we have the understand the definitions, understand the research the data, what's out there, it's are you entering the conversation in space from a perspective of inquiry, and curiosity and seeking to understand and really learn in that. And, if you emerge from that, in a space, where you begin to see the world through a different lens, you begin to see some of what you have laid at people's feet in a very, very beautiful way. You know, you mentioned this quote by John Lewis, which is, you know, "if you see something that is not right, say something, do something." And so that third part of the book, as you mentioned, is about action, and making a difference. And are there a couple of ways that you think about that when you're talking with folks because I know and you write about it in the book a little bit, I get asked all the time, do you have a six-point checklist of what I can do tomorrow? And I think maybe as we wind down our time together, just tee up a couple of ways for people to think about that. The action component of all of this.
Robert Livingston 34:53
There's a lot I could say because I think those were the longest chapters in the entire book. And they were about, I don't know, 70 pages between the things that individuals can do, and then the things leaders and organizations can do. So I'm going to think about which tidbits from that I want to extract. But first, I want to say and this relates to the last question, Scott about the conversation. And it also relates to this question about action. You know, because I'm sure there are listeners who are thinking, well, how can I have a conversation with someone who you know, clearly doesn't want to have a conversation or clearly doesn't get it or isn't trying to get it? And I think that's a great point. I think people have to be aware that there are at least three types of people, what I call dolphins, ostriches, and sharks. Dolphins are people who were, you know, concerned about community, they're friendly, they want to be part of the pod. They may bump beaks, sometimes, but they're generally good. And they're generally benevolent. And they generally want the best for the community. Ostriches are sort of apathetic or indifferent, that kind of bury their heads in the sand, it's back to that motivated reasoning that I was talking about, or the mental gymnastics, you know, they just, they don't want to see, you know, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil," they just kind of want to not get involved one way or the other. So they're not really pro community. They're not anti-community, they just are pro self. They want to do what's in their own self-interest. So they're what we call individualist dolphins or pro-socials. And then you have sharks, the third type, and they are not indifferent, they're actually anti cooperation. What they want is to dominate. They want to exploit. They want to rule the seas
Scott Allen 36:42
Protect, protect?
Robert Livingston 36:43
Well, they want to protect their own interests.
Scott Allen 36:46
Yeah, that's what I mean. interest. Yeah, exactly.
Robert Livingston 36:49
Not protect others.
Scott Allen 36:51
No this is not a protect and serve type spirit.
Robert Livingston 36:54
No, exactly. No, they're solitary creatures. So what I say is when people are having conversations, it's kind of important to know whether you're talking to a dolphin, an ostrich or shark because research has shown that if you're talking to and, you know, they're respectively about, you know, 48% of the population 38% of the population and 14% of the population, something like that. That's kind of the distribution of dolphins, ostriches, and sharks, relatively speaking. So about one out of eight people are sharks. You're wasting your breath if you try to have a conversation with sharks because they don't respond to moral appeals, which will be one of the goals of conversation. They don't even respond to carrots, which ostriches do. They respond to sticks. So with them, you have to have negative incentives. So I'll give you an example using you know, the vaccines when they first rolled out about half the population said we're going to do this because we want to protect the community we only do things about another third responded or slightly less than a third once they rolled out incentives. So you know, Ohio had the Vaxamillion if you get vaccinated, we'll give you a lottery ticket...
Scott Allen 38:06
your kid can go to school for free, or, or the free beer from Miller. I put on Robert real quick, I put it on LinkedIn one day, that would be a fascinating study to get into the minds of the people who that's what brought them over the edge. And free Miller Lite. Right? You know, that's a cool group of people to study.
Robert Livingston 38:25
It is you know, and I think in some states, it was you get a free gun or something like someone who was Wow. But, um, you know, but my thing is, from a community standpoint, the action is more important than sort of the reason underlying it. So the fact that they went out and got the vaccine, and it's now benefiting the community, even if it was for the case of beer, as you mentioned, I think is really interesting to understand their psychology. But what's important, from a practical standpoint was their action, they actually got it done. So you can get ostriches to pull their heads out of the sand and do you know, get on board with it? If you give them a carrot, right. And again, for dolphins, you don't need to carry it, you just need the moral appeal. So now we've got the moral case, the business case, if you will, yeah. And then the sharks don't respond to either one of those. So there are people that despite the fact that they could get a free beer or whatever they value, despite the fact they could get a scholarship, a million dollars, they're just not going to get the vaccine. Yeah, they're like "over my dead body." And we've seen in Texas, they're people literally have tried to sue, right. Literally, that may
Scott Allen 39:29
Literally in some cases now.
Robert Livingston 39:31
Yeah. And you know, it's unfortunate. I think it's sad, but you know, there are people who are just very resistant to it. So you can't get them to get on board no matter what. Unless you say, you know, you can't come to work, then some of them will finally bend and do it and some of them won't, they'll quit the job and sue you. So I think it's important to sort of know, so where am I going when we talk about actions. You have to be nimble and have a diverse toolkit. I think organizations have to have a diverse toolkit when it comes to interventions that will get people to engage in anti-racist actions. So, you know, I talked about the individual approach, the cultural approach, and the institutional approach and individual approaches, you know, change people's hearts and minds. And that's, you know, something you can do and people can do, individuals can confront racism when they see it, and, and that changes not only another individual's behavior change the social norms, because now you've signaled to people, that's not cool, that's not okay. Then it's culture, you know, how is the leader modeling what the leader wants to see in the organization. And then we've got institutional, which I think are the most important, which are laws, policies, and practices that actually provide a stick, if you will, to say, if you don't do these things, you can be arrested or you can be sued, or you can be fired or whenever the sanction happens to be. And I think having a combination of the three of those institutional cultural, that focus on social norms, which I think the last administration had a big impact on, it became more okay to be overtly racist. And because of those more lacks social norms, because we've already seen those online, you can be who you want to be online, there are no norms that dissuade you. And then policies, I think a lot of protections in terms of the law were also eroded. So that led to a lot more individual acts of hatred.
Scott Allen 41:31
Robert, I am so thankful for your time today. You know, in the, towards the end of the book, or actually, it was at the end of the book, you wrote a couple of things that stood out for me, you wrote, "my hope is the book that the book has inspired you." And I'm raising my hand and saying that it did. And I also read your words, "I appreciate each reader's decision to allow my words to fill their minds and hearts." And thank you for the incredible work that you do. And it's very, very much appreciated. And again, you're thinking about this in such an integrative and wonderful way. It's inspiring. And really quick, before we close out for the day, is there anything that you've been reading or streaming or listening to that's caught your eye? It doesn't have to do with anything that we've just discussed. But is there anything on your radar that you think listeners would enjoy learning about?
Robert Livingston 42:28
Yes, there are lots of things. So I just spoke to a good friend and colleague of mine, Cecilia Ridgeway, who wrote a book called Status. And it's a book about why we as humans have to form hierarchies in the first place. Yeah, and why people spend so much of their energy, seeking status, whether it's through the clothes that they wear, or the job titles that they have, or the way that they look or, or any number of things. And you see it in lots of primate species. And so it's an interesting book because I think in many ways, it forms the foundation of what we were talking about earlier, which is this need to feel better than other people rather than people just defining their own standards of who they are, and living up to that because I think there's a difference between ambition and competition. Ambition is fine because you set your own goals and you say, I want to meet it. Competition is I want to be better than someone else. And I want to move people more towards ambition and away from the competition. But you know, the other thing that I want to say, just in closing, Scott, and it's related to what you just mentioned, you know, I wouldn't have written the book, I wouldn't have spent all the energy right. And then it was a lot. It was a really intense process of writing the book if I didn't believe that this was a solvable problem. And I am convinced that racism is a solvable problem. 100%, whether it will be solved or not, is an entirely different story. And before we came on, you and I were talking about different diets and things and, you know, it's almost like weight loss, like in many cases, for most people, it's, it's a solvable goal. It's an achievable goal. But whether people achieve it or not, or smoking, you know, you can stop smoking, that's a doable thing. But whether people will do it or not, is a different question. And so for me, I've tried to lay out a compass and roadmap that will help get people from that, you know, solvability to solved.
Scott Allen 44:32
Well, thank you for the work that you do, sir. It's been a pleasure getting to know you. I know that listeners are going to love the conversation we had. They're going to really I would implore our listeners to seek out this book and explore its contents. It's actually it's just absolutely wonderful. And thank you, sir. Thank you for calling in from your island home for the time and being with us today.
Robert Livingston 45:00
Thanks for having me.
Scott Allen 45:01
Okay, bye-bye
Robert Livingston 45:02
Bye-bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai