Ori Brafman explores how physical proximity shapes relationships and collaboration, drawing on research from MIT dorms and Bell Labs. He demonstrates the effect with audience participation to show why sitting near someone matters more than you'd think.
And there's this weird thing going on in this MIT dorm. This isn't the actual dorm, but it was shaped like this. They tore it down. It was a U shaped dorm. And here's the mystery. There were residents throughout the dorm. They asked them, how many people are you really friendly with? And the residents in the middle had a ton of friends. And the residents living in the edge of the dorm had no friends whatsoever. So the first guess you'd say, well, why is that? It might be pretty simple, right? If you're kind of a loner, you live at the edge of the dorm. Well, the housing assignments were actually random. So they really sat down and said, well, what could it actually be? And what it came down to was how physically close you live to people. And specifically when they asked people who was your best friend in the school at MIT, 40% of the people said that it was their next door neighbor and their next door neighbor. The place between two doors was a distance of 19ft. And something really weird happens when you go to the person who lives the next door down 38ft, all of a sudden the chances of people hitting it off, of making a connection goes down by half. You go down another 19ft, it goes down by half again. It's exponential, it's not linear. Researchers at Bell Lab asked a company, it was a research company, about who you are most likely to collaborate with, regardless of interest in the field or anything like that, or education. And in scientific environments, people were much more likely to to collaborate with people who worked exactly right next to them. 10.3%. When you went down to the other side of the hallway, it could be the same department, it could be people working on the exact same project. The likelihood of them collaborating is 1.9%. You go down to another floor and it's fraction of a percent. You go to a different building and there's almost no chance of people collaborating. And you think of the implications of that, of when you're having a meeting, do you show up? When you're having a conversation, do you have a virtual conversation or do you do something in person? A study about work meetings found out that the vast majority of the meeting of what was useful about meeting actually happened before and after, not during, because that's when people were able to develop a little bit of trust with you other. So this is a really interesting crowd. Why don't we have a very brief meeting right here? I need just six volunteers. This is going to be fun and exciting, I promise. So just either stand up or come on Down. And I need six people. One. Yay. Two. Three. Four, Five. And I think we have six. I want you guys each to grab one of these chairs is what they're called. And I just want you to sit in a circle. Actually, no, sit right here, if you don't mind. Sorry, there's more space. Just actually form a circle. Great, great, great. Perfect. Let's give him a round of applause. That was a fantastic circle. Fantastic circle. I'm not going to make you guys actually have a boring meeting because we've been in enough of those. But I want you to do something. I want you to lift your arms and try to touch the other person's shoulders. And see there about you had to adjust a little bit, but most of you literally sat about arm's length apart. And that's how we sit. Like, this is a very cultural thing. You can let your arms down. It's not how we sit in the United States. Now I want you to do another thing. And this is going to feel weird, but it's going to be good, I promise. Are you up for it? Yep. So maybe just say. Just go around right now and just say your name. Just. Hi, my name is. Hi, my name is Lauren. Hi, my name is Jonathan. I'm Alex. My name is J. I'm Hendrick. My name is Gabriel. And why don't I get you guys to literally sit knee to knee, like touching knees. And what I want you to do now, again, very simple. Just tell me what you ate for breakfast today, if you had breakfast at all. A banana, eggs. I didn't have breakfast. An Apple 8. And I had Cocoa Puffs. A question for you guys. How does it feel sitting knee to knee other than weird? And everyone's breath smells great. It's fine. I'm closer and connected to everyone. Really. We're friends already. I don't know if you can see them from here. I don't know if you can see their faces. There is a little bit of they're smiling more. And notice. And I'm going to pick on you, notice his body language now as it was before, you're kind of leaning into each other and thank you. This was the meeting. You did a fantastic job. Thank you. Those last few feet really make a difference, but those last few inches make a whole lot of difference.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
Depois de tantas histórias, aprendizados e pausas necessárias, o @interior_iza está de volta
