Dr. Lynda Shaw discusses Neuroscience with Charlotte Kemp

Don't get up. Stay there, okay? Just stay and wallow for a little while because that is when your brain is in alpha and that is when you will be really creative and you will come up with answers to things that you really didn't have an answer to when you went to sleep that night.

Welcome to another edition of Futures Classics. Our conversation today is with Linda Shaw. Linda is an incredibly interesting person, a neuroscientist, a business psychologist, change specialist, which is what we're particularly interested in today. And she's also the president-elect of the PSA UK. That's the Professional Speakers Association of the United Kingdom and Ireland. So, from one president-elect to another, welcome, Linda. I'm really glad to have a conversation with you today.

Hello, Charlotte. How are you doing?

Very well, thank you.

Good, good.

So, Linda, I came across your post on social media. A colleague had commented on somebody's post about perceptions, and he invited you into the conversation to make a comment about it. And I really enjoyed your approach to kind of refuting some of the kind of pop psychology we have about how our brain works. And so I thought it'd be very helpful to talk with you to understand a little bit more about the psychology of how we think and how we can kind of make that practical and meaningful in the work that we're doing in terms of working towards the future with strategies and change management. So let's just start with, there was this post about whether we see things one way or another, and people were starting to talk about the whole right brain, left brain as if that was really great science, and you came up with some really good responses.

Ah, left brain, right brain. No, no, no, no, no, no, please don't talk about— everybody, right hemisphere means you're creative, left hemisphere means you're logical, is neuro-nonsense. It is not true. It is not true. The brain is far more complicated than that. The 2 hemispheres do do things slightly differently, but we always use the whole brain, whatever we're doing. We always do. And I hear— I've even had conversations with speakers and they say, oh, but you know, it's really, really useful to talk about the right hemisphere, creative people, left hemisphere, logical people. I said, no, it's not. It's not useful. Because it's not true. Stop it. You might as well say Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. It doesn't mean anything. So there's an awful lot of what I call neuro-nonsense out there that I hear professional people repeat, and it actually does jeopardize their own reputation in their own field. So if you do want to talk about neuroscience, really do check your facts from reputable sources. That's the message.

Yeah. I suppose it's kind of a nice easy way to reference things and think about it, but it can also be limiting. I mean, I know when I was very young, I did some tests and I was looking at the work that I was doing in school and was really good at maths. And so everybody told me that I was left-brained and logical. And it means that I totally dismissed the creative side of my life for years. And it's taken, you know, until this stage of my life to really embrace how creative I am and to explore new creative ways, but just because that kind of pop psychology neuro-nonsense label defined me in one way without me really realizing the complexity of how my brain thinks.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know something? When we are creative, we feed our soul. We examine areas of the brain, we examine our personality, we examine all sorts of things to become a more whole human being. So especially if you are creative naturally, very creative. I understand from colleagues that people who are extremely creative who are not being creative at the moment can actually become quite poorly.

Yes.

So it really is important to explore any creativity you might have, and I actually think a lot of us, or most of us, are creative in some way or other. I mean, I can't even draw a stickman, you know, so therefore I too thought I wasn't creative, but in actual fact I can move to music pretty well, so that's creative. So, you know, we've got to do these things things. And it's fun.

It's foolish definitions. My mother is an artist. She makes things all the time. She's done everything from woodwork to painting. And my daughter is studying both art and design. And the work that she produces is visually incredible. But I'm like you, can't draw a decent stick figure. And, you know, so it was kind of an area that I dismissed. But a lot of the work that I'm looking at now in terms of innovation, when we talk about innovation, it isn't kind of coming up with something brand new or creating something out of thin air. It's taking everyday life and systems and processes and finding better ways of doing it. So even somebody who feels like they are that old-fashioned concept of a very logical person, maybe, you know, somebody who's in accountancy or, you know, doing something that is really well defined, can still find a creative, innovative way of doing their work that enhances the value that they bring to their employer or to their client. And I think by making these foolish distinctions, we really do kind of rob people of the ability to be expressive in terms of their creativity or their innovation.

Absolutely. I mean, I can remember— you made a really good point there, Charlotte. I remember when I was preparing to do my thesis for my doctorate, and I thought I really had to reinvent the wheel. I was having sleepless nights trying to work out all of the, you know, how I could be really different and be really valuable and, you know, add to the knowledge that we have. But that's the key, is add to the knowledge we have. It's not come up with something entirely new and different here. It means actually developing on from what we've already got. So to be creative and innovative isn't something magical that a small percentage of the population can do. We can all do it. Especially if we take advantage and be proactive, proactive in putting the brain in alpha frequency. Because alpha frequency is the, like, a light meditation state. So when we are, when we, you know, when you just wake up in the morning and you're not quite awake, you're not quite asleep, you sort of that lovely wallowy feeling. Yeah, that one.

Yeah.

Don't get up. Stay there, okay? Just stay and wallow for a little while because that is when your brain is in alpha and that is when you will be really creative. And you will come up with answers to things that you really didn't have an answer to when you went to sleep that night. So, and you can deliberately do that for yourself for the rest of the day. You can stare out of the window watching the rainfall. You can just go off. Do you remember at school when our teachers would say, for goodness' sake, pay attention, stop staring out of the window? No, that was the brain in alpha, and that is when you're doing your best work. So deliberately putting yourself in that sort of that light meditation state is incredibly helpful if you want to be innovative and creative, really is.

You mentioned, you know, watching the rainfall, and I have to ask you a question, you know, is there something about water that makes us more creative? Because if I figured if I could, if I could meditate in the shower for hours, which we can't do because we're coming out of a drought here, But if I could meditate in the shower, I could come up with the most creative ideas because those two kind of work so well together.

There is something about water, isn't there? I escaped at the weekend, a 2-hour drive to the coast, and I just stared at the sea for 4 hours. And I came back and, you know, the following day I was on fire. I was, I was, I was absolutely going for it. It was amazing. The effect of water, the effect of the shower, the effect of the bath is very calming, very therapeutic. Yeah.

No, very helpful. Good.

All right.

So Linda, when we were talking, we were talking not just about, you know, kind of that old-fashioned right-left brain concept, but that our brains and our experiences are so much more complex and informed by experiences that we've had in the past, which brings us to how we perceive things, whether it's this present moment, this present conversation we're having, a decision we're trying to make about moving into the future, a strategy that a team has to come together around. What I often talk to people about when they get frustrated with their team is that we haven't really grasped where everybody else is. So we'll have one person on the team who has a very clear vision of the future, and their past has kind of created this environment, this belief in them that they have agency over the future, that they can actually, you know, make decisions, that they're not victims of, or they're not waiting for other people to give them permission. to do things towards the future, and other people on their team are not all in the same place. So maybe you can explain to us a little bit about, you know, how people with such different experiences have a completely different view of the current moment or their options into the future, that whole perspective aspect of our decision-making.

Perception is everything. Perception is our own personal reality. That's all there is.

Yeah.

So let me, let me tell you a little story to demonstrate a point. 2 women are pregnant. Their babies are due exactly the same time. In the second trimester, their babies develop taste buds on their tongue, so when they swallow amniotic fluid, they can begin to taste 5 of the strongest flavours that we have. One day, one woman eats some chocolate. And her baby's first perception at this point is sweet. On the same day, her friend eats some cooking apple, so she— her baby's first perception is sour. The following day, the women swap flavours. So then now baby 1 is now tasting sour after having tasted sweet the day before, and the other baby is vice versa, the other way around. Their perception of the second flavour is different because it's dependent upon their perception On the 3rd day, these women share a bowl of olives. So now they are— the babies are tasting something salty. They perceive that salty flavour differently already based upon just 2 experiences so far. By the time those babies are born, their perceptions are hugely— this huge pyramid of the latest thing is dependent upon all the mathematical equation of the perceptions before, all the time. By the time we get to be adults, we're not that different. So, Adults, oh my. This equation is mathematically huge. It is enormous. So, and I'll give you another example. My— when my mother-in-law was very poorly and about to leave this earth, she wanted to discuss her will with her 3 sons. So I know what I know, and I just— I said, okay, Betty— her name was Betty— Get all 3 boys over at the same time. with their wives and you tell us all at the same time your wishes. You've got your will and we'll understand and we'll make sure things are as exactly as you want them to be. The 6 of us listened to the same thing my mother-in-law said. I thought, cracked it, yes! Less than a week, 2 brothers had heard something totally different by the time they had talked about it.

Totally different.

So when somebody says to you, I know exactly how you feel because it's happened to me too, no, they don't. No one ever knows exactly how someone feels. We can't. All we can do is ask open questions and ask questions to truly understand at that moment where that person is coming from. That's all we can do is improve our communication skills because everyone will perceive things differently. Everyone. It's normal.

It is. It's so strange. I remember when I was pregnant with my second child. My first child was a daughter, and we didn't discover the pregnancy, the sex of the child until she arrived. And the doctor tells me it's a girl. And I thought, I already have one of those. And I'm going to have 2 of the same. And, you know, it was just, I have to admit, I was on drugs and things at the time, you know, having a cesarean section. So I wasn't maybe thinking clearly, but I could not have been more wrong because those 2 children could not be more different in every aspect of their lives. And, you know, if we had actually raised them differently, they are so fundamentally different in how they view things. My brother had 2 boys and he kind of joked about the same thing, that we should swap the children. But, you know, his sons are completely different as well. So even the children brought up in exactly the same circumstances with the same parents and the same expectations, end up, you know, very different. So, you know, I'm thinking about how people come together and try and work out what is going on and what they want as a team if they're all— if they've all experienced so many things, if they're all perceiving things so differently. So is there any kind of advice about how we cope with that kind of change management, team management option?

Well, it's even more complicated than perception, to be honest with you, because what we do is rely on memory. And memory is vastly complicated, it's hugely complicated, but for instance if you are talking to somebody, one of your team in one of the team environment, and you've explained about perception and you may have told the story about the 2 babies or my mother-in-law story, I don't mind, but whatever you'd say, but the trouble is when people are listening to you they will take the gist of the conversation. They will not listen to the whole sentence you say, they take the gist of it and they fill in the gaps based upon their perceptions. So already what they're laying down to memory is going to be different from the incoming information alone. And then you have the issue that we've got this habit, and it's not a habit, it's the wrong word, it's not a habit, it's a, it's the way we recall a memory. We recall it dependent upon whom we're speaking to at that moment. Now we don't deliberately distort the information, but what we do is we want the people, what we're trying to do is Communicate for understanding. So we just slightly change that memory of perhaps the meeting we had last week, just slightly, so that that person has got a better chance of understanding it. Now that is not a conscious process, that's way below conscious awareness. We don't know we're doing it and we're not deliberately doing it by any means, but can you see how all of this adds up to misunderstandings and misconceptions and missing— Missing all the time. So again, all we can really do is everybody around the table knows about these foibles of the brain, understands a little bit about how the brain works, and then agree to be really thorough in the way we communicate so that everyone's singing on the same song sheet. Wow.

Yes, I know we— my husband and I remarried a few years ago and We experienced something quite funny. He tells stories in his speaking, and he tells stories that he kind of jokes that his stories evolve over the years, you know, to make— entertain audiences and to make the point of whatever he's trying to tell. But when it came to our personal stories, when, you know, we were kind of dating in the beginning, and then we kind of got together and got more serious, and some of the stories get repeated, but now you fill in more details. So he's asking me, Why is the story I'm telling now different from the story that I told them the first time around? I said, well, the first time around it was, you know, we're dating and I'm not sure how long this relationship is going to go. So there's just enough of the story to kind of entertain that conversation. But now that we're together and we're sharing a life together, now the story, you know, there's more detail that needs to be filled in. And then there's a third time you tell the story. It's when you're actually in that same physical place. So when we traveled around, we've gone back to a place, I want to tell the story again. And that's just 3 different ways of me telling the same story to the same person. So I can imagine if we're sharing that story to other people, how much we either edit down or flesh out or maybe nuance, even if we're not trying to be deceitful, just in terms of that conversation.

Absolutely. And you know, I don't know about, you know, this with your girls, but I've got a boy, a son and a daughter, and Sometimes I hear one of them telling, telling a story of their childhood, and I know it's the other one's story.

Yes.

But they've, they've taken on board that sibling's memory as if it were their own. And that's something else we do, and it's not deliberate. It is never deliberate. It is just us laying out— just shows you how amazing the brain is, but equally how some of the systems are faulty.

Yeah.

You know, even our attention, we can pay attention, our attention's tiny, so our attention, if we are paying attention to that over there, that might not be what we should be paying attention to, to be really efficient and effective, it's over there. So, so yeah, there's a lot. Actually, do you know what, Charlotte, we do extremely well.

We do.

We really do, we do brilliantly, because there is so much that can go wrong In the way we use information, regurgitate information, whatever we're going to do with it. There's so much that can go wrong, but we do it remarkably well.

We do. I'm going to ask you in a moment, maybe you can help us to work out how to do better, but, you know, we're both professional speakers, and I know when I listen to other speakers, in my notepad, I draw a line down the middle, and on the one side, I'm taking notes on their topic, whatever they're talking about, and on the other side of that page, I'm taking notes about their style or their delivery or technique, which I think I either want to kind of learn how to do that, or I certainly want to avoid doing that. And so my brain is kind of always playing with somebody else's content in 2 different ways at the same time. And very often I will hear something that kind of slots into other information that I have or something else I'm thinking about. My brain goes off on a tangent, and I have a new perspective on my issue. Which is not the issue that the speaker is speaking about. And I'm sure you would— well, I mean, even if you don't experience it, you would know that the same sort of thing is happening when you're speaking to an audience. Their minds are leaping off to other issues because you've triggered a thought in them. So, with all of this complexity in our brains, are there any techniques that we can kind of use to either get an audience or team members to kind of focus back on a particular issue? I know in order to kind of understand our different perspectives. You suggested asking more open questions, so we need to really have some robust conversation. But then how do we, how do we kind of test that we have something in common that we can move towards without kind of going down a path and then discovering that our team hasn't followed us?

I think from what I've seen as a speaker and from what I've seen in my work, It's stories.

Okay.

I mean, people will not want the detail. They will only remember detail if they are ready to hear it and they are— and it's bang on what they need right now. Absolutely right now. It's not, oh, that's interesting, I'll think about that. The word interesting, by the way, is an irritating nuisance because people go, oh, that's really interesting, and you know full well they're not listening, or you know full well they're not going to buy from you because, oh, that's really interesting, park it away, park it away, But if they're going, ah, now, in that case, would it help if I did that tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock? Then you know you've actually got it. But it depends on where each person in the audience or the team are coming from at that one time, and we can't control that. But we can control how well they attend to the overall message.

Right.

For them to find out if they want to know more. And the best way, honestly, is to, I think, and I'm sure you've already intimated about it so far, is by a personal story or a story that is original to you that you can deliver with appropriate level of emotion without getting sucked into any kind of emotion that you might be feeling. So you need to rehearse it a lot if you find the emotion might get in the way of your delivery. But equally, that you are— that people can anchor remembering the story with an emotion that you evoke within them, because emotions are extremely powerful when it comes to stories, you know, and we know that, but sometimes we need to be reminded. So I personally, I think stories are excellent. However, there is a cultural issue that we need to consider. For instance, if you are speaking to a a Japanese audience, a German audience, something like that, some people who want lots and lots of facts, they won't want reams of story. If you're talking to a North American audience, they will want lots of story and a little bit of fact. And I'm not, I'm not being biased here, but this is the general idea you get from reading culturally specific ways of communicating. So we do have to be mindful, I think, think the way that you and I would probably handle it is we get a balance of both. So, we probably can communicate better with a multicultural audience than others. So, yeah.

I like to try and balance a message with a story, statistic, and a soundbite, and a smile. Something to make them, you know, something that's humorous. And if you can kind of package your points around that that package, then there's a greater chance of an audience picking it up and recalling it.

Yeah.

A lot of the people that I deal with are— they're trying to create a future for their organization or for their association. You'll have one or two people on the board, on the leadership team, who have a very, very clear, rich picture of what that future is. Now, often when we talk about stories, we're talking about this story now or a story in the past. But what we need to do with a story like that is we're telling a story about sometime in the future, about a world that doesn't yet exist. So we're saying, you know, in 3 years' time or 5 years' time, this is what our association could look like. This is where we could be having our chapter meetings or our convention, and this is how many members will be there from all these different countries, and this is what we're going to experience and learn. And we have to kind of paint a picture of that future world. Do you have any kind of advice? You know, how do you tell a story about something that hasn't yet happened and make it convincing to an audience that maybe is a little reluctant to explore that? They're a bit anxious about the future.

I think one of the things that we need to stimulate is curiosity, because once we stimulate curiosity, we will want to learn more. That is the basis of learning, unless it's the times table when you were at school, you know, 1,000 years ago. But if you can stimulate curiosity in a child or an adult, they will want to learn more. So I think if you are delivering a message of the future, inspiration, yes, hope is big, hope is huge, but curiosity, and then, and then give them steps. Or not necessarily concrete steps, if you excuse the pun, but not necessarily concrete steps, but maybe this is where I want to be in 5 years' time, this is what it's going to look like, and really draw out the curiosity and all of that stuff, but then also say, well, to do that we need to create and achieve these steps, which are still full of hope and inspiration and curiosity, so that you've got some That's somebody that's then starting to feel like, wow, this is actually doable.

Yes.

You can actually achieve this. This would be incredible. What do you want us to do?

Yes.

Yeah, what— okay, where do I fit? I want to play. Pick me, pick me. I want to play. Pick me. So they want to come on board then, and they go, yeah, yeah, that's really good. And of course, that's when you empower people, and then you trust them, please, and not micromanage. You trust them, and they become therefore more trustworthy. And all of a sudden, you've got this lovely dynamic moving forwards and to the future that is something that's tangible and exciting.

Yes, I'm inspired.

Oh, good.

Linda, thank you very much. This has been very interesting, and I know, you know, on teams when people are looking towards the future, there is that anxiety, but if the person who who has that vision can find a way to communicate it like you just explained, you know, tying it to stories, to curiosity, to hope, aspiration, there definitely is a really good path that they can take towards the future and that this is all possible and not as difficult as many people are feeling at the moment.

Absolutely, and then we are moving in a collaborative way. In a supportive, kind, collaborative way. And that's just the best way of working, isn't it? I think so.

Yeah, makes that journey up those concrete paths, um, so much more interesting.

Absolutely, absolutely right. Yes.

Good. Linda, thank you very much. I really appreciate your time today.

Thank you, Charlotte.

You can find both Dr. Linda Shaw and myself on LinkedIn, and show notes for this episode are on futurespodcast.com. If you'd like to be in touch with me to create a really insightful futures strategy for your team or organization, then please contact me on charlotte@charlottekemp.co.za. Thank you.