264. Herding: Are You a Guppy? (Refreshed Episode)

Welcome to episode 264 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about herding.

Ready? Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Today's episode is all about herding. We humans are a herding species, just like cows and sheep and guppies, and this has a big impact on our behavioral choices. We are tribal and we look to others to help us stay safe and make good decisions, or at least what our subconscious tells us is a good decision. This is why things like testimonials are so important, and I'm linking to the episode on social proof in the show notes for you because I talk about that more specifically in that episode. Both of these concepts also have dedicated chapters in my first book, what your Customer Wants and Can't Tell youl because they're so important for businesses to understand, especially when we're looking at customer experience. The reason I chose this episode as the refresh today is because of the guest who's joining me this coming Friday. His name is Dr. Nick Epley, and we're going to be talking about the importance of social connection and why we often don't do the things that will help us to be happier because we perceive them as being uncomfortable or awkward or against the social norms of the moment. A main example there is interacting with and having a conversation with someone. Say, the last time you were on a train or a plane or in the elevator, did you talk to anyone.

Or avert your eyes?

Maybe you even thought of something that you might say, but didn't. Why? Our hurting brains tell us that we shouldn't speak out, that they might not like it or us, and they wouldn't value that interaction. But research says otherwise in the business context. Imagine how much value could come from having a simple chat with your colleagues or people at a conference. Most people probably stick to their groups where they're already comfortable and don't strike up a new conversation. But what could happen if you did? There's a lot of value in breaking from the herd and having that conversation, even for less than a minute, which we'll talk about more on Friday when episode 265 with Dr. Nick Epley comes out. If you aren't already subscribed to the Brainy Business Podcast Podcast. Now is a great time to do so to be sure you don't miss it. And as you listen today, I encourage you to reflect on all the times you thought about striking up a conversation or asking a question and didn't. What aspects of hurting made you feel like you shouldn't? And what can you do in the future to engage with others more? It's valuable for you both professionally and personally, I promise. Before we jump into this refreshed episode all the way back from 2018, I want to remind you that your free herding worksheet and links to past episodes and books and articles, most of which weren't around when this episode first aired. Since it was only the 19th episode.

Of the podcast, they're all waiting for.

You in the show notes for this episode, which are found within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com264 alright, let's talk about herding.

The nice thing about a concept like herding is it is a word everyone should already be familiar with. And yes, it is the same as the concept of a herd of sheep or cattle. Humans herd in the same way as other species, including wasps and squirrels, schools of guppies for much of the same reasons. Unfortunately, those reasons are pretty selfish. The main reason that animals herd is for protection. The animals on the outside of the herd, those on the periphery, are more likely to be killed or attacked by a predator than those on the inside, so it's beneficial to be as close to the center of the herd as you can. If you watch videos of sheep being herded by dogs, the animals on the outside run very fast to try to get to the middle, while those in the center are less inclined to move. They might just be standing around until they find themselves getting a little too close to the outside, and then they start running toward the middle. They'll also follow each other almost blindly. The assumption is, you know, if everyone's running this way, they must know something I don't, and instead of waiting around to see what they're running from, I'm going to run first and ask questions later. When you think about survival of species, this is a very smart strategy, which is why all of our brains have really learned this over time. And this concept of herding impacts all sorts of species, which is why humans do exactly the same thing. It's in our nature. I noticed while trying to adapt to the flow of walking traffic in London, again, trying to move and sort of trend toward the left instead of the right. According to my friends, jaywalking is less of an issue there and people often just walk across the street whenever they can. Again on the left, maybe toward the right or instead of toward the right. I was noticing how one person starting to move would make others waiting on the sidewalk feel uncomfortable. Some would then start to go without looking. So if somebody was to walk across the street, let's say there's a group of us on the corner and somebody runs across the street almost without hesitation, someone else would start to go without looking, only to then be pulled back by someone else to keep them from being hit by an oncoming car or bus. But as more people across the street before the light changed, you could see those that were on the corner starting to look uncomfortable and debating if they should go too. This happens all over. Look for it next time you're waiting to cross the street in a crowd. Maybe you've noticed it before. You can see people's eyes sort of darting around. They look uncomfortable. They don't want to be the last person person on their side of the sidewalk. Another piece that was really interesting to watch was when we were walking through the financial district around 8:30 in the morning with what felt like about a million other people going in both directions. It's amazing when you stop and think about it and you realize how everyone can walk amongst so many other people and follow the flow of traffic without hitting anybody else. For the most part, there aren't set lanes or rules, but the group will quickly form its own without having to use verbal communication. This is the power of herding. And one of the reasons that we as a species have adopted this is that herding helps us to learn by observation. I'm going to talk about that later on in the episode. But we watching where others go and following with the group keeps you safe. And that's why we heard. I'm pretty sure you're getting the point. But before I move on to some studies, I have to give the universal example that we can probably all relate to, which comes into herding, which is going to help show another time how those nervous people on the corner that were waiting for the right time to cross and not wanting to be the last one left on the wrong side of the street, how that might have evolved over time to something that we all probably did or said when we were kids. I want you to think back to when you were a teenager. Your parents probably said this to you at least once after the umpteenth response.

Of but mom, all my Friends are.

Doing it or going there. To which she said, and I bet you can say it with me, if all your friends were going to jump off a bridge, would you do that too? That feeling of discomfort of not doing what everyone else is doing, whether it's going to a concert or staying in a hotel after prom, or being the last one to cross the street, is fueled by our herding instinct. As humans have evolved to have a much more advanced and complex society than guppies or cows, herding behavior has not always served us well. It's because herding is there to protect individuals, not the group or a complex society as a whole. During this episode, I'm going to give examples of how to use herding to your advantage in business. When you should use it, how you should use it, and just as a way of an alert, just to make sure, you know, I'm going to give examples of some times where hurting can really lead us astray. So you can be aware of it and try to keep from making mistakes personally and in your business. Okay, so why do we herd? As I've said, in addition to safety, it's also a key way that we learn. Learning by observation is critical to the survival and growth of our species. Babies watch adults do things or other children and emulate them almost immediately. This is how we learn to speak and walk and be safe and find food. It's very important for our survival. Speaking of food sources, studies have shown that when presented with two sources of food, ants will tend to choose one over the other, and then the whole group uses that one instead of being evenly distributed among both options. When you look at this logically, if you were to observe it, you might think that's really silly. Why wouldn't anyone of these ants go to this wide open food source? There's nobody over there. It's the same food. How silly of them. But sorry to tell you, humans do the same thing when it comes to food. We choose restaurants by online reviews and crowdedness. I've talked about this before on episode 17, Unlocking the Power of Numbers. To get back to this example, if you were in a new city and you had to choose a restaurant and you could only go by the street view, so you had to go walking down the street, you're not going to use online reviews, and I'm not going to really dig into that because you know how reviews work. And I've talked about it on that Power of Numbers episode, most people would choose a full restaurant over one that was completely empty. So if you were walking by two right next to each other, one's full, one's empty. What would you think? Those people must know something I don't. That empty restaurant must be bad, and the full one must be great. Sound familiar? That is herd mentality at work. Another thing restaurants or coffee shops do is to seed their tip jars with money to make it look like others have put tips in the jar already. You may have heard this before and you might be expecting it now based on what I'm talking about on the episode, but people are more likely to leave a tip when others have done the same. So if you a jar that has money in it means people are more likely to leave tips even if that money was put there out of the register versus actual tips that were provided. Because you don't know that when you look at the jar you just see a full jar. Interestingly, I was able to see this on a very grand scale while we were in London. We went to a few museums and they all had these giant clear containers with lots of cash in them, encouraging donations. You could clearly see lots of money inside bills and coins, which would make others more likely to contribute as well. I have shared a picture of this on my social media accounts, so you can see it firsthand and you can find me as the brainy biz if you want to see it for yourself again, this is the power of hurting. Have you noticed how these days when you go to the grocery store, the checkout asks you if you want to donate to a cause? You have to say no and it makes you feel this twinge of guilt when you press the button. Maybe you look around to make sure no one else sees you press the big red nose no button. Taking it a step further, sometimes the person working the register will ask you if you want to donate to the cause and you have to verbally say no. You could just leave it at that, but often people are inclined to give an explanation. While I was recently at an airport, the woman in front of me in line was asked by the lady working the register if she wanted to donate a dollar to I think it was to the troops. Her answer was no. I do a lot of volunteer work at home and you know, I send lots of donations to the troops on my own, so I I don't need to do that now. It made me laugh a little as I was standing there because I'm obviously aware of this concept of hurting. And it's funny because she gave this explanation as if the lady working the register actually cared. It isn't her cause. After all, I'm sure it's corporate policy to ask everyone. She probably doesn't even like asking that question. Or, you know, perhaps lady in line thought I would be judging her. She was inclined to think the rest of the herd would donate, and she needed a reason to explain why she was choosing not to donate. It made her feel better even though it did not matter to anyone else. There, you see. Hurting mentality is much more likely to come out when people feel vulnerable or are unsure of themselves. I know nothing about this lady. I couldn't even tell you what she looks like. But it's very possible that she doesn't actually volunteer or do anything for the troops. If that is the case, why would she have said that? To overcome her natural tendency to feel that she needs to go with the group and to overcome her guilt that she feels with saying no when asked if they want to donate. Many people get antsy, like those people on the sidewalk not wanting to be the last to cross. It's their hurting brain taking over. Another time that people do not feel very confident and are thus likely to take on a herd mentality is when it comes to finances and investing. This is another time where reputation can come into play. And when you're concerned about your reputation and what others would think or say, hurting behavior can run rampant. Let's say you're part of a group where everyone is betting on something with a million to one odds. Everyone in the group bets on the same thing. The thing with the good odds Would you be able to stand up to the group and bet on the one in a million chance? Many people have a hard time with this because it's better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right. In other words, if you bet and come up wrong but everybody else did too, you are much less likely to be ridiculed than if you went against everyone else and made a losing bet that no one else made. Let's say you're brought into a meeting of your peers with a large corporation that wants to invest in some smart companies like yours, but they're looking to see which of you are the best of the best.

Best.

In this group interview, you sit down and are shown a slide with a very simple equation on it. Let's say, what does two plus two equal? You are the eighth person in the group, and as each person ahead of you answers 4, 4, 4. You follow suit. Easy. There are a couple more rounds of this and then on another seemingly simple question, what color do you get if you mix red and yellow. You had an immediate answer in your head and you were confident until the first person says purple with absolute confidence. Purple. You think, how ridiculous. Then the next person says purple and the next and the next. You're getting anxious. Now you thought it was orange, but these people must know something you don't. It's almost your turn. What are you going to say?

Purple or orange?

Studies have shown that up to 75% of participants will give an answer they know is wrong to go with the group. You might say you wouldn't do it, but in the heat of the moment your subconscious hurting brain might take over and force you to say something you don't believe to keep from being ridiculed or just embarrassed in front of the group. It takes strong will and conscious focus to be willing to go against the group, and it's even more difficult when those people are like you. So people you want to impress or are similar to you mean you'll be more likely to go with the group than to trust your gut. Again, this especially comes up at times when you are less confident in yourself or your knowledge. Do you remember the show Candid Camera? There is a video that they have from an old episode which I have linked in the show. Notes of people facing the wrong way in the elevator. And then you can watch people who were not in on the experiment turning to face the left, the right or the back of the elevator instead of facing forward like people normally do in an elevator to being be part of the group and go along with what everyone else is doing. Similarly, if you are walking down the street and see someone looking up at the sky, or better yet, a group of people looking up, even if there's nothing there, the chances are you will stop and look up too. This is a reason things go viral as well. People want to be cool and share on social media. Once something has become worth it, if everyone is talking about it, you better share it too so you aren't ridiculed. But interestingly, most people do not want to be the first to like, comment or share something on social media because they don't want to stand out from the herd. But more on that in a little bit. First, I'm going to talk about a real problem that has come from herding in our society. Investment bubbles. As I said earlier, many people are not confident in their knowledge of investments, what to do with money, which stocks to choose, etc. They're relying on the expertise of others to tell them what to do, either an advisor or by watching trends. If everyone starts buying something, many people think, oh, I better buy that too, because again, it's better to fail by making the same gamble as everyone else than by being the one person who went against the cumulative advice of the herd. After all, they probably did the due diligence and learned what was best. I'm just going to jump on board too. This is how markets crash, bubbles burst and scams like those from Bernie Madoff can run so rampant. When everyone follows the herd and doesn't take the time to do their own research, stocks or companies get artificially inflated by the confidence in others. This is not always based on the merit of the item being bought, but on the collective decision until the inevitable comes. Warren Buffett was famous for not investing in tech companies when everyone else was jumping on the train. He was absolutely ridiculed by the masses. How could he be so silly? This was the future. Everyone was doing it, so it had to be safe. Until boom. Buffett was not willing to go with the herd and buy into the stocks or invest just because everyone else was doing it. That was not a good enough reason for him, and he trusted his past strategy of only investing in companies he understood and and can do. Valuations for dotcoms didn't fit into that at the time, so he did not make the investment. Everyone mocked him until they didn't. Similarly, Buffett is notoriously harsh on bitcoin and cryptocurrency, saying it's not an investment but a speculation that the next person is going to pay more for the nothing than you paid for it. I honestly, I don't know enough about cryptocurrency to buy any myself, but I'm definitely taking Warren's knowledge and history to heart. Crypto is absolutely impacted by the herd mentality. We see people make millions and feel more optimistic. We can have that same fate if we act fast. This is the concept of availability. Again, the topic of episode 15. You can see a couple of great stories and overweight those and the likelihood that they would happen to us, making it easier to listen to our subconscious desire to go with the herd and invest without doing your due diligence. Always beware if your brain is making you feel anxious to take steps and do something, anything, just because any everyone else in air quotes there everyone else is doing it or having your FOMO fear of missing out triggered in a way that makes you want to do less research than you normally would before investing your time, energy or other resources. This shiny object syndrome can be fueled by the collective message of the herd, but don't let it force you into a bad decision for your business. Be aware that this exists and turn on your conscious brain. When you feel the anxiety building, ask why it's there. Do you actually want to do whatever that thing is? Is it the right decision for you or your business? Or do you just feel like you have to because everyone else is doing it? When the stakes are high, take the time to engage your conscious brain. Okay, enough about that sort of scary doom and gloom stuff. Here are a couple of great examples of using herding behavior to help do good in the world and for your business to learn to emulate. If you have stayed in a hotel recently, you probably saw a sign encouraging you to reuse your towels. It likely said something about saving the environment by using less water, which is great. When using this tactic, about 35% of people will comply and reuse their towels. Pretty good. Here is a way to use herding combined with the power of numbers and framing, both topics from recent episodes which.

Are linked in the show Notes when.

Staying for four days or more, 75% of people will reuse their towels at least once during their stay. This is a fact, something that was found out in some sort of study. So if you shared that information and simply said on the sign instead of about the water you'll save. If you were to say 75% of guests reuse their towels, please do so as well. What you find is a 26% increase in towel reuse. It's pretty great. But what if you take it a step further? What if instead that sign said 75% of the people who have stayed in this room reuse their towels? May seem like a weird statement. You might be concerned about the cleanliness of the towels currently hoping they have been washed since and you would likely see say as with so many other studies, I share that it would not impact you differently. But as you have learned so many times on this podcast, you would be wrong. This slight tweak in messaging, just a few words different, was the most effective and had a 33% increase in towel reuse. Crazy, huh? This also works with getting people to use less energy, turn their lights off, encouraging people to vote, or driving more fuel efficient vehicles. All sorts of things. So what's the point? People like to be part of the group and this is increased when the other people in the group, your peers, are comparable and more like you. For example, if they're your friends or neighbors or people who stayed in the same room, or when that person is not confident about their own knowledge like with investment strategies. Remember this Whatever your business does, you are in the business of solving problems. The only reason people buy anything is to solve a problem, whether it's the problem of being hungry or the problem of how to market their business. And problems make people feel anxious or uneasy or less confident. That means people will be more likely to tend toward hurting behavior and look to see what others like them have done. So anytime you can provide reassurance through numbers like 95% of customers said their experience was stellar or a five star rating on Yelp, it all matters in helping someone to make a decision to buy from you Before I wrap up this episode, I want to talk about social media. Don't even get me started on all the crazy or dumb things people will do to be a part of the herd on social media. Let's reference the Ice Bucket Challenge. Eventually everyone was doing it and you would be mocked if you were called out on social media. If someone nominated you and you didn't dump a bucket of ice water on your head, did you do it? Someone you know probably did. Maybe someone in your house? Here are some questions for you. Do you remember the name of the cause it was for? Do you know what they do? Could you tell me any of their stats or figures? Probably not, especially for that last question. But you participated because it was less painful to get doused with ice water than the psychological pain of not complying with the herd. That really says something. But did you ever sit and wonder who was the first person to dump a bucket of ice water over their heads? Or the second and why did they do it? And then why did everyone else? Our brains are fueled by chemical releases. As I've said on the show before, the brain loves dopamine and will do what it can to get more and more. Similarly, oxytocin is released at times of bliss and known as the love hormone. This is released when you kiss your significant other and also what helps mothers and infants to bond. But it does much more than that. It is also released when we engage in any sort of social behavior. Being in a group makes us feel safe and happy because of this release of oxytocin. When we're not part of the group, our brains do whatever they can to get that bliss feeling back. But by seeking out more group relationships to help us feel safe and warm, I've linked to a really great article from the association for Talent Development on leadership and herd mentality. I'm going to read a couple of the main points from that article on helping leaders to build a followership first is to recognize the power of existing affinities. They say the high that we get from a flood of oxytocin can be habit forming, possibly even addictive. This means that breaking out of our existing connections can be extremely difficult. Sociologists long have noted how difficult it can be for an individual to escape the influences of a teenage gang. And now we know that gang initiations and actually can cause physical change in the brain which makes it harder to break those bonds. The second thing to do is to encourage the formation of new affinities. If you want people to follow you, their brains must be able to recognize that they're part of a group of followers. Social media, face to face meetings and other tools can help to send those signals to your followers brains. And third, fight the herd instinct yourself. The paradox of all this is that as a leader you are in danger of falling into the herd mentality yourself. Leading often is uncomfortable because you may not see other people around you doing similar things. That's because you're out in front of the pack. When you are leading you, your brain will not release the chemical cocktail that makes you feel good. Instead, you may feel anxious and begin to doubt yourself. It will seem safer to run to another group rather than to start your own. As a side note here, revisit episode 13 on mindset to help with getting over some of those instincts that you might be feeling if having a hard time with leading and difficulty with imposter syndrome. The good news is they say that herd mentality can be broken. Research shows that conscious choices actually will make physical changes in the brain, breaking established neural pathways and making it easier to form new ones. Leaders have to change two brains, their own and their followers. Understanding that fact might make it a little easier to deal with the herd instinct effectively again. There is a link to that article in the show notes. The lesson there is that understanding herd mentality in yourself and your customers makes you more likely to recognize it. And now after listening to this episode, hopefully you can deal with that appropriately. This can help you to become clear conscious of its existence, which will help you to overcome the fear of being at the front of the pack, which is where you need to be to leave your mark on the world and grow an amazing business. And understanding what will trigger herd mentality in your customers for both good and bad can help you to message better and more effectively, which is what I'm here to share with you in this episode. One of my favorite TED talks of all time is from Derek Sievers and it's just three minutes long. It's called how to Start a Movement, but no need to Google it. There's a link in the show notes and I have written an article about it on the blog as well. It's a great video, absolutely worth watching. It has over seven and a half million views, so you'll be in great company. See what I did there? In the video, Derek shows another video of a shirtless guy dancing alone at an outdoor concert. He calls him the lone nut. That guy could dance alone forever. He isn't worried about the herd. He's just dancing and doing his thing. Others around him are looking on with confusion or laughing at him. That lone nut dancing in the field, you know, wondering why isn't he sitting like the rest of us? Until something suddenly changes everything. Another person, the first follower, runs up and starts dancing along with the lone nut. As he says in the video, the leader embraces this first follower as an equal. They're now a group, a they, a plural. The first follower makes a simple gesture to suggest his friends join them. And one of the best quotes from the talk is when he says, a first follower is an underestimated form of leadership in itself. It takes guts to stand out like that. The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader. As the video continues, soon a third person joins in, and then another, and then two more, and then five more. And very quickly you watch people from around the field running to be part of the dancing group. This is now what the herd is doing and they do not want to be left out now that the risk has been reduced. And as he says, they can be part of the in crowd if they hurry. He wraps this up by saying, we're told that we should all be leaders, but that would be really ineffective if you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show others how to follow. And when you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first one to stand up and join in.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about hurting today? For me, I often advise my clients and speak to audiences about the importance of avoiding what I call unintentional normalizing or as I talk about in my book, what your employees need and can't tell you to not take short term wins at the expense of long term hurting gains. Here's what I mean by that. We humans like to give the big shocking statistic to jar people into action, saying something like 6 in 10Americans don't have 500 in savings or despite record turnout, 80 million Americans didn't vote. Here's why. These are both actual headlines from CNN and npr, by the way, and the articles are linked in the show notes, but it isn't about these specific articles per se. It's more about the framing of how they're using herding and whether or not it properly aligns with the goal at hand. In the case of a news outlet, they have goals for clicks and interactions with their articles, so they're doing a good job of that with headlines like this. And as someone in a business where, say you're trying to get people to increase their savings amount, say you work at a financial institution, or if you want to encourage more people to vote, these stats can actually be hurting you in the long run because of how we heard saying six in 10 people don't have $500 saved for an emergency will not spur most of those people without enough saved to go save money. But many studies show they'll actually be more likely to think, hey, well, no one else has money saved either. I'm normal.

I will go buy that Xbox.

Maybe not that extreme, but you get the point. There's comfort in the herd. So this stat can actually normalize the behavior you're trying to change if you communicate about it wrong. Speaking of framing and how we interpret information, let's take a quick look at that second headline and how the frame of the message may be impacting behavior. Saying that 80 million Americans didn't vote uses a very large number that you probably felt some impact from if you didn't vote. You maybe felt comfort in your choice not to do so because you're in good company. If you did vote, you may have actually been persuaded a little bit not to, because what's the point? No one else is doing it. But what this article's headline doesn't say is that 67% of Americans did vote in the 2020 election, the most in 120 years. This is covered in the first sentence of the article, but we know a lot of people won't make it that far. And the impression of the article is already established by the prime that came earlier in that headline. What if the headline said that voter turnout increased in all 50 states that year?

Or if it said that the average.

Increase in voter turnout was 7% higher than the last presidential election, which was a record setting year as well? Or that 154.5 million people voted in 2020, which was 17 million more than the 137.5 million people who voted in 2016. Or to put that another way, that voter turnout was up more than 12% in 2020. Or even to say that most most people voted for President in 2020 and you should too. That can use hurting to encourage the action you're trying to lead people to. So what are the lessons here? First, be thoughtful with the numbers you put out into the world and consider the hurting implications for what you want people to do in the long run. Shocking them with a stat to read the article is a short term win that potentially has a long term loss of them doing the opposite of the behavior you want in the long run, since everyone else is doing that. Second, be really thoughtful with the numbers you read and see out there in the world and know what the goals are of the people sharing them. As you can see, 80 million people not voting hits us differently than saying that 154 million people did vote one or that 67% of voters showed up with a 12% increase over the last presidential election. Those all are concurrently true within the numbers, and what is shared is never the whole story. So just be thoughtful about that. Third, and bringing it back to what I encouraged you to think about in this episode and why I refreshed it today leading into Friday's conversation with Dr. Nick Epley is to consider how social norms and hurt hurting instincts may be keeping you from having conversations with other people on the train, in an elevator, at the conference. Our instincts here are wrong, and people typically enjoy the conversation much more than we think they or we will. I'm guessing you were able to come up with a bunch of times that you considered saying something or asking a question and then didn't. Reflect on why you thought you shouldn't and see how it ties back to our herding instincts and what you learned in today's episode about human behavior. What can you do in the future to engage with others more? It's valuable for you, both professionally and personally, I promise, and you'll hear more about it in Friday's episode with Dr. Nick Epley. Come share it with me on social media. Whatever it is, you'll find me as the brainy biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. And as I mentioned previously, herding has a full chapter in part two of my first book, what your Customer Wants and can't tell you. If you want to expand your thoughts on this and dig in even more on herding and how to apply it to your business, go ahead and flip to chapter 11 in your copy of what your customer wants and can't tell you. It's also featured throughout what your employee needs and can't tell you, with specific examples of how you might inadvertently normalize behavior. Like saying, oh, don't worry, people show up late all the time.

It's no big deal.

To help someone feel better in the moment. When you want to change those norms in the future, it can really be problematic. But we have these little offhanded comments all the time that we think aren't going to make a big difference, but they definitely can. There are links to those books and related past episodes and articles all waiting for you in the show notes@the brainybusiness.com 264 and just like that, episode 264 on hurting is done. Join me Friday for a brand new episode with Dr. Nick Epley to discuss the power of Connection. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.