379. Tuning In: How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World w/ Nuala Walsh

Welcome to episode 379 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to reintroduce you to Nuala Walsh, author of the new book Tune In.

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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. In today's conversation, I'm joined by my good friend Nuala Walsh, who I'm so excited to have back on the show. Nuala is an award winning business consultant, behavioral scientist, independent non Executive director and ex CMO. As the CEO of MindEquity, she consults with Fortune 500 firms as well as human rights and sports associations on strategy, reputation, culture and behavior change. Recognized among the hundred most influential women in finance, her 30 year distinguished investments career includes leadership positions at BlackRock, Merrill lynch and Standard Life Aberdeen where she served as Chief Marketing Officer architecting the first global Ryder cup sponsorship deal in its a Founding Director of the Global association of Applied Behavioral Scientists, of which I'm a proud member. She also serves as President of the Harvard Club of Ireland and Chair of the Innocence Project, London. Former Vice Chair of UN Women uk. Current appointments include Council Member at the Football association, non Executive Director at the British and Irish Lions and Basketball Ireland Advisor at World Athletics and the Chartered Institute of Security and Investments. She has a popular TEDx talk about overcoming Indecision which is of course linked for you in the show notes and has written more than a hundred articles for Forbes Inc. And Psychology Today and her insights have been featured in the Financial Times, BBC World Series, Harvard Business Review and Fox Business. Nuala is a Visiting Lecturer on Business, Criminology, Finance and Decision Making at inseed, the London School of Economics and Harvard Kennedy School and for my on Internal Communication and Change Management via the Human Behavior Lab at Texas A and M University. Trained in Forensic Psychology and holding a degree in Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, she also earned two first class Master's degrees in Business Studies and Behavioral Science. I am so excited to have her back on the show today to celebrate the launch of her first book, Tune in How to Make Smarter Decisions in a Noisy World really quickly. Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for everything including related past episodes, articles and books including Tunein, of course. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com379 now let's jump right in. Nuala Walsh, welcome back to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you very much Melina. It's great to be here.

Yes, and it's in the likes. So much has changed and all things are the same I guess since you've been you were here last. But for everyone who doesn't yet know about you and who you are, can you share a little bit about yourself and your background?

Sure. Well, I wear many hats, sometimes too many hats. I guess as a I'm a board director, a consultant, a behavioral scientist and now an author. But I guess maybe just stepping back a little, the bulk of my career is actually in global investment management where I spent 30 plus years with BlackRock, Merrill lynch and latterly as CMO with Standard Life Aberdeen. But I guess, I guess about 5 years ago I changed direction, went back to school to learn more about human behavior and I did an MSc at the London School of Economics. I was always interested in criminology and had studied forensic psychology a few years back, so that was slightly different. And since then I set up my own consultancy, mindequity. And today I advise a number of different types of firms actually on either brand business, culture change, communications, and I guess these span human rights organizations, sports organizations, commercial brands and some Fortune 500 companies. So and then the other strength, my bow if you like is I hold a number of different board roles. I'm an unexpected director across world athletics, British and Irish Lines, Football association and basketball, Harvard Club of Ireland and investments and different business organizations. And in my spare time, Melina, of which there is very little, I lecture and I write for like Yourself Inc. And also Psychology Today, Forbes and Harvard Business Review. And now I guess my first book. Tune in.

Yay. I know. And as we were kind of talking about in the I guess our pre chat but this so this episode will come is coming out. The book is out. It's here. So exciting. And I know we've been talking about your book for quite some time, so I'm so excited that we get to chat about it and share it with everyone today. And there were a couple things you said that I'm going to want to touch on as we go through the conversation for sure. One of which is that I'm so thankful that as you said in your ample spare time that you have been kind enough to come and speak to my classes at where I Teach Texas A and M. And in my internal communication and change management class, you know, Sunula has done guest lectures every year to talk about when we talk about change and talking about mergers and acquisitions where not everyone will go through a merger. But when we think about change, you know, there's a lot of important and interesting things that come up when we look at that in our organizations. And, you know, knowing from the book and what you've talked about in the classes, there's some crossover there about the importance of tuning in across business in all the ways. But, you know, in a merger may be a point where people kind of tune out even more. Do you want to talk. Can you talk a little bit just about the merger piece? And then I think we'll get into, you know, why you wrote the book and the information. That's what it means to tune in.

Yeah, the merger piece is a really good example. And actually I do have a couple of examples in the book. But I guess if you. If you just assume that not tuning in, if you like, is almost the equivalent of not a blind spot, but a deaf spot. But in mergers in particular, where you have blind spots, deaf spots, and dumb spots, if you like, that plays to the bystander effect where people don't really speak up. And that's evident whether it's in a merger, whether it's in the Catholic church examples, whether it's in the space program. So we find that everywhere. But in terms of mergers, I think mergers are a hotbed of all of these death spots, which is basically where you hear what you want to hear. And I think from a psychology perspective, you know, we all know what that's about. But the problem is that we don't hear what really matters because of this huge range of internal psychological biases that we have that we default to truth. You know, we hear what we want, we deny reality, we miss here, we rush to judgment and we get our wires crossed. And it's. It's not just in M and A that you find that, and you can't find it at every stage of the merger process, but it's in all types of decision making. But when that happens at scale and when it's a power holder that's doing that, that's when you get the real problems, whether it's from a social perspective or a personal perspective. And I mean, today, socially, we talk about activism. We see it from an employee or a customer perspective. You can look at polarization, and we know that's everywhere, and that's a real a Real problem now. And you know, I guess I equate that to tone deaf leadership if you like. But it's a psychological problem, but one that if, when you are tuned in and when you are more aware of these potential problems, you know, the world can be a much better and brighter place. So really, I guess as you say tuning in, it's about being much more aware of these potential missed signals, you know, missed opportunities as well. So it really is just about making sure that you don't miss. In a neglected source of information and in a very noisy world, it's much harder to hear what really matters, you know, and we know that people feel really, really unheard today. My own opinion is, you know, it is one of the most underestimated risks. And companies tend not to talk about this type of risk. They're focused on economic risk, technology risk, climate risk, for obvious reasons. But human risk, human decision risk that I think you very much appreciate is, you know, is huge. It's underestimated. But it is in this case, I think, triggered by our tendency to just tune out what really matters.

Yeah, definitely. And I think it's such, you know, it's a aptly named title which, you know, obviously you spent time selecting that focus for been there, you know, with the, with the book. But when you think about kind of common advice is like, just listen up, pay attention, look around. But if I'm listening to the wrong station, it doesn't really matter because like there's this other thing that's being broadcast. I'm like tuned in, you know, my dial's not on the right frequency so I'm not even hearing it or seeing it and then I'm not able to say anything about it. So I think that that is really important and I guess hopefully a good segue into why there's a problem of people, you know, not being able to listen or see properly. Like how do we, how do we know if we're listening to the wrong station? I guess. And what can we kind of do about that?

It's the wrong station. But it's also that there are too many stations. So the problem is in a noisy world, I mean, which station there are too many. And common wisdom, our common advice is often you've got to listen to every voice. So you know, in a world of equality, but every voice isn't always the right voice. So people tend to listen to the first voice, they hear the most senior voice, they hear the most popular voice. So even so even being aware of those kind of elements, I think is a really good first step and your point about it. And then, but then what kind of voices you have, you have the voice of conscience or the voice of convenience or the voice of common sense or curiosity. And I think it's how do you know which is the right one? Is sort of a harder question to answer. How do you know which is the right one? You certainly will know soon enough when you know when it's the wrong one, because as you know, the impact comes out, you know, pretty clearly. But what I've done is I've tried to break down into the reasons why. So I guess the book is then two, two parts. It's the reasons why you aren't listening in the first place or you're choosing to listen to certain voice. So, for example, you know, the psychology of ego is kind of an easy one to work out. But when you're. So when you're hunting power or you're afraid of losing power, you know, you can think Donald Trump or you know, your focus is incredibly narrow and therefore you're only listening to what suits you, to what you want to hear. And by definition, the argument that I make is to try and get people even to just pause, just pause, be more selective, take those extra few seconds, which science proves even a few seconds makes a massive difference before people rush to judgment. So, but in a fast, the problem is in a fast paced world, in a noisy world, we don't slow down, we rush to judgment. We take the first thing that we hear at face value and we get our wires crossed and all of these other, these other mistakes that people are aware of. So whereas you can blame data overload, distraction, disinformation and digitization and every other contextual factor, the answer is also in your head. There are too many voices in your head. We all have them and it is really difficult. But if you're at least aware of some of these, what I call the misjudgment traps and these death spots makes life a lot easier. It's not a guarantee, but it is a guarantee that you'll at least do better if you're aware of these than if you're not. So what I've tried to do is Synthesize. There are 200 biases I've synthesized into 10, about, actually about 70 into 10 core misjudgment crafts that spell out perimeters. So for example, P for power, ego, risk, identity, memory, ethics, time, emotion, crowd and stories. Now you put that together and it spells perimeters. And the whole point is that unless you expand Your perimeters, your perimeter thinking and at least question what you hear in high stakes situations only obviously because you can't do it all day or you'd never make any decision. It's a really good way to actually be able to identify where you are at risk of making mistakes or where you can see other people in your team or around you are at risk of making mistakes. Or you can use any of these explanations to explain prior mistakes as well. So for me I think it's a great way to explain your past errors. And we all struggle with, you know, the mistakes we've made in the past, but this helps you explain them at least and then through explanation, through learning and being more aware of them, it does help prevent you repeating them in the future.

Yeah, and thank you for that wonderful explanation. And I know I mentioned to you I wanted to ask this question and it's now combined with a new question because that's just sort of how things happen here. So you were mentioning, you know, you went through the perimeters piece and for everyone who was going along and seeing spelling with you and then heard where you said crowd for the last R is relationships. Right. I have it written down here. So it's like P E R I M C. Right, that's get through. So we've got that on there for, for people as they were kind of going along and then I love a framework and I know for everyone who's thinking about writing a book, who's been thinking about how they're trying to turn their work into a process or you know, the framework or anything along those lines, I'm always fascinated to hear how people come to theirs and I think that that's helpful for people to learn. The question I had asked you in our pre chat was kind of did you have perimeters and the categories first and then you're bringing. You went to go find stories or did you have stories first and then start. Started to see how they grouped and this came together in this way and the new layer that comes on and my apologies, that is becoming a complex question. But was as you were saying in the intro about the background in you know, an interest in criminology and forensic psychology which is very apparent in the book and the stories throughout of different really I think things that we don't typically see through, you know, a business book, let's say these sorts of, I mean real life stories and examples. So I'm guessing that that has something to do with the answer to this question but would love if you can kind of Touch on that aspect as well.

Okay, great. I'll touch on just that. The relationship word first. Actually, in the perimeters it's about the crowd, the relationship with the crowd, with other people, rather than one to one relationships. So. And that's why I deliberately use the word relationship and plus it matched obviously. But it's about the plurality of relationships and following the crowd rather than a one to one personal relationships. Because again, that would have been five books if I was trying to do that one. But it plays to your point, Melina, about where do you start? Do you start with stories? I was not short of stories to begin with, so I had a multiplicity of stories that played to different biases. I had it structured quite differently. In the beginning my publisher said that they had never seen so many stories, so I certainly wasn't short of giving examples. But what I did was I actually, I tried to regroup the biases on purpose. So I tried to. And I had a few that were power related. But then when I went through the streamlining process, I took out a rake of stories and examples that didn't play to being a deaf spot, that weren't related to mishearing, miscalculating, not pausing. So I had fabulous ones. And in fact I could probably have filled another couple of books with those. But I deliberately tried to streamline it into what, what stories? And they were all read. There is these are all real life examples what store and drawn from a number of different industries, exemplify what happens when we mishear and when we tune into the different voice. So each of those perimeters actually relate to certain types of voice. So we, at a very obvious level, you know, the ethics chapter is about, you know, the voice of conscience. Time is about, you know, present bias or the labor illusion. Memory would be about misremembering the power of suggestion. Identity would be about impression management, consistency, etc. So then when I wanted to exemplify, for example, impression management, I thought what, what stories would fit that? So for example, I might have used, in that case, Buzz Aldrin, you know, being the second man on the moon. You know, he really struggled with that because it was part of his identity. Suddenly he wasn't, you know, an accomplished astronaut in the first place, which he was at the beginning, but before he went, you know, went and landed on the moon, he was now known as the second. The second man on the moon. And there's a whole thing about his struggle there. And then another example, for example, would be, you know, Anna Sorokin, who Again, was the New York a German girl who was a fraudster in New York, again, desperate to impress. I have examples of people who hid Nazis and that example that played to consistency of identity and the complicated relationship there. So I was never stuck for stories. I was never stuck, for example, because if you look, all you have to do is look every day. And this is why I think it's good for the reader. You just look around you and find these examples of how these biases play out. But the power of knowing what they're called at least, and I give very memorable examples or stories that I thought were really, really interesting makes it much easier to remember. So. So that plays to which came first, you know, and then the framework. So, in fairness, I did play around with the word parameters. I did play around with different words. I think I had impatience. I did slightly if I'd changed the word. It had the word impatience, actually, I was able to make out of it as well just by changing the words. But I felt that that would suggest that the book was about speed and it is where it is slightly about fast decisions. That wasn't the whole point of the book. It is about not slowing down. Yes, but it's about broadening your mindset, broadening the range of alternative interpretations that what you hear might enable. So I did play with them and I felt, and there were some I left out as well, because to be fair, it's a very high level introduction to those. It's also a fantastic framework for a behavioral scientist that wants to put together, you know, the P for power. What are the four or five main derailers? Decision derailers, that, that can come into play when you're talking about either hunting power, craving power, or trying to preserve power. As an example, and then you mentioned the, the forensic psychology piece. You're right, there are quite a few examples there. But I deliberately have a spectrum of. And I actually did. Actually, I almost counted out to make sure that I had enough of a spread of stories. There are business stories, There are plenty CEOs in there and plenty of financial services examples. You've got the Ponzi schemes, I've got Blackstone, I've got Blackrock, I've got a huge number of business leadership examples. But I do deliberately juxtapose them with stories from space or from the medical world, the legal world, not just the serial killers, but actually from misconduct. I have professors, I have academic professors in there. I have politicians, I have pilots and I have parents. I have very well meaning parents who tuned out didn't listen when it really mattered to their children, to other people as well. So I deliberately tried to make it as representative as possible because human behavior covers, you know, everything in that space. So you've got your journalists as well in there, and you've got your ordinary, ordinary, non CEOs, you've got ordinary individuals trying to climb the ladder, as we've all done in our day. And I think what this does is it points to the errors that you make when you are trying to climb that ladder and you are trying to, you know, impress, be successful, etc. So I was happy with that. I was happy with the criminology aspect as well, because, I mean, I do work with the Innocence Project. I am very interested in the psychology of the criminal mind. And I think, you know, it's evident. It's evident in many places, not just. Not just in prisons.

Yeah, well. And I think really, when we think about the, you know, true crime type of podcasts and the shows that we watch, and of course, like you said, having Anna Sorokin or however we're supposed to pronounce her fake name, I all I remember is, you know, from the Netflix documentary of it, you know, that she said that people are so basic. With my husband, I will say that all the time that things are basic. So there's that. But with these, you know, I think it adds this layer of things that we know people like to learn and read about. But like you said, even as far as having an ability, once you have the perimeters framework and you're able to go watch when you are listening now to that favorite, you know, true crime podcast or whatever else, and someone says, oh, like, aren't you supposed to be working? You can say, oh, no, I'm looking for the perimeters.

The funny thing, the funny thing is, Melina, you don't have to look far for these. I could be watching the news, breaking news, look at any movie, look at the news, read a magazine. You can find them in there. What I discovered was are actually everywhere now, so I could be updating this. And my favorite hobby now is almost to take something that's in the news, something that's happened, and work out which of the perimeters misjudgment traps are these and which are the driving biases. And as you well know, we don't oversimplify. It's never one. What I did find through this journey of writing this was that actually this. And that's why sometimes I have characters that appear in, you know, the P, the E The or and the s. Because the stories continue and you find that the same individual has. The cause of whatever the misjudgment is, is actually evident in a number of different places. And I deliberately wanted to do that. Actually one of the, one of my early editors said, oh, it looks like you don't, you don't have any new stories. I'm thinking, no, it is the. I'm deliberately trying to, you know, trying to show the same individual experiencing a number of these different traps at different stages, you know, of whatever their decision making or life stage journey is. Because it's too simplistic to say, well, you know, that's mimicry or that's probability neglect or that's, you know, one particular thing because it's never one. And that's what I call the force multiplier effect. And that's what happens for all of us when we're making decisions. You can't just pinpoint one thing, even though we like to, because that makes life seem really simple.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, I know we touched on some of the, and there are ample of the when things go wrong examples throughout the book. And like we said, we've got a few points and you're able to say, okay, this is where perimeters was, you know, power. This is where we missed on emotional peace and whatnot. Just to be helpful for the listener here, can you share an example of where like when things go right, when you are tuned in, what might that look like? And I guess if there's a good example that comes to mind of what might have happened if you did what people normally do.

Yeah, I can pick legal examples, commercial examples of business people. So I've got, you know, if you think of Salesforce as one example of, you know, leaders who buck the trend, tune into the market, tune into their own self belief. And I mean, Mark Benioff is one example who, you know, bought Slack once upon a time. And I think, you know, that the stock market didn't like this went down. You know, the stock market stock price dropped considerably. But you know, a couple years later he was proven right. And you know, the figures are astronomical in that case. That's an example. There are plenty of examples in the book also of entrepreneurs who do use self belief and who do tune into their own voice of confidence and their own, their own inner self to get it right. I have another example which I think is an excellent example, which is of an FBI investigator who was asked to pick up. And this is about tuning in to empathy. So using empathy in the right way. So he was asked to pick up a witness in a particular case. And the witness, you know, the FBI investigator took the wrong route on the way home, on the way to the office, and a 45 minute trip turned out to be a 90 minute trip. But he empathized hugely with the fact that it's just coincidentally, this FBI investigator, his job was to track missing children. And it turned out that the person that he picked up had a brother who had actually been abducted for seven years and the by a paedophile who hadn't been. And the pedophile only received, I think three or four years in prison. So the investigator hugely empathized with this, with this potential witness for it was for a Yosemite murder. And the long and short of it is. I'll fast forward it. The long and short of it is because when he got back to the station, he was then asked to do the proper interview because he had empathized and connected with him and attuned into genuine emotion. Even though this was a witness who could have been, you know, whatever the individual Kerry Stayner was, his name confessed not only to the crime for which he was being just questioned, but actually to three other murders for which there were individuals being held by the FBI. And I absolutely love this example because if he hadn't tuned in, if he hadn't read the language, if he hadn't done. What I advocate quite extensively is to go beyond what people initially say, to probe beyond what you first hear, to try and decode what people say rather than just encode the first message and that there's much more detail than we can do today. But there are a couple of examples like that. Decode what people are saying and when you do that, it really makes a difference. There are plenty of other examples I'll give you, just as the last ones, for example, you know, lawyers, sometimes they win. The outcome might be the outcome you want. But Johnny Cochran, for example, is famous for getting a lot of people winning a lot of cases. Whether he should have or not is another thing. The point is he used the power, reinterpreted what was happening at a given point of time in society, and he used that messaging to make a difference and to get his client to win. And that was in the O.J. simpson case. But he did it brilliantly. And there are plenty of examples of people and professionals who use tuning in properly to either make a difference to clients, to employees, to their company, to their organization and for society at large. So I've deliberately, in every Chapter I deliberately also have, as you say, enough positive cases where people have done it right so that you can see the power of what happens when you actually tune in. And when you tune in, other people hear you. So it's interesting that we all think people hear us, but there is actually technically only like a 25% efficiency level for listening. So it's not. This isn't about listening better, it's about decoding and reinterpreting, interpreting what people say when it really matters.

Yeah, well, when you just said when you tune in that people hear you. Right. It made me think of the example from. And I don't remember the name of the person, but in the. Bernie Madoff, right?

Yeah.

Do you want to share a little bit about that? The. So there was the. The guy that had looked at it and said after, you know, five minutes, I can tell you this, right. And had reported and people weren't listening.

Yeah, that's right. And he was nine years Harry Markopoulos, you know, well known. He had identified. I think he raised 29 red flags. He tried over nine years to report this to the SEC in the States, both in Boston and in New York. I think he even might have tried D.C. at one point. And again. But again, that goes also, there's a slight reason that we hear what we want to hear. And there was also something in there about the messenger effect, which is why I say it's never just one thing. He wasn't in the. In group. I don't think he looked like the people that he was trying to, you know, communicate to. And as we know, first impressions count. We tune out people who don't look like us, sound like us, or have anything in connection with us. And again, all of these factors, I think, I think are really important when you're trying to. When you're trying to make something that you know, you know, a really important decision, whether for yourself or for your family, you know, or for your organization.

Yeah. And I think it's important on that flip side, too. Right. So the piece being if you're the one who's making the decision and not tuning into the tips, that's something that we can say, does this person, do they look different than me? Do they sound different than me? Is there some reason that I'm something I'm missing? And if you're the one that's pitching the thing that you know is going to be a hard sell, or if you found out it's going to be a difficult hard sell, what might you do to help it so that that message is more likely to be heard and that the person on the other side is more likely to tune in and not kind of write it off before it even has a chance to break through. And this is a bit of like, well, that shouldn't matter, as we say with everything in the behavioral science sort of space. Right. We don't, we shouldn't judge the books by their covers. We, people just should learn to not do that. Sure. And our brains are wired in a way that these things do happen. So now that you understand what these perimeters aspects are, if you can be thoughtful to them, it will just make it that much more likely that the message will get through and then you have an opportunity to help make it better for the next person.

That's right. And it's not people's fault. I mean, it sounds like a funny thing to say, it's not our fault, but it isn't in a really noisy world. I mean, the context is just against us slowing down, taking this time. You know, everyone's under time pressure. There is too much information, There is too much, you know, do it now the most, you know, decision makers are promoted when they make quick decisions, not necessarily the best decisions. So in some respects you have to fight against this. And you know, there is a crisis of tone desh, deaf leadership, you know, en route and companies are at risk if they don't try to at least pay more attention to this because it's, it's, there's, there are unheard voices, missed signals and you know, it's, it's avoidable. This error really is avoidable, as you say.

Yeah, I love that. Well, at the last part of the book, you give some really helpful tools for broken down into their own framework of sorts. Right. So we've gone through perimeters and now as we're looking for opportunities to help ourselves tune in, there are, it's an interesting way that you grouped that one as well. So I think this has its own opportunity to have a framework conversation, if you want to talk about how you put that together for the end of the book.

Yeah. And again, I broke it down into. I have 18 strategies now. They're quite, they're quite simple strategies. They're ones that people, you know, may or may not be familiar with. I deliberately wanted easy ones and that wasn't going to, they weren't going to be too difficult to practically implement. I broke them down into five words and spelled out sonic S O N I C. But it was really just that maybe essence was quite simple. The essence was just about slowing down and finding easier ways to reinterpret what you hear. Not to jump to the default answer, to reinterpret yourself, to reinterpret other people. Because actually, science has shown, and in my research, I found that even just a couple of seconds, you know, if someone asks you a question and we all jump in with the answer really quickly, how many of us actually pause to reconsider the answer? Probably we don't do it as much as we should. But one of the studies showed that, you know, in a school environment, you know, a teacher, pupil environment, that even slowing down two to three seconds, the teacher slowing down and not answering for two to three seconds, that the students and the children answered had far better quality judgments than if. Than if. Than if the teacher jumped in with an answer or they said, you know, they hurried the child along. So, I mean, we know this from Kahneman's work. System one, system two. It isn't just system two slow down, because even system two is incredibly flawed. This is about not forgetting the middle step in decision making, which is about reinterpreting. So reinterpreting what you hear, not just assuming that what you hear is right. And so that does take a little bit of time out to tune in. And what I do encourage is what I've called decision friction. Now, in behavioral science, we all know the friction is a pain. You know, how long does it take you to cancel a subscription? I had to phone someone, you know, a media company this morning to cancel. They couldn't just give me a button to press to cancel. I had to phone them, which is friction, which is painful and annoying, but decision friction, actually, decision friction is what you want to be successful. So if you slow down, it's something you should welcome a little bit of an opportunity just to pause. There isn't that pressure on us that we think to rush to judgment. And if we do slow down just that, just that small bit more, it does give you a greater opportunity to at least reconsider what you hear. So what I try to do through these strategies is to make it easier, if you like, to hear the right voices and harder to hear the wrong voices, because when you do tune into other people, they tune into you. And, you know, if you tune out, others tune out. So if you want to be heard, never mind about you hearing other people, if you want to be heard, the trick is actually to tune into other people. But, you know, that doesn't happen, as we know as much as it could or should, which is why you know, I really do think this angle towards deaf spots, which hasn't been covered and isn't typically covered, is probably maybe an interesting way for people just to remember this rather than. Rather. Rather than not. So it's so important from a reputation perspective. And as you see in the book, there are so many examples where people have lost time, lost money and lost lives. You know, there is a mortality cost to getting this wrong. It's not just financial or moral.

Yeah, for sure.

Well, and you mentioned about the, like, the deaf spots and that people don't talk about them as much, if at all. And so how did you come across realizing that this was a gap that needed to be filled and, you know.

How'D that come about? Yeah, to be honest, just. Just. Well, I was trying to decide what was. I was. I nearly called the book death spots actually. I kind of wanted to in many ways, but people weren't familiar with it enough to, I think for it to really work. And sometimes I have to be clear, there was psychological death spots and, you know, being cognizant of the ability perspective. I guess just through all the reading, Melina, I did then when I did, when I thought it's quite a good angle for, you know, explaining this and drawing more attention to this, I discovered it did actually exist. I mean, I wasn't the first person to make up the word deathmaster. It had existed from 1969. And I did check how much of this has been covered and hasn't been covered in the literature. There are a couple of references to it. I'll tell you where they're referenced to the reference to deaf ear syndrome, which is kind of the same thing. And being tone deaf. So from. I mean, from a. From a. It's a common phrase that people use all the time, but deaf ear syndrome, inattentional deafness is quite similar to inattentional blindness, which is just not paying attention to what we hear. So there is something around this in the science. In the science world, it just. It just hasn't been covered for whatever reason because maybe, you know, it's easier. And then when I tried to dig into which particular biases were particularly, you know, an exemplar of death spots. I mean, denial is one. The ostrich effect is kind of maybe an obvious one. Confirmation bias is really. Is one that really gets, you know, exemplifies this very, very strongly as well. You know, the messenger effect that, like, I'll only hear who I want to hear. And the beauty bias, which is there's Another angle in the whole book, which is we rely on what we see, not what we hear. And so there's a whole thing about, you know, the power of the visual rather than the aural. And we know that we make decisions for reasons of physics, neuroscience and education. We jump to conclusions because of what we see, not what we hear. And there's plenty of evidence for that as well. So I covered that a little in the beginning just to make the difference between blind spots, deaf spots and dumb spots is of course not speaking up. And if you don't speak up, well, how can people hear or understand what you're actually saying if you don't speak up? So they're all interrelated and I call that the trilogy of error. It was just again, an easy way for me to try and remember it. And I thought it might be useful for other people to think about it like that.

Oh, yeah, definitely. And as we've already said, there are so many wonderful examples throughout the book and great frameworks to help people. It's definitely, like you said, chock full of stories that help us to keep going. Even if, you know, it's like sometimes, you know, you're reading a book that's a business book, you think, well, I'll come back, like, but what's going to happen? Right? It's got the thriller sort of aspect in this tied into which I really love and appreciate. Not that we would need it because the book is obviously very interesting and captivating on its own, but it really interesting perspective that we don't necessarily see often in business books. So for everyone who is excited to go get their copy of Tunein, which as we know, just came out this week for when this episode comes out and they want to connect with you and learn more, what is the best path for them to do so.

It's, it's available on all the main channels, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the Waterstones, or directly on my own website, Nuala G. Walch.com wonderful.

And we'll of course link to that in the show notes to make it easy for everyone. And thank you again, Nuala, for joining me once again on the brainy business. It was of course a delight to have you.

Well, thank you very much, Melina, and thank you for all of your support throughout the whole process. As an accomplished author yourself, whose third book is coming out this week, may I say so, best of luck to you with yours, of course.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you again to Nuala Walsh for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation for me. I am of course, always so delighted to chat with Nuala. We finally met in person for the first time last year when I was in London for a couple of weeks finishing my third book, the Truth About Pricing, and Nuala has been an early reader providing thoughts and feedback on all three of my books. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, she has also been a guest lecturer for my class on internal communication and change management, where she talks about mergers and acquisitions and how behavioral science can help them to be more effective and less likely to fail. It's always a student favorite. We've been talking about her book for such a long time. I'm so beyond delighted for her that it's finally, finally here. It's a really interesting read with so many stories across history and from around the world, from musicians to the boardroom, cults and con artists and everything in between. The insights help the reader to understand their own blind spots, deaf spots, dumb spots, and how to tune in a little better to pay attention when it matters and act when you should. It's a great book from a wonderful friend of myself and the Brainy Business. I absolutely recommend it. And of course, to make it easy, there are links in the show notes for everything, including to connect with Nuala, get your copy of Tunein, check out related past episodes and articles, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 379 and thank you again to Nuala Walsh for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. 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. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.