Monthly Message Design Office Hours

to live office hours, uh, where we are talking about all things Let's see, sense giving. I'll define that in just a moment. Message design. But really all about how people think about new ideas so that when you have a new idea, you can make sure that people think about it. Hey, I'm Tamsen Webster. I am a researcher at Teachers College Columbia and I am the founder of the Message Design Institute. And I've spent 25 years trying to figure out why is it that some ideas create instant shifts in how people see the world and some nope. So today and what we normally do, what I normally do in these message design office hours is a couple of things. Number one, experimenting a little bit more these days with having a topic at least to start so that if you're watching and you've got thoughts, add them. It's also an opportunity if you've got your own questions, concerns, trouble spots with an idea or a message that you've got, Hey, it's your chance to get some live on-air advice or coaching about it. Um, if you're interested in that, uh, beyond the question that you've got, chat, uh, put something in the comments, and then Jen, who is in the background being a fabulous right hand, um, can help work that through with you. Otherwise, also happy just to answer it, um, answer your questions as you post them. Okay. So my thought today was— and I saw my thought today originally was, and it still is, by the way, uh, to talk about what academics can teach thought leaders, uh, and what thought leaders can teach academics. Now you might be saying to yourself, aren't they the same? Sometimes they are, yes. Um, but as someone who is a WIZND practitioner, 25 years doing, you know, starting in marketing and branding and then doing all sorts of different kinds of change-related communications, there was a question that I got to about, again, this question of how do we— why do some ideas land and some ideas don't? That just practice wasn't, wasn't answering and I wasn't seeing the answer. So that's why I ended up taking myself to a doctoral program at Teachers College. And what I've noticed there are there are certain things that academics do certain, you know, sometimes it's techniques that they've got, sometimes it's certain hoops they have to go through that I think are very helpful for folks who want to be more recognized for their expertise, for their ideas, for their authority. At the same time, there's a lot that folks who are already doing that work as primarily practitioners can teach to academics. And so today I thought that this would be a good thing for us to start talking about. So what are some of those things particularly that I've learned, uh, since being in school that I have not only adapted into my own practice but are things that I am encouraging other folks and helping teach to the folks that I work with one-on-one, um, to learn how to do as well? So one quick question, one quick definition, I should say. Sensegiving is the name that I'm putting towards this work that I do. Then sensegiving is from the organizational behavior literature, and it is exactly as they say, what it says on the tin. It is about this idea of giving sense, not because people don't have it, But in the sense that you are trying to help other people make sense of something, and particularly in organizational contexts, you are trying to influence that towards a particular end. Notice that it's not persuasion and it's not discussion and it's not sales and it's not marketing. It is in it at its heart. And it's one of the reasons why I like the term so much. It is about saying, Here's why this idea makes sense to me, just either as an idea or as a way to accomplish something. And in essence, if I can do that successfully, if I can make this new idea, this thing that you've not heard of or haven't experienced yourself, make even more sense to you than whatever it is that you're doing now, then I've raised pretty dramatically the probability that you will not only understand it, but also agree with it and adopt it because of your own belief and your own internal motivation, uh, towards that action that I'm thinking about. So that's what sensegiving is. So if you hear me talk about that, that's increasingly what I, what I consider myself as. I think of my clients that I work with as professional sensegivers, folks who in various ways, shapes, and forms, that is, their ability to sense give effectively is a major factor in their success. Now, you can see why this applies both to thought leaders, though, as you're— if you're familiar with me, you know, I prefer the term thinking leader, the leader of thinking, not just here is a thought. But professional sense givers also applies to folks in whose primary, primary home is in academia. So we can think of educators and all and folks like that. Okay. Hello, Jeanette. I'm delighted to see you on here. So what are some of the big things that I've, I've learned in my, you know, as a baby academic? I think let me start first and foremost with the tools, because the tools are related to something I've been talking about on Substack lately, in my newsletters lately. And that's this idea of standing, of making it clear to others why your idea, whatever it might be, um, deserves to be heard, uh, and why it deserves to be heard on its own merits, not because of you who is giving it, um, but because it is necessary in the world and it solves an important problem, and it all makes intuitive sense to people. So this is an idea I know that as I've been talking to folks, they're like, it's kind of blowing their minds a little bit because the, the research, the science does support the fact that when it comes to analyzing new ideas, absolutely correct that we are assessing the source of that information. But if the idea itself, regardless of the source, doesn't make sense to someone, if they can't understand it, if they don't perceive it as irrelevant to them, if it's absolutely inconceivable to them or incompatible with their beliefs, they will ignore it, like, full stop. And if you are the one sharing that ignorable idea and you were previously somebody and a source that they trusted, it kind of— it gives that a blow a little bit. So as much as we spend so much time on, like, I am a credible source— very important, let me be clear. The idea needs to earn that standing, and the analogy I used in my newsletter was about a court case. You can't just bring any case to court. You have to— I'm not a lawyer, let me be clear— but you have to make it clear that this case deserves to be heard. It meets the minimum requirements of being processed. Okay, fine, Tamsen, what does this have to do with What can I teach you? Okay, here is what I have learned. Standing is really important to academics. And what I mean by that is one of the things that was really a surprise to me when I, when I started my doctoral program is that at the doctoral level, it is as much about teaching you how to be a scholar as it is you learning about your topic. Note that, for instance, just a fun little fact, I cannot even call myself a doctoral candidate until my proposal for what I want to study gets approved. And I cannot even— I could not even submit that until I had written a paper that gets approved and taken an exam that gets approved. In other words, I have to show that I have a baseline level of knowledge in my field and that I can produce thoughtful content on that knowledge and integrate and synthesize that all before I get to even say like that for, for the institution to say, okay, you're ready. Uh, we think to go out and study this thing. So I. Up until then, I'm a doctoral researcher, I'm a doctoral student, but I'm not a doctoral candidate until that dissertation proposal is approved. And part of the reason for that, as I've come to learn, is because, again, at the doctoral level, the threshold that you have to be able to cross is one that was first introduced to me by Dr. Ruth Gotian, also an alumna of Teachers College, where it's all about creating new knowledge. So that's the bar of, of a doctoral program. That's the bar in academia at the doctoral level. That is, and that's, that's familiar to me because that's the bar for the highest quality, let's say TEDx events. That's the bar. If you think about those leaders of thinking that have really changed how we think about things, that that's what they've done. They have created new knowledge. They have put new information, like literally new information, into the world. Now, does everybody need to do that? No. But understanding that— what does this mean if you are a thought leader, aspirational or otherwise, or want to become a thinking leader? First and foremost, notice how many of the folks that I hear people say they respect regularly come from an academic background and how many of them are still in it in one way or another. Adam Grant, Brené Brown, Amy Edmondson, Rita McGrath, Francis Frei, like Andrew Winston, all like all of sorts of people, right? Katie Milkman, like just look at the Thinkers50. Now, are all of them? No. But the folks that aren't, who you may have thought about, like leading your thinking in a certain way, let's say somebody like Malcolm Gladwell, they come from in a lot of ways an equally in-depth, equally kind of code-based, process-based form, um, a background like journalism. Same thing with Dan Pink. Um, and so there is this— what does that mean for you if you're not from that background? It means whether they realize it or not folks from that background are looking at books, content, substantive newsletters, comments on posts through the lens of all of that background, right? How does it relate? Is it new? Does this person— is this person even aware of how— like, do they have that baseline knowledge of, of what's going on out there in the world? So first and foremost, I think it's important to understand that if you are and want to be a leader of thinking, that— and there's certain people who you aspire to be like them. It's important to understand that they, in certain ways— and again, this is my own view— are likely looking at whatever you're producing from a different set of standards. In other words, they're establishing standing on very different terms than you may have been aware. I know I certainly was. I was like, oh, this is why. Just as a quick example, I, this, I happened to notice yesterday here on LinkedIn that Rita McGrath shared somebody's research and I just caught the way that Rita framed it. And she said, this person studies and knows all about human flourishing. And then she went on to say, based on a, let's say, 300, 500, 600-person data set kind of way, and not a motivational speaker kind of way. So again, Rita's entitled to her own opinion about that. But what, what's, what's more important, I thought, was more significant to me was that clear distinction, right, between somebody who is basing their work and their ideas and what they're saying based on some form of observable evidence from the outside versus here's my idea. Now, to, to show you, so just show you that this isn't just Rita, I also, I was kind of tagged in a comment by Hannah Prior. Hey Hannah, uh, on a post also here on LinkedIn from a fine thinker and speaker named Shane Feldman. And Shane was saying something very, very similar, meaning it was less about like, hey, you need a dataset and more that one of the ways to stand out, particularly since AI can make you sound polished and knowledgeable, is to go— is to be able to have the lived experience, to be able to give specifics about when and how and where you have applied your idea and what you've seen. Both of these, by the way, that's also acceptable evidence. Is it something that for, for years now in my work with clients, particularly those who want to be thinking leaders, I've referred to always as the burden of proof. I am agnostic about whether or not that is purely academic quantitative, qualitative research that's been, you know, approved by an institutional re— you know, review board and peer-reviewed, or it is acquired through practice. I think they can be equally valid. Um, not everyone agrees with me on that. Um, but that burden of proof is one of those bars that is what sets, I think, the aspirational thought leader, the thought leader, and the thinking leader apart from each other. So again, however it looks for you, I think that that's a, that's a pretty important, pretty important distinction. So what does that mean for you? And here I'm speaking more to the professional sense givers who don't have a background in academics. It means do your research, and here's what I mean by that. Okay, remember I pointed to a couple different things of, um, about what, what academics expect you to have, right? Um, which is a baseline knowledge of your field, um, the ability to argue successfully for a point of view and/or to synthesize for a point of view, which is what generally master's programs focus on, by the way— your ability to synthesize information, not necessarily to create new knowledge, but to, um, argue for a point based on the other knowledge that is out there. Um, and again, this, this newness piece. Very often when I start working with clients, uh, sometimes— no, that's just contradicting myself. I would say, let's say more often than not, um, I'm talking with people who don't have a baseline knowledge of what else has been done on their topic in their field. Um, in other words, I've had people I've talked with, SenseGivers, etc., who are coming and talking about wanting to share what they see as a new idea and what may be new to them, and it may be a very powerful idea, but without the knowledge that it's not actually new broadly. And that's one of the quickest tells, your inability to tie, like, to show that, that you know what else has been said or done in a particular field and/or around a particular phenomenon. And what I mean by that is if you're a leadership speaker and you can't name, for instance, some of the dominant theories of leadership, or even the categories of leadership theory, meaning, are like, is it— do you think leadership is a process? Do you think it's a set of traits? Do you think it's a set of behaviors? Um, that's a— that's— that is an active debate in leadership. Um, if somebody asks you, how is your approach to leadership different from, uh, situational leadership? —that's the One Minute Manager kind of thing—or from adaptive leadership— that's Hyphenz. Can you answer that question? Again, your standards may not be that high. Totally fine. But I'm here for those who really are thinking about that as something else. So the Dunning-Kruger effect, Kathy. Yes, right. In other words, this is one of the things that I often see, and I have been told this by performance coaches, like, stop hedging your bets when you talk about something, like, say X, Y, or Z. That's for folks that come from a primarily academic background. To Cathy's point, that can represent what's known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is somebody thinks they are much more knowledgeable about something than they actually are. Whereas folks who have deep, deep knowledge of something have had enough experience to know that there's always something else that they're— that they don't know, and that there's always a possibility that even despite all that proof and all that evidence, it isn't quite correct. Um, John Lentini is giving a beautiful example of just this, which is, isn't Simon Sinek a strong exception to all these things that I am talking about very strongly right now? So So what's interesting is that in the sense of him being a thinking leader, so does he come from an academic background? I don't believe so. He had a very well-packaged idea that, well, to a lot of academics would look to, well, let's say to some, gonna hedge my language there, would say, oh, that's just an interesting repackaging of this, that, or the other thing. Um, you know, I'm gonna say honestly, John, I don't actually know enough about Simon's background to be able to, to show how he fits into the situation, but I am going to go explore. So thank you for that challenge. Um, yeah, there are so many experts now, and it's interesting because there are some schools of thought. I've seen them, um, to bike Helga on Instagram. Who is a marketing executive background. OK, so that, John, that— so also coming from a marketing executive background. OK, now I can defend him a little bit from that perspective. So when you do a thing a lot over time as a practitioner, if you, if you start to notice certain patterns and you start to be able to tie them in to other patterns that are observable and have been observed by others. I do think, particularly if you're a marketing executive and you've got a great way to package it, you are able to say, huh, this seems to be something new and different. So he does meet the standard from, from, again, just I'm making wild assumptions here of doing something long enough and with enough attention to have assessed an amount of burden of proof. You know, the thing I'm probably most familiar with is his TED Talk, which is originally TEDx Talk, um, where he, he, he serves even in that brief amount of time, uh, a third-party validation, as I like to call it, of his points of views. He gives other examples other than just, I think this is what's happening. Um, he explains what he has seen, why he believes it's true, and gives other examples of why it's true. For him. So I think that when we're thinking about how do you learn from that, I think that there's still— that does still come back to that burden of proof concept. And, you know, giant caveat for all of this, one of the things that I'm doing anytime on these office hours is thinking out loud and shaping, you know, using this as an opportunity, as I hope other people do, to test ideas and see where they do and don't hold up. So again, Thanks for that, John. Um, so there's that, that knowledge and that ability to be able to say, how does this connect to other things? Which Simon did, particularly in that TEDx talk. Um, how do you do that? How do you know that? Um, well, there's a lot out there and on these different topics, and my personal preference, one of the very first things to do is understand kind of the difference in levels of sources. So I mentioned her earlier, but Dr. Ruth Gotian, uh, we were talking about something else, but she— I'd asked a question in a group that I'm part of, uh, about different levels of publications, and she wanted to be helpful, so she was clarifying which level of publication I was talking about and at the same time produced a very useful stratus, right? So at the top she was putting academic peer-reviewed journals,. Now I would say that the vast majority of the average human does not read these on a regular basis. And fun fact, even academics don't really read those papers very thoroughly. It is what my professor says, we read for data collection, not always for comprehension. Side note, I think that leads to some problems. We can come back to that if anybody wants to know. So there's those academic peer-reviewed journals. Now, the reason why that might be important for you is that that is often where the, the good stuff that the Malcolm Gladwells and the Dan Pincks of the world, uh, it's where they often— it's, it's often where they're mining for new information, for the newest of the new information about what are people figuring out. So I am a huge fan of if not like setting up an alert in Google Scholar, I'll come right back to that, then following the folks who process the papers at that first level. So as an example, there's a, there's a woman named Dr. Phil Hartmann. She's on Substack. She talks about learning and AI in particular. And Every week, couple weeks or so, she goes through and does a learning research digest where she has already sifted through a bunch of papers and kind of highlights usually somewhere between 3 and 5 that she finds to be particularly interesting and that also meet certain academic standards for quality information, etc. And as you would expect an academic to do, she's kind of calling out, be careful of this, note this aspect about it, etc. So I love subscribing to people like that because that is very helpful. Back to Google Scholar. Many people do not know that Google Scholar exists as a tool. People are like, well, I know Maps and I know Images. No, scholar.google.com. And what Google Scholar is, is a search engine of academic papers. And so, you know, we can spend a lot more time on a future Office Hours about that, but. But you can set up alerts within Google Scholar to send you papers on certain topics as they come out. So you can become one of those people that is aware of new things as they come out. Now, part of that means getting— starting to be familiar with all the different ways that academia refers to the things that you are interested in. And oh my Lord, this is a whole This is for me, that's like one of my research side quests is kind of like going after the whole terminological confusion as it's called. That's out there. A way to get around that, go into your favorite AI. For me, that's often for something like this would often be something like Perplexity because Perplexity is really tied into like actual web searches and say, this is the thing I'm interested in. What other scholar— like, what, what is the— like, what else? What other disciplines? That's one of those little fancy terms that, that, that will tell you— tell it you're looking for scholarly information— study this? What do they call it? Um, you can figure out, and then once you've got those, then you can start to put those into Google Scholar and then, then get alerts so that now you've got kind of, you are starting to build your baseline knowledge about what other people in your field are like, talk about, how do they talk about it, what is the newest stuff, and all that kind of good goodness. So that is one of the first things I would say is doing is start to lay the base of what your information is. So back to Ruth, that is the scholarly peer-reviewed journals. The second layer of stuff, of stuff, publications, at least at the periodical level, are practitioner-focused, academically affiliated trade publications. Trust me, this was one of those things where I went into perplexity or Claude, and I was like, how do I describe these? How do people describe these? But these are the Harvard Business Reviews, the Sloan Management Reviews, the Knowledge at Wharton. And then I went to a, you know, a group of folks that I know and said, what's the equivalent of these in your home countries? Because I'm curious as to what people see as those, that level in someplace else. So those are— no, those have anything there has to go through an editorial board, but it's not as, not quite as rigorous. And that's where a lot of practitioner-focused folks, not necessarily folks from an academic background, can really get their idea out there as long as they've got burden of proof and as long as they can show what they've done to get there. And by the way, they can at least nod to the academic— some of the, some of the theories, some of the concepts, some of the established practices that are already out there. Um, so that's useful. My equivalent in book form of that would be of the books like, um, and well, I've, I've recommended some of these in the past, but books like, um, The Ancient Art of Thinking for Yourself, uh, by Robin Reams, uh, recommended by Owen Fitzpatrick to me. Another one recommended by Owen Fitzpatrick to me, How Minds Change by Dan— Don Rainey. Those are books that take these papers, these well-known subjects, and, and they're like one level past. So think of the papers as primary, these books are often secondary. Um, that secondary source can be really useful because those folks tend to have done some of that broad research for you, and so they can present as, you know, Rainy did with, uh, with Change, a whole bunch of studies, ideas, etc. And then in those kinds of books, the, the reference section is gold because if somebody says, hey, well, here is this thing in X, Y, and Z, and you're like, what is that? I want to know more. If you go back to the reference section, or sometimes it's in footnotes, you can see oftentimes was it a study, was it a book chapter, was it a um, you know, something like that where you can, you can go and you can like read that for yourself and/or follow up on other, other work. So I love books like that, particularly when I'm kind of poking into a new, um, a new area. Like, you know, Robin Reams's book was really good for me because it really started to poke me into rhetoric and where does that come from and what are the big ideas and And again, thanks to Donald Rainey with How Minds Change, it exposed me to what's known as deep canvassing, which is a phenomenon that produces a phenomenon that I'm really interested in, which is sudden perspective change that lasts. All right. So you can become— like, if you don't want to go into academia, you can become kind of like that middle ground of folks, right, where you're kind of collecting information and you're being the first round of folks, um, you know, you're, you're kind of the first one that's collecting these things together in that particular way, or at least you're pulling them together in that particular way for a particular group of people, um, or in a particular area, um, etc. And then now we're into like the tertiary sources, right? And on a magazine side, that's probably your, um, Fast Companies of the world, your Inks, your Fortunes, where they are editors, but there's a lot lower barrier to entry there, uh, for the ideas. Um, you know, the viability, the standing of the idea doesn't necessarily have to be quite as high. The standards don't have to be quite as high. I'm not saying they're not good, let me be super clear. Um, but it's just, it's different, right? And that also would be, I would say, kind of that third, third level of book or publication at that point where someone's writing a book, but now they're processing the processing of information. So think of it, for instance, as— let's talk about the deep canvassing research, right? So there's the original scholars of that research, the folks that actually studied deep. So there's deep canvassing itself, right? Great. And then there's the practitioners. And then there were academics that went and studied it and figured— and then studied it and said, hey, look, this is what it's doing. Based on these other academic theories that are out there, and they publish papers on that. Then Rainey and How Minds Change talks about both the practitioners and the stuff, so he's citing the papers in his capturing of it. And then there's going to be a group of folks that just start to cite Rainey citing the scholars. Do you see what I'm saying, right? And the further down you get from the original creator, the less likely it is that you will be seen as contributing new knowledge. I'm not saying you're not, but that's one of the things that, in my view, you're, you're going to be working against. So this is a very long way of saying the more that we can get to the original sources, the closer you can get to the original sources, or the more that you can be an original source yourself itself. You know, I had the, I have the great honor of being friends with a fascinating and wonderful speaker named Brittany Hodak, who does customer experience work. She's been collecting information for 10 years through Mentimeter while she's been talking to, to her audiences. That's legitimate data. So she can take that data that she has collected because she's asked these same questions in the same way to a whole bunch of different people and say, look, this is what I've seen. So she, in that case, has now become the primary collector. She's the primary source of that data. And based on the insights that she shared, now that she wrote her book Superfans, now people cite Superfans. Right. And so This is kind of how that cascading of ideas comes out. So, oh, I'm glad, Kathy, that that's useful. And yes, Jeanette, that is, uh, yeah, I love perplexity because I'm like, tell me your sources. Um, and Jeffrey, I love the fact that it's, you know, going deeper into what you believe in the process. Yeah, it's— you're right. I, I, hmm, this is one of the things that, again, it was a surprise. I fully admit Total surprise when I first started my doctoral program because I come from a marketing background ultimately. And what's that all about? Differentiation, positioning. You got to have something that's new and different. All right, first of all, as a researcher, I want to strangle all the people who decide to call the same thing something different because it makes it a lot harder to find information on it, right? So it may be great for you the individual, it makes it really hard for advancing your out there in the world. The second thing is that academics have this really different mindset about finding other people who have studied the same topic or may have even come to the same or similar conclusions. And that is not, uh-oh, it is, oh, great. Honestly, that is exciting when you found other people talking about your work or the same topic because it means that they have probably taken care of a whole bunch of stuff that you now don't have to do. So, for instance, the kind of official academic name for what I study is transformative learning, and specifically within that, something that I'm calling sudden perspective shift. All right. Transformative learning. It's been around since— officially since 1991. It started to show up in the work of a guy named Jack Mesereau in 1985, not on the quiz. Um, in, in 2016, uh, uh, an alumnus also of my program named Chad Hogan did what's known as a literature review, meaning he collected using very clear criteria so that anybody else could replicate it. That's another thing that academics do. All the literature published to date that met that criteria on transformative learning because he was concerned that that phrase, transformative learning, was being applied willy-nilly to everything. Okay, he's— I'm a fan. I'm like, thank you for doing this work. All right, so what came out of that literature review, which by the way is a form of research, um, legit accepted, respected, was that he basically said, okay, looking at everything, here's how I believe we should define transformative learning. He gives the definition and he also says, and here's how, again, looking at all of this, he believes, supported by evidence, you know when it's happened. And so he's created— he listed out, you know, the assessment, what are the outcomes that something has to meet in order to get that. And the outcomes for him are breadth. How broadly does the shift in perspective change? How deep does it go? How, like, does it disrupt or replace or shift fundamental assumptions about how you see the world? And lastly, importantly, durable. Is it— does it last? Right? Does it last? So this means now instead of going, oh no, like somebody's already studied this, I can go, thank you, Chad, because those outcomes are— now I don't have to define them, he did, right? So what you can do is say, all right, now if I'm looking at this other phenomenon, I can show the, the evidence both from my, both from my practice and from my research that says, look, this kind of shift meets these criteria that he said is transformative learning. And so this is where finding somebody else who's done the work for, like, in one way is actually a really, really good thing. So, and by the way, also totally acceptable in academia for very good reasons is Someone could have done everything you want to do, but not with the people you're most interested in. And this again is the beauty of academic research is that it's all about can it be replicated, meaning can someone else do exactly the same thing and get the same results? So A, you can do that. You can just look at somebody else's results and go, if I follow everything that they did, do I see the same thing? That is legitimate research. Second, there are guidelines here. I do not want to say just like, hey, go out there and do that. But the other thing is that you can say that is a really interesting approach, but they were not paying attention to this group of people, right? So what does that mean, right? So this is one of those things where really understanding like where your idea fits Helps to solve for one of those, like, first big things about standing that I think is really important. Because while not everybody is looking at your idea through the lens of academics and research and all of that, you know, one of the things that I've been talking about lately is— and my next newsletter is on this— is that You know, the three kind of killers of standing, which are entirely avoidable errors, are irrelevance, incomprehensibility, and indefensibility. Irrelevance meaning somebody doesn't see how it connects. Um, incomprehensible, I don't understand it, it makes no sense to me, you're like, I, or it's incompatible with somebody's pre-existing beliefs and knowledge. And then third, indefensible That's a lot of ways where burden of proof comes in, where someone goes, yeah, that's— you just— you— that's, that's, that's been proven wrong, right? Um, this is where, to me, doing some of that research, some of that let me see where my idea fits, who else has studied this, what else have they found, how does it apply— that is one of the— that is one of the simplest steps you can take to avoid all three of those issues. Number one, by seeing what else somebody has done, right, you can start to say, oh, this is an active topic and it's relevant, but it's so covered that there's really nothing new, which will be perceived by other people as being irrelevant, right? Or you might find, I think, as, as, um, I think, John, you were talking about, like, you might find a new belief that, that you, that you get, that you get led to. Or Jeffrey, excuse me, Jeffrey, that you get led to that allows you to say, oh, I had— oh, this is a new aspect of this that I hadn't thought about. Let me, let me go dive deeper into this. Um, incomprehensibility. You, you'll see me do this a lot, and it probably annoys some people, but whatevs. I have reached a certain age where you're getting, you're getting me in a banana suit of all things. Um, and that is that I will often, if I know that something is called multiple things by multiple people, I often will give it a name and then quickly like link it to the other things that it might be called. Best example I can think of off the top of my head is that I often refer to our kind of simultaneous processing in the brain, known as dual process theory, as automatic processing and analytic processing. And I will often say, because I think those are more intuitive labels than what you may know as System 1 and System 2, or the fast brain and the slow brain, um, or something along those lines. So by doing that, right, I take something that might have been incomprehensible to somebody, and I quickly attach it to something that they may already know. You can also do this by quickly giving somebody an example, right, as well. You're kind of quickly establishing that, like, you may not have known that term, but this is something that you know and understand. And then the last thing it can help— and this is the secret killer of ideas— is the indefensibility piece, which is I gotta tell you, there's a lot of information out there that— and particularly at those kind of, um, more diffuse tiers of information synthesis and interpretation— where people are continuing to share information that is either wildly outdated or full stop been disproved. And that also, for anybody who's familiar with a particular area, current thinking, etc. Like, the minute something like that comes out of your mouth— people only have the, you know, attention span of a goldfish. No, um, that— it's an immediate credibility killer, right? And it's immediate credibility killer of the idea because someone goes, that's not correct, or that's not been— that's not been proven, um, or that's been— that's been disproved or debunked, or that aspect of that has been disproved or debunked. And it hurts you because they're like, you should have known that. If you're going to put yourself out there as an expert, that's a thing you should have known. Um, indefensibility can also again be solved by just saying, hey, I'm not the only one— Simon Sinekian— that has seen this, that has done this. You've seen it yourself with your own experience is a way to say it sometimes, but also being able to add those burden of proof All right, we're closing in on the end of what is usually about a 45-minute session, but I haven't seen— oh, Kathy, I'm so glad that this is energizing you. Um, listen for what people aren't saying. And this, by the way, is something that AI can't tell you. Um, this is one of those things that you as a human are the only one who can spot the holes, um, and the gaps in things. Um, so obviously I'm a fan of reading widely and deeply and often because you never know where something is going to come from. Um, you just, you really don't. Um, so read widely, we read broadly. Anytime that something that somebody says to you, like, you're like, ah, follow that thread. It's potentially something that is new, is distinct, is different. And you're probably not the only one that at least feels the friction. But you may be the only one that does the work to figure it out. Right. Yeah. All right. Jeanette, over the years of coaching people in what I called habit shifting, it was never the data alone. Oh, my gosh. It's never the data alone that made them change their mind. It was connecting them with something they cared deeply about that would either be possible or better if they changed the habit. Yeah, I mean, this is where, you know, if, if I'm thinking through, for instance, what I've learned about how people think about new ideas, that's all of that is very consistent with all of this. Um, and, um, and it really comes in, right? So if you can like think it, link it back, Jeanette, to, to what one of the things that you were saying, right? It's A, they have to care deeply about it. It has to be relevant, right? It has to be something that is comprehensible to them, that is compatible with their current beliefs about themselves. And yeah, only humans can care. So true. That gets to that kind of comprehensibility piece and that defensibility piece. Again, that's where— and this is where a lot— this is where the practitioners Full stop excel. I'm not afraid to say this is where academics struggle and where practitioners excel is in operationalizing ideas, by which I mean making concepts concrete, figuring out how great— this is a fascinating idea. How do I make this actually work for real human people? Jeanette happens— I know her work happens to be great at that. And it's one of those things that really kind of fits into that defensible of like, this feels like me. It feels like something I can do. You've made it simple enough and practical enough that I think I can do it. So anyway, thank you all for joining and listening. I look forward to future conversations. If you have other thoughts that you'd like me to expound upon in the future, happy to do that. There are many other tips that academics can give. We only just like touched on the, the kind of that surface of like what academics will call literature review. But again, there are just some basic searches that you can do just to figure out where in the kind of universe ideas your idea fits and connects. Which contrary to what a lot of people will tell you, does not weaken your idea. It gives it a much stronger foundation. Uh, so on that note, I look forward to hearing your great ideas, uh, and seeing them out into the world. And I shall see you the next time around.