The Science of Social Flow: Unraveling Human Connections with Dr. Michael Mannino

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Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance. Access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance. So you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Ryan Dorris, and together with bestselling author Stephen Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio.

I'm Dr. Tori Higgins, the head coach of the Flow Research Collective, and I'm here with one of my fellow coaches today and FRC's chief science officer, Dr. Michael Mennino. Michael, thanks for hanging with us today.

Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be with you. I'm excited for the conversation.

Me too. So Michael, this is our final episode in this month's series on social relationships and flow. So in case the folks at home have not caught the earlier episodes, this month we've been talking about why relationships are foundational to peak performance. They're the key to health and wellbeing. They're also make or a make or break component to achieving and sustaining flow. So over the last couple episodes, we've been looking at how our interactions with other people can either spark flow or get in the way of it. We've also looked at how teams can achieve a state of flow at the group level, which obviously multiplies what they're able to achieve together. So today, since we have you with us, I want to dive a little deeper into the neurobiology of human connection and how prosocial behavior promotes flow. Um, before we get to flow though, I think it's worth mentioning that in 2023, the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, published a report that the US was experiencing a loneliness epidemic. And in this report, he explained that the mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. And the, the impact of social disconnection on physical and mental health here is even greater than obesity and physical inactivity. So, Can you talk a little bit about on a neurobiological level, why is social connectivity just so important for wellbeing?

I mean, there's so many outcomes of, of we are social creatures, right? We have social brains. So you have a bunch of neurochemistry, reward systems, plasticity going on in the brain, all of these kinds of things that are going on in the brain that, that are affected by, are directly affected by social relationships. Social connectivity, right? We have built-in mechanisms and networks of the brain that facilitate social bonding and prosociality. And with that, you get different outcomes, more empathy. So for example, one of the biggest systems in our brain is called the mirror neuron system. And very interesting, it was actually discovered by Italian scientists way back, way back, like in 1991. And what they found is very interesting. They actually found that, and they were studying monkeys in this case, but subsequent to that, we found that mirror neurons exist in humans. And when humans have social communication problems, problems with the mirror neuron system have been identified in correlating with that. But what they found was they were actually, they had an electrode in a monkey's brain for moving the arm, and the monkey was grabbing a grape and they were looking at, they were studying motor actions in the monkey's brain and the monkey was grabbing a grape. Making a movement to go, you know, if you can see my arm to go grab the grape like this. A funny kind of fortuitous thing happened. The scientist left the room, scientists, and so every time the monkey makes that, you know, they get a little, they get a little, you know, electrode of that neuron firing and they get a little sound, right?

Sure.

Scientist leaves the room. Rizzolatti, I guess his name is, if I remember correctly, comes back and the scientist actually grabs the grape. on the table and the monkey saw the scientist do that. And when that monkey saw the scientist do the same motion, the same neuron fired, even though the monkey wasn't moving and wasn't grabbing the grape. So the same neuron fires when the monkey is actually grabbing the grape or watching a human do the same action. And this is interspecies. So this is even really, really fascinating, right? So they discovered the mirror neurons. Hopefully that made sense to our audience. So the, the neuron fires when the monkey's making this motion, grabbing the grape, and the neuron, same neuron fires when the monkey's watching a human mimic the same action, even though the monkey's not doing the action herself. Got it. Right. Just to refresh that. And so, and so they discovered the mirror neurons in the system, the mirror neuron system in the macaque monkey's brain. We subsequently discovered that in human brains as well. We see problems in the mirror neuron system in autism, for example, which is a social communication, a sensory processing disorder, but also a social communicative disorder. So a bunch of theories came from this, that the mirror neuron system is the basis of social communication, all kinds of empathy, which I can talk about the neuroscience of empathy for— we can get into that. I think that's actually very important for social communication and social bonding, but Sure.

So I love that you went to the— I love that you went even deeper because I think that what most people would think about in terms of why social connectivity is important for well-being is because, you know, we know that the brain releases a whole host of neurochemicals like oxytocin, endorphins, serotonin when we're around, when we feel like we're— we have a sense of belonging, when we're connecting with other people. Those are helpful for things like creativity and motivation. But I think to your point, and empathy for sure, and, but I think to your point, in addition to all of those, like those are the feel-good neurotransmitters, right? In addition to all of that, social connectivity is vitally important from a learning perspective as well, right? That, you know, and just to achieve that sense of belonging. So I love the mirror neuron add to the conversation here.

Yeah, so we can actually learn from each other's mistakes, learn how to communicate with one another. And, and so on. But with empathy, it's very interesting. So that also is, is, is essential for, if we'll get, we'll get into this part of the conversation for flow itself, but for social, for interpersonal wellbeing, right? For social bonding, for prosociality. Many, many studies have been done on the neuroscience of empathy. It's well-established science now. And for learning as well.

Tell me more about why do you think that empathy is such a vital part of the human experience and, and having this sense of belonging? 'Cause we know, Michael, that having a sense of belonging is really protective, both for physical and mental health, right? We know that, uh, this sense of belonging, feeling connected to others, it reduces the incidence of dementia, anxiety, depression, cardiovascular disease, stroke. So what is the role of empathy in all of this? Because I think that you're talking about mirror neurons drive that ability to be empathetic. What is that doing for us?

So I think empathy and the mirror neuron system are mechanisms, are neurobiological mechanisms that allow for social bonding so that we can have all these other outcomes. And it makes sense too, because now we've discovered there's a, a whole host of things going on at the level of the brain and the body with empathy that actually lead to those outcomes. So why? It's the reason why you have less incidences of dementia, Alzheimer's, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and those kinds of things. So we should define empathy first. We could, we could say it's the, the human mental capacity for the ability to share and understand other people's mental states or emotional feelings or emotional states. So we've discovered actually that there's different kinds of empathy and there's actually different kinds of empathy at the level of the brain too. So you have emotional empathy or what's called affective empathy. That's right when we talk about, you know, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes literally feeling their emotional states. Literally feel— I can feel your pain. I can literally feel your pain. That's affective emotional empathy. Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, is more intellectual. It's perspective-taking. It's the ability to understand somebody else's cognitive perspective. And then people have distinguished compassionate empathy too, which is the, you know, being moved to act to help somebody, right? Now there's different— so affective empathy and cognitive empathy actually have different differential activations in the brain.

Okay.

Right. So when people are feeling affective empathy, this part of the brain lights up versus when they're feeling cognitive empathy or just understanding somebody else's perspective, another part of the brain lights up. And this was actually discovered back in the first— the first really interesting part of emotional empathy was discovered back in 2004. All the way going back to 2004 with Tanya Singer. She actually discovered, um, she put lovers in brain scanners. And so she put one lover in the brain scanner and the other couple, uh, the other member, the other, the other person was outside.

These are brave couples that signed up for this study.

The person outside the scanner was being shocked with painful shocks. And what they found was that, so, and then the person inside the scanner was being shocked too. So the person inside the scanner with the brain being, with their being shocked, certain parts of the brain lit up. But then also when that person was in the scanner watching their lover also being in pain, the same areas of the brain, same exact areas of the brain lit up as if they were in pain. Right.

So, yeah, I mean, I would be, I would love to see the informed consent doc for this, for this study because what if, I mean, This is, this is a make, yeah, make or break relationship status situation though, of like, what if that empathy button did not get pushed while your partner is getting shocked?

They needed, well, quite a, quite an ethical considerations for doing this study and, and consent form. Yeah, for sure. Really.

I love it.

And then they, they all like, so a lot of studies have been done with the neuroscience of empathy and how it affects, uh, social bonding and prosociality and that kind of thing. But they also found something really interesting that I wanna mention. Which is very relevant for this context, this conversation. They found that mindfulness and meditation has been correlated with being more compassionate. So there's a very interesting positive correlation between more mindfulness in your life, more meditation, and not even loving-kindness meditation, but just meditation and mindfulness in general being correlated with more compassionate. And one of the reasons it actually does this, so this is where the conversation with empathy gets a little bit more nuanced. One of the reasons it does this is because it actually dampens down parts of the brain that are involved in affective empathy. Because if you think about it, in certain situations, you don't want affective or emotional empathy. You want cognitive empathy, like in coaching situations or, or even in group flow situations. You don't wanna feel, you don't wanna literally feel, or psychotherapy, for example, right? You don't wanna feel somebody else's pain. You wanna be able to understand their perspective. So mindfulness actually dampens down those parts of, of the brain that are involved in affective empathy, which is one of the reasons, the possible explanations is why you're able to have more co— same thing with, you know, we talk a lot about on the FRC podcast, interoceptive, away, by the way, cut me off if you, anytime. Sorry.

Well, I wanna, I, I, I wanna double-click on something you did just say.

So, okay, let me, okay, okay.

All right, all right. Get, jump back in. I'll finish your thought.

I'll lose it. So we talk a lot about interoception, uh, in, on, on the podcast, right? Interoception or interoceptive awareness is correlated with higher levels of mental wellness and mental wellbeing. So interoception is being sensitive to, right, what's going on inside your body, your heartbeat, your gut movements, your temperature, um, whether your mouth is dry, being more sensitive to those things.

Yeah, be more embodied.

Be more, being more embodied. Exactly. They actually found— so one of the really interesting things they found, so higher levels, people with excessive levels of, of, of emotional empathy are at more risk for inflammation.

Hmm.

Now that's very— one of the reasons why is because they found that people with higher levels of affective or emotional empathy have lower levels of interoception. So if you are overly concerned with the way other people are feeling, right, their physical states, right, their emotional states in their body, you are less sensitive to what's going on inside your own system, in your own. And that have negative ramifications or implications for being more inflamed in certain areas.

Likewise, I think, well, that ties, that ties so much into SK's conversation with Michael Jervais a few weeks ago that if you are so preoccupied with what other people are thinking, feeling, et cetera, your own performance tends to suffer, right? Like the first rule of mastery is to be focused, right? Being more embodied, better interoception, mastering what you can control. Um, so I think this is, I think this is a really important point because we're not saying that, you shouldn't care about other people at all.

Correct.

But there is a dark side to empathy as well. Yeah. So I think that, I think that's massive.

Yeah. And there likewise, or conversely, there was a positive relationship with the cognitive empathy. So people who had more cognitive empathy had more, had better interoception. So understanding of other people's perspectives is probably linked with a better awareness of your own bodily states.

I hear a distinction there. Instead of just simply absorbing all of it, right, we are being understanding, we're being curious to what other people's perspectives and what they're thinking might be, but we're not necessarily internalizing it, right? We're not letting it take complete front and center. We're still maintaining that interoception. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, so let's— so this, it strikes me, you know, because, because of the mindfulness piece that you mentioned, that mindfulness seems to be protective. Against kind of the dark side here of empathy that we're, we're talking about. How does this play into burnout then? Right? How does—

Yeah.

Uh, yeah. Tell, tell me a little bit more about how do you think, what's, what's the interplay with burnout and kind of social connection and empathy?

There's different dimensions of burnout. We have, uh, cynicism, um, like, uh, depersonalization. Yeah. Uh, emotional exhaustion, um, from, from different, uh, you know, inventories of people studying burnout. Maslach and so on. And then different causes of burnout too. So, and some of those are social things, right? Not only, it's not only like your amount of workload, but it's your fairness is a cause of burnout, values, reward. If those things aren't optimal, then that could also lead to burnout. And those things are social things, right? Fairness, like, You're not being treated fairly. Likewise, emotional exhaustion. So I would say there's all kinds of research showing that people who have higher quality social connections have lower risk of burnout, probably because they're not gonna be so emotionally exhausted cuz that emotion can be distributed literally at the level of the brain and the body through, through your close social connections. So you reduce that kind of risk.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the research that I'm familiar with, it completely backs up what you're just talking about too. You know, I've read, a lot about burnout, particularly in healthcare workers, right? And, you know, what the research is suggesting is that robust social networks are actually incredibly protective to some of those other burnout triggers, like work overload, like feelings of insufficient reward, that that strong sense of community can actually buffer against some of those. And so, do you know, from the neurobiological perspective, you know, What do you think, what are some of those mechanisms at play there that make that sense of community so helpful in an atmosphere with high levels of burnout?

Again, the neurotransmission. So oxytocin, for example, has been called the bonding molecule or the moral molecule by Paul Zak and dopamine, serotonergic systems, different areas of the brain connecting with one another in the like for example, the default mode network is something as well. So the default mode network, which we know, you know, Scott Barry Kaufman calls the imagination network, but that's also involved in the social, that's the social network as well. So it's not only about the default network comes into being when we're self, when we're ruminating, when we're self-reflective, when we're, you know, thinking about ourselves, thinking about the future, not really involved in a task kind of thing. It's really like, I want to use the word endogenously driven. So inside, self-referential, but it's also highly involved in, in the social brain. And we see overactivation in network in the default mode network, for example, when people are ostracized in their community.

Okay.

And things like that. So that's a, that's a major network of the brain that's involved probably in the ability to so higher And even, even though now that, and now that I'm thinking about your question more carefully, there was a study showing that different areas of the brain light up with different dimensions of burnout. So emotional exhaustion, you have when you're experiencing that dimension of burnout, one part of your brain lights up. When you're feeling depersonalization, which is another dimension of burnout, another part of the brain lights up. And that is also involved in higher overactivity of the default mode network. So that's also— and breathwork and mindfulness and all these things that we talk about lowers that activity of the default mode network. So you actually— that can mitigate some of it. So those are some of the neurobiological mechanisms involved in those different dimensions of burnout.

I think that's super important. And it's, I think, precisely why, you know, in one of our modules in Zero to Dangerous, we talk about how critical it is to understand kind of the nuanced signs of burnout And to your point, we, we, the reason we want to do that is because we, we want to strategically treat burnout. Burnout shows up in lots of different ways. There's different triggers to burnout. I think developing a better understanding of what those signs are, what those triggers are, it better equips us to treat the, the flavor of burnout we have. And I think, you know, what I just heard you say is that, you know, a big part of burnout is emotional exhaustion. We also tend to see people who are very high in cynicism and pessimism. They tend to lose empathy with those around them. And so really implementing, number one, something like a mindfulness practice will help you reconnect with some of that empathy, right? Cultivate that sense of belongingness, right? And then, and I think I'm also hearing just the importance of being super intentional about finding people, finding your training partners, finding people that are going to be that support system when you're feeling like you're contending with signs of burnout.

Yeah, a huge point that you're making is quality over quantity, especially with social connections. Right. And there's a huge study by Harvard, their adult— I forget what the name of the— it was a long, long study. Maybe you remember it's that quality relationships, social connections, quality. Yeah. Great predictor, a massive predictor of healthy, happy lives with higher levels of life satisfaction, quality of life, wellbeing, way more than things like IQ and, and, and other things. So that just risks also mitigates burnout as well.

I, I love that point. And this is something that I wanted to talk to you about because I think I get this question a lot, right? Is, is it, you know, Should I have lots of different friends, or is it better to have, you know, just a few really close social connections? I think you're referencing the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Oh, yes.

Longitudinal study. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't know if you're familiar, I was checking out recently in preparation for this podcast, there's a 2022 meta-analysis by Sultani et al., and they found specifically that really tight social connections, so, living with other people, being part of a weekly community group engagement, interacting weekly with family and friends was tightly associated with slower cognitive decline in older adults. Yep.

And that one of the mechanisms there, the neurobiological mechanisms, if I'm not familiar exactly with that meta-analysis, but there's something called cognitive reserve.

Yeah.

In our brains. And cognitive reserve is the, their mind's ability to resist degeneration. So it's your neurobiological resilience, if you will. And it's well understood now that people with higher levels of cognitive reserve are much slower for cognitive decline. But they stave off dementia much, much, and Alzheimer's much longer than other who don't have, or have lower levels of cognitive reserve. And so one of the biggest builders of cognitive reserve is not only like lifelong learning, learning things, learning things, learning things throughout your entire life, it builds up cognitive reserve, but social connections and really quality connections. You get this with like the, the blue zones and, and other areas too. It's, it's, it's all, it's all very, very universal.

Yeah. I mean, speaking of peak performance aging, right? I also love in Nar Country, Steven talks about not just the importance of tight social connections, but also I, I'm gonna steal his term, having replacement friends. So actually purposefully cultivating friendships from folks in different generations than you. And I think this is something that it's never too early to start doing this, not just for, I think, the, you know, the cognitive protective benefits, but also for learning, right? You said being a lifelong learner. I think that driving that neuroplasticity by connecting with people from different generations, right? You get different perspectives, you get to learn from the wisdom of older people as well.

Yeah. Steve talks a lot about that grandmother hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's 100%. But it's interesting that, you know, we're now discovering that there are real underlying neuroscience, neurobiological mechanisms to explain, to explain these things and then make predictions, right? So they can tell us how to live our lives better, more optimally. And Uh, it's just fascinating.

Exactly. And I think, you know, something that I want to bring into the conversation here too is, uh, the importance of this for people who are entrepreneurs, particularly solopreneurs. This is something that I hear all the time from solopreneurs who— there's this feeling of tremendous pressure that everything is on their shoulders to scale up a business, to do all of these things that maybe are not necessarily in their zone of genius, like starting a business. Is really hard. And I think that a lot of solopreneurs really don't realize how beneficial it is to step outside of their own business and cultivate relationships with people that are in, you know, similar field doing similar things, how powerful it is for, for performance, but also well-being. Right. It doesn't feel good to be on an island.

Yeah. I don't want to jump the gun too much in this conversation. I know we're going to get to it, but there was a paper that came out very recently called Founders Flow.

Oh yeah. Steven and I talked about it too. Yeah, it's great.

You, you talked about that already. Okay, great. Yeah. So, and that, that was, um, that's exactly what you're talking about. Getting into flow as an entrepreneur with a team. They talk a lot about team flow, uh, which I'm, uh, we'll get to in the conversation. But yeah, so there's already some, some evidence looking at, looking at exactly what you're saying.

Yeah. Very nice. I mean, look, we, I, I feel like we, we, we made it almost 30 minutes talking to one another without focusing on flow. So let's go ahead. Let's bring, Let's bring flow into the conversation. We've waited long enough. Um, before we dive into it, because just in case people haven't tuned into earlier episodes from this month, can you give us just a kind of quick definition, Michael, of social or group flow?

I think a quick high-level definition would be it's a shared experience of flow, um, that does correlate with some overlap of individual flow. So feedback. The challenge-skill balance, absorption and task engagement. But overall, there are things that are different. There are different characteristics that come into play with social or group or collective or team flow. But overall, it's a shared experience of flow. Now, we could get into this further down the conversation, but that means something very specific. That phrase shared experience of flow means something Very specific.

Can you describe that just a little bit? Because again, I, and I said this when I was talking to, to Steven too, that I, I think a lot of people are genuinely surprised that team or social flow is a thing. I think a lot of people conceptualize flow as a very individual experience, and the research suggests that's truly not the case, right?

Correct.

What's the, what's the shared experience like?

One of the top researchers in flow re— um, in team flow research, JJ Vanden Hout, um, talks about a sense of unity. With other people, a holistic focus. So we're all focused on the same thing. There's a sense of joint progress, right? There is a higher level of mutual trust, for example, that's exhibited by team flow. But the shared experience of flow phrase, what I mean by that, that means something very specific is that there's this idea of inter— it's also called interpersonal flow. So but interpersonal flow at the individual level versus interpersonal flow at the collective level. So the question becomes, and this is, there's a lot of different terminology, terminology in the, in the literature because this is a very nascent field, I should say, but group flow versus group-based flow. So the idea is if we're all at a concert together and we're all in, we're all, I'm with my, my clique, you know, I'm with my, with my, with my tribe, with your, with your crew.

Yeah.

Crew with my tribe. And, and, and we're all experiencing this amazing euphoric, uh, flowy experience individually versus, um, versus this, um, unified state of flow. So that, and we've actually found this, there's one study showing this, that flow is not just, yeah, group flow or team flow is not just a combination of individuals at the same time experiencing individual flow. More than that, there's an interbrain or interpersonal state that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts kind of state that exists. That is the thing called team flow. And that really is a distinction, if that made sense.

No, it's a, it's a huge distinction. I think that it's, it's greater than the sum of its parts, right? It's not, it's not just everyone in a room separately being in a state of flow. It's this, it's this greater experience. I think that That's a really important point because that feeds into why group flow feels so incredibly powerful because it's kind of this ultimate state of belonging, which as humans feels really good to us, right? That's what we're wired for.

Yeah. And there's underlying mechanisms that, that when you say wired for, we've now found the underlying mechanism, those, we found those wirings. We found the exact nature of those wirings, those mechanisms that, that actually facilitate that and allow for that. And it's just, it's amazing work. And we, we could talk about that.

I mean, let's, let's do it. Tell us a little bit more about what, yeah, tell us a little bit more what those, what those wires are, what's, what's going on kind of underneath, underneath the surface that makes it feel so powerful.

Yeah. Um, well the biggest, one of the biggest things is the mirror neuron system, which we've already talked about, but, um, um, so let's take a step back and then I'll get into that. But so JJ Vanden Hout's work, um, he talks about, um, these prerequisites or antecedents to, to team flow. So we have a collective ambition. We have open communication. We have a big, audacious, hairy shared goal. We have psychological safety. We have high skill integration. So that's also a social component which you don't get in individual flow, right? High— like, skills need to be really, really well matched, you know?

And Stephen said, I can't, I can't ski with, with him and Ryan because the high skill integration is not there, right? I would mess up the group flow. Which I understand.

Yeah. But you can be in your own individual flow and just say, you know, like, yeah. So even if that's missing, that's fine. You could still be in individual flow. Um, there's, uh, mutual commitment, things like that. And then those, I think that he talks about like 7 prerequisites. Um, and then you get these characteristics that we were talking about earlier show up, this sense of unity, this holistic focus, this, uh, sense of joint progress, this sense of trust and those kinds of things that show up with team flow. Now, one of the, the wirings, the neurobiological mechanisms that facilitate those things like psychological safety, one of the biggest things is something called interpersonal synchrony. And so science has really shown now that the really the secret sauce of, of, of team flow is this idea of human synchrony, humans being in sync, synchronization. And so even outside of the context of flow and just like talking about collaboration, when— and I'll define synchrony in a second, but when you have more synchrony, you get higher levels of empathy. Even between like mother and daughter or mother and child. We put mother and child in the scanner, have them talk about things in empathy, and we see more synchronization in their brain. So that's what happens. You get brain synchronization, you get body synchronization. So and we have phrases in language, right, that correlate with this. Oh my God, we're on the same wavelength. We're so in sync. We have chemistry. We're clicking. All of those things. It turns out there's a real biological truth to that. So heart rates synchronize, brainwaves synchronize, your skin conductivity, which is called galvanic skin response, synchronizes. All of these things synchronize. And when you get synchronization, you get more empathy, more trust, more psychological safety, cooperation, collaboration, prosociality, generosity, and so on. And, and, and you get, and you get team flow at the end of the day. So in fact, this is a little personal plug. So this is what my PhD research was on. And so, and my advisor, one of my advisors, my main advisor, Scott Kelso, which is the father of— Stephen and I have published a couple of papers with him. Our first few seconds of paper. He was an author on that. We have a neurodynamics of intuition paper coming out and he's on that as well.

So stoked for that. Yeah, that's going to be great.

So, so, so great. He was the father of coordination dynamics in social neuroscience, one of the godfathers of social neuroscience. And he first discovered back in 2007, he was recording people's brain activity when they were doing a task together and they were supposed to compete in a task. And then in another control, in another section of the experiment, they were coordinating on the task. So they were coordinating and competing, and he found different neuromarkers were associated with when they were competing versus when they were coordinating. And so that was back in 2007. Now we've done all these kinds of research and it's just, it's been a fire hose of research on human brain synchrony and heart rate synchrony in, in e-gamers, in pilot and copilot when they're taking off and doing a task together, brainwave synchronize, all kinds of situations, musicians in flow and so on. So that, that human synchrony turns out to be an underlying mechanism, a neurobiological mechanism that facilitates all of these characteristics that J.J. Vanden Heuvel talks about.

That's amazing. And so we've got this wealth of research that is indicating that it's not just a feeling of belongingness and working together and optimal collaboration. There, there's actual physiological synchrony taking place that is driving these performance improvements that we see. Um, tell me a little bit though. So I wanna call out here though that interpersonal synchrony is hard, right? Like figuring it out with a new team in particular, I think is, is really challenging. What is that? Why exactly is that synchrony elevating our performance as a group? What is it doing for us?

Um, it's allowing— it's facilitating communication. And when we think about it, we— when we're in group flow, um, this idea of collective communication really is— we can see team flow or group flow through the lens of collective communication. We're communicating and we need open communication, we need equal participation. Uh, so, so, so biological synchrony, um, and this is— when I say biological, so I'm talking about humans here, but it also— this also exists in fireflies, it exists in ants, it exists in all kinds of species, um, but biological synchrony facilitates the ability to communicate effectively and to understand other people's states, mental states. Again, back to the mirror neuron system, so we can actually facilitate. And so I want to mention that there's only one, there's really only one study. There's really only one study looking at team flow as a unique brain state, as a unique brain marker. And that was done by Mohammed Shahada, who we're also presenting, Stephen and I are presenting with Mohammed in the Society for Neuroscience. Later this year, the biggest neuroscience conference with over 40,000 neuroscientists with him. He did this study back in 2021 and it kind of like came full circle for me because I got into all this flow research with FRC, but I was doing my, my PhD in neuroscience and inter and intrapersonal synchrony. And his paper actually cited my advisor's work along with like Csikszentmihalyi's work. And, you know, so just to be in the same citation there was pretty cool. What they found in this study, they were— so this study was really, really fascinating. Really good study. They were— there was, there was, there was a pair of dyads, pairs, two people playing a video game, and they looked at three conditions and they were recording brain activity while they were doing this. And basically what they found was that team flow really is a unique interbrain state. That's not just the addition of individual brains in flow. They also found that synchrony was a major component of this. And there was a, there's a part of the brain called the right medial temporal lobe, the right medial temporal gyrus that was actually the, that was the, that's the node in the brain that facilitates team flow. So we found that there's a part of the brain that gets active that facilitates, you know, team flow. It was really great study.

That's awesome. And I wanna land us in kind of why people should care about this and how they can use it. What it's telling us is that there is, there is this thing that's happening, this interpersonal synchrony that's driving our ability to collaborate optimally and communicate with one another in a way that truly elevates performance. And it makes me think back to, you know, Stephen and I were talking about it in the last episode, we were talking about psychological safety and how it's not just an organizational responsibility. Absolutely, leaders should be looking to create an environment that cultivates psychological safety, but it's also an individual's responsibility to regulate themselves, right? So the idea here is if we are all operating kind of in our optimal window of nervous system activation, we're taking responsibility for that. That's gonna facilitate that interpersonal synchrony, right? And so, yes, so, so critical to keep communication open. If, if I come in activated, and I don't own that responsibility to try to regulate myself down for where everyone else is, I could be blocking that interpersonal synchrony for the group, right?

Absolutely correct. And this actually turns out to be measurable. And that's the really, really cool thing. You know, you think about that's what this— all these studies that are coming out every week on interpersonal synchrony are correlating with all these kinds of, you know, your cognitive state, your behavioral state, your psychophysiological state. So things like heart rate variability, You can actually use this to measure. You can actually use those, those, those metrics, those biomarkers.

Yeah.

To measure the likelihood of psychological safety that's facilitated by open communication. So you can have like a group metric, if you will.

Yeah. So that's awesome. And I mean, it's also making me think about other group flow triggers. And so What do— and I'm trying to think about, okay, what do leaders do if they're recognizing that not everyone in the group is kind of in that optimal window of activation? We always want to be thinking about as peak performers, how can we shift our physiology to make it work for us rather than against us? So, as a leader, if you're recognizing maybe some members of your team or even yourself are outside of that window, you know, looking to intentionally infuse group flow triggers like blending of egos, anchor back to the mission at hand, not what everyone individually is trying to get out of it, or really trying to encourage equal participation, get everyone involved, make sure they're feeling part of it and valued, right? To try and basically co-regulate everyone to the same place because it really does matter.

Yeah. When you say co-regulate everybody to the same place so that we're all in the same sort of nervous system physiological state so that synchrony can happen. That optimal kind of synchrony can happen. And you were saying something. So the ego blending and the familiarity. So that's like what I really, as a scientist, find so fascinating explanation description-wise is that we now know that ego blending is a real thing at the level of the brain where we're just talking about Shahada's study, right? We are— there's an interbrain state. We are not only blending our egos, we're blending our egos at the level of the brain. Same thing with familiarity, right? That's the— what the synchrony facilitates, familiarity, to being familiar with other people's mental states. Synchrony allows us to do that. This mirror neuron systems allows that to happen. So this is just amazing.

Yeah. And this is, this is exactly why I wanted to have this conversation with you, that, you know, we talk— we were talking tactically about, you know, some of those preconditions to group flow, group flow triggers. But I think what you're really providing here is that there's, there's some very solid science.

Yeah.

That it— and we're right on the cutting edge of it too. So we're— I expect us to continue to get more validation behind why these triggers are so important to be thoughtful of as leaders in order to support the best performance from our team as a whole, right?

Yeah, correct. Yeah, this— it's a, it's a very emerging field right now. Um, you know, it's hard to, um, talking about the neurobiology of team flow, um, even in individual flow, and Stephen and I have talked about this before, right? It's a very hard thing to test. You know, it's doable, it's possible, and we're getting better at it.

You can't put a whole team in a, in a magnet, right?

Like, that's —barely put, you know, rappers, we could do that, rappers or artists or, you know, in scanners and ask them to do their thing to try and get them in flow. You really can't do that with a team. And so it's very tricky to measure, although that's why there's only 1 or 2 studies, you know, that have done this. But already with those 2 preliminary studies, the research is— the science is already very clear in pointing a direction It's a real thing. Team flow is a real thing, and we can use that science and leverage that science to nudge teams to better flow, just like we do with individual flow. And that's really the point.

Well, so speaking of individual flow, I'm curious, what is the relationship between individual flow and group flow? Does, does, does— is being better at group flow setting us up to be better at individual flow? Like, is there any relationship there? Yes.

Because there's an overlap between individual flow and group flow, we still have some of the same triggers, challenge, or, you know, characteristics, whether you want to talk about this as characteristics or prerequisites, but like challenge, skills balance, immediate feedback, having clear goals. It's extrapolated in a social context. So there's a relationship since there's an overlap between some of the prerequisites and characteristics of individual and team flow. One facilitates the other. That's what that means. You know, if you're good at understanding your own flow triggers and being able to maximize and optimize flow in your life at a daily basis, it's gonna be, it's gonna be much easier for you to do that in a group context. You just have to add those other triggers in the right kind of context to be able to get into group flow. Likewise, bidirectionally, if you get into, if you know, there's a group flow can also facilitate individual flow because Again, it's, there is, there is this idea of if you're in group flow, you're in flow, you're, you're yourself, right? Sure. In a social context, which elevates the entire group or team in this interbrain, you know, we were talking about earlier, whole is greater than the sum of the parts state. So yeah, yeah.

I think that, and you know, as you were talking, things that, that kind of came up for me that, you know, I would think that if you were in this incredible meeting where your entire team got into group flow, it was super productive, really collaborative. You had that strong sense of collective ambition and shared clear goals. There was this blending of egos. There was open communication. It would make a ton of sense that when you go back to your desk after that meeting, you are primed to get into flow yourself because what are, you know, what Michael Gervais' book about is that the fear of other people's opinions and maybe other people's feedback is such a flow blocker. And you're putting that— you're, you know, really quieting that just by having all of those triggers present in a meeting, right? So I might feel way more freedom to get completely immersed in the task because I'm far less concerned about what my team or my manager might think because of that team flow experience.

Likewise with creativity, I would say, and team flow, you get a lot of creative moments. It's a really good meeting. There was a brainstorming meeting. We had really great creative moments because we were in team flow. You go back to your desk or you go back to a creative activity that you do. And because those parts of your brain are already lit up that are facilitating creativity, it's a great, you know, it's a kind of thing that like flow lasts for days, right? Like if you get into macro flow, it could have effects for a longer time. Same thing with probably we're going to find with team flow as well. So it's, you get in a macro team flow state, and that probably facilitates your ability to just linger in flow individually after you've left your team as well.

Yeah, I think that I'm hearing so many opportunities to amplify individual performance using team flow. We're priming areas for, um, creativity. We're releasing people from that, that FOPO, that fear of other people's opinions. Yep. Right. Any, any other pieces? Do you, do you think there's anything else to amplifying individual performance from a team flow perspective.

So if we look at the individual flow triggers, if we look at the group flow triggers, right? Um, and we look at this through the lens of, let's say, collective communication, feedback, having goals, you're, you're, you could, you could get a sense of how if you have team goals, this big audacious goals in a team flow, and that's a prerequisite. Um, in fact, JJ Vanden Heuvel talks about pre— one of the prerequisites of team flow is aligned personal goals. Yes. So aligned personal goals, all of your, all of you, there's a strong alignment, right? And we can use the word synchrony, but a strong alignment of each individual's personal goals. But think about that. Those are still personal goals. By definition, they're personal goals. So when you are, when you can, when that when that prerequisite, when that group flow or team flow trigger is present, aligned personal goals, that facilitates strengthening your own personal goals and your ability to then go after those goals, right? It focuses your attention on those kinds of things. Absolutely.

No, I think, I think that's a fantastic point. So just being clear on that alignment of personal goals with team goals and feeling empowered to pursue the team goals in hand is going to widen up that belief spotlight. That I absolutely can pursue my, my personal goals. And it's probably driving motivation to pursue them as well. Right. Something else that, that I thought of, I think in terms of how team flow is potentially amplifying individual performance too, would be, you know, a big part of team flow is it requires not just open communication, but deep listening, right? You have to be paying attention to the people around you, which in turn is going to stop you from getting tunnel vision on your own perspective. Right? So I think that it's potentially opening up the way that you frame ideas, um, and the way that you generate new ideas because you're, it's, it's a more additive experience rather than you're kind of on your, in your own lane thinking about it in just the way you were thinking about it. It immediately opens that up and kind of takes the ceiling off of how you're framing problems, how you're generating ideas, how you're innovating, right? Innovation is, is inherently an additive process. So I think that, and it's, it's gonna expedite that as well. So, so many, so many good, and I, I wanted, I, I don't wanna belabor the point here, but I wanted to emphasize how helpful team flow can be to an individual's performance as well. Because I think that, um, there are some leaders out there that think like it's just really hard to cultivate team flow. And it is like, it, it's hard to get everybody on the same page, but the benefits are, are just exponential.

Yeah. Yeah. It's not just the group outcomes itself, it's the individual outcomes after you're done. Yeah. And you made me think of, so you mentioned deep listening. So active listening obviously is a huge component right there. Deep listening, active listening. But you made me think of something else too, this idea of metacognition. So metacognition is thinking about how you think, right? It's cognition about your own cognitive state, right? It's reflecting on on your own state, which I think is very, very helpful for— and people with higher levels of metacognition, it's well known they have higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction and they're better learners. Yeah. And more successful careers, more successful in their jobs. There's all kinds of research on people with higher levels of metacognition. So again, metacognition is thinking about how you think, reflecting on your own processes, how you make decisions, how you solve problems. It's, it's an art and a science and, uh, just cognizing about your own reflective cognitive state. And when you're in team flow, um, so metacognition actually goes away when you're in flow, right? You, you're not, you're, you're, you're, you know, you're, you're not paying it. There's not, not self-referential activity. You're thinking about the task, you're engaged in a task, right? That's selflessness. Yep. By yourself or with a group. Right. And so, um, but I think what you're making me think about is there's, there seems to be a relationship between when you're in, when you're in team flow and then you go back to your own thing. You can reflect and then that can actually help you, that higher levels of metacognition about what's happening can actually help you then reenter your own individual flow state. Yeah. Cuz it's not about you.

It's not about you. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. Very well said. Yep.

I hadn't thought about that, that it really does facilitate that selflessness component too when you're, when you're by yourself. Oh, amazing. Amazing. Yeah, it was great. You know, we've, we are both acknowledging that that, you know, this is not the easiest thing to cultivate, particularly, you know, if it's a newer team that you're forming. Um, what, just in your opinion, what are some of the most important preconditions for group flow based on the research, right? We've talked, we've kind of thrown a few different around, but let's, let's highlight a couple here for folks that really want to get tactical about what they might want to start implementing or being intentional about.

Um, so in a group flow, a team flow setting? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think all of the research sort of is converging on, on, on these triggers that we've talked about, these sort of prerequisites or what are called antecedents to group flow synchronization. So getting on the same page, getting, you know, getting aligned, then there are several like behavioral activities to do that. Eye contact, breathwork, being vulnerable, sharing each other's emotional states. So being vulnerable is a huge, huge, huge prerequisite to team flow because then you're facilitating being on the same, in the same emotional state and being able to take another person's perspective. Um, and there are different, um, techniques and strategies to be able to communicate in ways to be more vulnerable, to be more authentic. Um, we, we talk a lot about the science here at Flow Research Collective on vulnerability and authenticity. So I think those are, are, are, are mechanisms as well that help these prerequisites. Uh, again, we talked about—

oh yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna just jump in there because I think that what you just said deserves kind of some, some underlining there. What I hear there is Um, and this is something that I work on, on lots of work on frequently with leaders is how you start a meeting instead of diving right in and you're, you're trying to tackle a problem or communicate information, having a much more intentional opener to the meeting to make sure everyone is regulated to, to that same space, right? So that we're, we're really facilitating that interpersonal synchrony. Um, so whether it is, you know, starting the meeting, letting people get settled, Whether it's, you know, noticing that maybe people are stressed, they've been rushing from task to task, meeting to meeting all day, and they're coming in kind of in this activated place, doing something like a little bit of breathwork or movement. You know, I wanna, yeah, move movement absolutely is huge. Uh, I also like to, if I notice my team is, um, coming in in a stressed place, I'll, I'll ask a question that makes everyone laugh a little bit, right? And we all share, get that equal participation right away. Make sure we're getting that feeling of belongingness as a group. Maybe a feeling of, I'm glad I'm here with these people before getting to business. And, you know, I think that that feels counterintuitive when we're, we've got jammed schedules, but the, the message that I think I would like everyone to hear is you will run a much less efficient, less productive meeting if you don't take a couple minutes to kind of drive that, that interpersonal synchrony and get everyone regulated to the same place. Like it's absolutely worth the time input. To set the meeting up to be successful and set it up for team flow. 100%.

Call it a check-in. So yeah, having a check-in. And there's actually research to back this up. A lot of, even from industry and from science, they've actually done some research on having check-ins and check-outs as well.

Say a little bit more, if you would, about vulnerability. Any recommendations just as a coach? How do you coach leaders around vulnerability? How do they show up like that in meetings?

Because that can be hard. It can be very hard, but there are, I think, several behaviors and linguistic triggers that can help with opening up, right? And being more vulnerable. It's not, I wouldn't say it's something that you could sort of switch. I mean, there are just like there are more autotelic people and so let's say less autotelic people as we talk about vulnerability seems to be the same thing, right? There's more trusting and vulnerable people and less vulnerable people. But there are ways to train that up, just like there's ways to train empathy, to train grit, to train authenticity, to train vulnerability, I think. So it is hard, I will definitely admit, especially in meetings. But there are specific, I would say, behaviors like making more eye contact, several linguistic things that can actually, like, words that you could use that can open yourself up as well, um, and emotional states as well. So yeah, I think there are, are ways to just like sprinkle little bits of vulnerability throughout, for example, a meeting. Um, if you're in a meeting or, or not even if you're just in a conversation with your partner or, or, or something like that, right? That, that are all that facilitates those kinds of team flow in those, those situations as well.

Yeah, I mean, I hear there that, you know, as someone who's leading a meeting, especially if you are a leader, vitally important if you're coming in, you know, activated to regulate yourself, right? Because you're not going to have the emotional intelligence, the empathy to foster that sense of belonging connection with everyone else. I also heard, I think, you know, you said the word authenticity. This is a huge one. I think that if you show up to a meeting and I think this happens a lot with folks who are maybe not super comfortable public speaking. They show up with like this persona to speak from, and that's immediately blocking team flow because people read that. It doesn't feel authentic. I think it can block that social connectivity. So showing up as yourself is really, really important. Having like a public speaking voice that you put on is like an immediate flag of like, Nope, go back to the drawing board on that. That's not going to be the most effective way to message. And I think another potential technique that folks can use is to ask, when you ask for feedback, to very clearly actively listen to the answer, care about the answer, right? That I think that that cultivation of bidirectional feedback from a leader in particular, I think really fosters some of that vulnerability and psychological safety. To, but it can't be performative.

You have to actually care. 100%. Great. Those are, those are great like modifications and interventions and recommendations, uh, all based on the science, right? So there's this translate, you're translating the science very well.

I try, I try. Um, great job. Also, okay, something, thanks. Um, thanks. Something that we haven't talked about, um, quite yet, you know, cuz we've been talking about the power of social connection, the power of having a close network of people. But let's talk a little bit about what the research says about who we should be looking for in terms of teammates or training partners to help us get into flow. Are there kind of certain things that we should be on the lookout for in terms of, um, characteristics or, you know, things to look for in other people that are going to help facilitate any of this?

Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about personality traits, um, um, possibly. Again, back to JJ Van Den Hout, he talks about high skill integration. So just to get, again, scientific on, on you. Please. That's why we're here. In the Team Flow and Shahada study, in the Team Flow, they actually matched people's skills when they were playing this particular game, but they were doing this particular video game. They actually did. So they took that into consideration, this high skill integration. You know, you don't, and, um, you want, um, in term— this gets into an interesting point too. Like you want the right amount of cognitive friction and diversity of thoughts in teams, um, to really facilitate optimal collaboration, you know, and team flow. And this gets back to the whole idea of synchrony. Too much synchrony, uh, can, can not be good, uh, can be not good. Um, so no echo chambers, so no echo chambers, no groups think. No, um, everybody's just following everybody else. Um, you're not gonna get creativity and you're not gonna get those moments. So you want the optimal amount of synchrony and that's, that's largely context dependent. And so this is part of, part of your point here about context. You know, you want to, um, you know, wanna have, you wanna blend egos, but you wanna blend personality traits in the right way. You want to blend skills in the right way. Um, and things like that. So that, that also is hard that, that gets to how do you— and back to our conversation, earlier conversation, how do you get into flow, right? Versus how I get into flow. Yeah, maybe we can optimize those to get into flow together. And that might not— that might mean, you know, some differences in the way that we do that individually. So you want the right amount of diversity of thought and cognitive, you know, friction, just the right amount to be able, especially like in creativity and brainstorming, situations, or decision-making situations, for example?

I think, look, this is, this is huge because, you know, I want to, I think it emphasizes that we don't want everyone to be exactly the same in the room. Diversity is critical for innovation. We, I like the term cognitive friction. And I think that the, the piece to help leaders as they're forming teams you know, you want to look for diversity of experience, skill sets. Yep. Ways of communicating. Ways of communicating. Yeah. And I think, but I think that where we don't want diversity, right, is we want everyone to be aligned on the team goal, the team mission, why we're here in the first place, right? That, that alignment on, and that will, that enables diversity in so many of the other places.

Correct. That those, those two things could go together hand in hand. And you're actually making me think of, something that's very personal. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. Okay. And Star Trek, the bridge crew, the crew of the Enterprise, whether it's Captain Kirk—

this should come as a surprise to no one, by the way.

Exactly. So whether it's Captain Kirk or Captain Picard or Captain Janeway or Captain Sisko, all of the captains in different Star Trek episodes, that is the epitome of team flow. And, um, getting into situations and then getting out of them. And it all comes actually from a great quote from the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, who, and I'm paraphrasing this, but he said, um, the day that we not only tolerate other people's differences, but take delight in them, that's when society moves forward. So it's, it's not only our ability to tolerate each other's differences, but we have to take delight in them. Open ourselves up to other people's views, celebrate them, and celebrate them. And we now know, you know, I'm kind of getting goosebumps talking about it. We now know that there's neuroscience to back that up. That's just what excites me so much. So, you know, that, that, that really interesting too. You make me think about several psychological experiments have explored this as well. This idea of too much groupthink and too much synchronicity. We, we see like, you know, National Socialism. We see all of these examples in, in history where you've had this. But a really interesting psychological experiment was performed actually back in the '70s by a guy named Solomon Asch. And he did the Asch line experiments and he just had people sit in a room and he had these 3 different lines and they were all different lengths. And then there was a 4th line that matched one of those 3 lines. And there was one subject in the room and everybody else in the room in the line in the group of people was in on it. And they would go through and they would ask, which line matches this line? And everybody would say the wrong answer. And in the first, you know, iteration of the experiment, the subject would be like, no, it's, it's that line. And then as the subject, as the experiment goes on, the person just says the wrong line. They say the wrong match because everybody else in the room is saying that too.

Because everyone else has said it.

Yeah. And it's just amazing that, that pure pressure, um, um, of that kind of thing. So you, that you can get into groupthink very easily and you can get into too much synchrony very easily. So we need diversity of communication, diversity of thought. But again, to your point, this isn't, that is not, they can go together. Alignment of shared goals can go together, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think, I mean, to your point, not having enough cognitive friction, right, is going to impair accurate strategic decision-making. It's going to suppress innovation and creativity. So vitally important. And I think that again, the way to cultivate a diverse team that's still, that's still prepared for team flow is to consistently anchor back to what is the mission of the team? Are we all aligned to the larger vision? And then, You know, the next piece would be, you know, what you were talking about in terms of collective ambition. Are my, are my personal goals aligned with the team mission? And am I intrinsically motivated to perform the role that I've been given on this team? I think all of those are really, really important too. And that this is why when I, when I talk to leaders about recruitment, you know, I always talk about you want to recruit first. First for people who are aligned with your, your team vision and are intrinsically motivated to do the work, and then skill. Because if you don't have people that are intrinsically motivated, um, to be there, right, then they're not going to be getting into flow individually, and they potentially could be a group flow blocker. Yeah, as well, right?

100%. Um, Adam Grant actually, um, made some statements about, um, alignment versus agreement and, and they're not the same thing, right? You can, you can still disagree but still be aligned on your goals. And, and that if you get that Goldilocks zone of disagreement just right, the Goldilocks zone of synchrony of disagreement just right, then, then that facilitates optimal collaboration and team flow. So yeah, I 100% agree with you. Yeah.

And I'll, I'll, I'll totally plug that book too. That Think Again is is so, so good. I think for folks that want a deeper dive on any of this, I think Think Again is a, is a great one. Group Genius, um, by Keith Sawyer. Yeah. And then any of JJ's work, I'm sure we can put this all in the show notes is all really, really great kind of extra reading on these.

Yeah. And there's a couple of, uh, interesting, um, meta-analyses and studies that have been done on group flow. So we can link to some of that, those studies as well.

Um, If people haven't nerded out enough with us already in this episode, if they want more, there's more. Well, Michael, before, before we sign off here, this is more a slightly personal question, I guess. I want to know just, you know, if you could kind of wave a magic wand, if you could fund any kind of study at this point, where, where would you go from here on the group flow research front, what do you think would be kind of an exciting future direction or, uh, for research in this space? Any specific gaps that you'd want covered or tackled right now?

Yeah, great question. Uh, like all of them. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of gaps. That's the thing. I mean, flow. So let's back up here for a second. Flow research itself is still the neuroscience of flow, I should say. Right. Um, flow neuroscience is an emerging field. In fact, that's what we're going to speak about at Society for Neuroscience, the emerging field of flow neuroscience. Flow psychology from Csikszentmihalyi, you know, is decades old now, multiple decades old now. Flow neuroscience, much, much less so. Team Flow is also kind of decades old with Keith Sawyer being Csikszentmihalyi's student, but Team Flow neuroscience is 2 years old. Yeah. And so it's like there's so many open questions, open scientific questions from a research point of view. I mean, one study did, so another study just, just did come out, I think in 2023. And they were looking at synchronized cardiovascular synchronization predicted group flow experience. Oh, cool. Cardiovascular synchronization predicted group flow experience. So that was another indicator, a biological indicator that, that yeah, hey, maybe there's something really here to it. But confirmed that, that thinking. So I would say if I could wave a magic wand and have like an ultimate amount of funding to be able to perform this research, it's just getting people in team flow and just putting all of these sensors and measuring to really, really find, you know, to really find the biomarkers of team flow. And then so, and then using things like machine learning an artificial intelligence to be able to predict the conditions. Hey, this person over here and this person over here are going to work together really, really well and get into team flow. And here's exactly what you should do to synchronize your biology to, you know, that kind of thing. So you can definitely deploy some technology on that front. But, and then what you want to do it, you want to do it in like what's called ecological context, right? Real world scenarios, you know, not people with like a huge brain thing on their head or EEG and then just playing a video game like this, but, you know, in a virtual reality situation or, you know, in a real band on stage, you know, those kinds of situations to find out like what's really going on that people are connecting so well. You made me think of another research study, if you don't mind me just geeking out even more.

Not at all. No, I just, I mean, I just got a vision of the future of like, you know, kind of the pairings for optimal collaboration, just if we could kind of know that. And then also, you know, what if it was, what if it was part of kind of daily operating procedure that, you know, if you and I, before we, we jumped into a brainstorming session, we just took a few minutes to regulate our nervous system so that we were synchronized before diving in. Exactly. That would be— that'd be so cool.

And so I'll plug Steven here, you know, at the end of Future is Faster Than You Think, in a book that he wrote with Peter Diamandis, the very end of the book, I think like the last 4 pages, they actually— so Steven starts writing about the group flow and it being the most pleasurable state on Earth, which I 100% agree. And now there's actually neuroscience to back that up. But what he talks about in that, and in the last 4 pages of that book is the hive mind. And that's what really gets me excited. Like we are moving toward a world to solve the greatest problems on this earth, right? And we need collaboration to do that. We can't do it alone. We can't do it alone. Right. And, and so if we can find the exact biology and biological So when we talk about getting your biology to work for you rather than against you, making your nervous system your ally instead of your enemy, what does that mean on a group level? Let's get our nervous systems to be allies and not enemies, and let's use technology to measure that and really create a true hive mind so that we can solve the world's greatest problems. Stephen writes about that at the end of Future is Faster Than You Think, and it just like gives me goosebumps to talk about that. That's what I, that's what I wake up with a magic wand.

That's what we're moving towards. So if anyone's listening, Michael is accepting your funding dollars to execute on any of these, any of these studies. You look, and I'm right there with you. I mean, I say it all the time when I'm working with, with larger organizations that I think that the, the organizations that are really on the cutting edge, they're going to be doing the most powerful things. Are the ones that are paying attention to exactly what we're talking about. That learning how to shift your biology to make it work for you rather than against you is an absolute fundamental piece of peak performance. And then even more than that, learning how to do that in a group context. Yeah, exactly. Creating an environment and facilitating that in a group context is, it is the number one advantage right now, I think, from a peak performance standpoint.

Yeah, you get that right and you're, you've made it. You get that right, which is not a trivial thing to do. You are in this state ready to solve major problems. Yeah, agreed. And perform really well.

Well, Michael, thank you so much for sitting down and diving deep into the science of kind of why all of this is so important. I think that we could probably do this again in 1 year from now and have a whole host of new studies to talk about because we are so on the cutting edge now. So, Thanks for nerding out with me. This has been an absolute blast. Absolute blast. All right. Take care, y'all. Thanks. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you.