Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome by the dutch women in tech.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Podcast Sammet Andre, set down from Meerzao.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: In Ithayan opense website de vendor of Openserv.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Yes. There we are again. Welcome to a naval episode of the dutch women in tech podcast. And this time, I have Esther besides me, because Karina is relaxing on the beach.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm now doing the sidekick.
She's on the beach. She's having the most fun, probably, yeah.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: And today we have a special guest. It's Bogdan Manta. He will introduce himself shortly.
I heard Bogdan share some great neurological data and insights a while ago, and when we were prepping this podcast series, I knew I want to have Bogdan on the recording. So welcome, Bogdan. Sorry, can you introduce yourself?
[00:01:01] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me. Always having fun doing these podcasts. My name is Bogdan Manta. I'm a neuroscience for business expert. We're a tiny little boutique agency. We translate very complex neuroscience into business. And later on, we're going to see what that means in practice. I think two important things there. Number one, which is very weird about us, number one, we never disclose who our customers are. Therefore, you will never find out who we work with, because confidentiality for us is paramount. Very simply put, if you invite me to your organization, I'm not going to put that on LinkedIn. And we're very value based, which means we only work with the kindest organizations, with the kindest people who pay it forward, who are all about people and so on, and organizations who are not about that. We very nicely say, thank you so much, but it's not for us. And it's a lot of fun.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: A lot of fun. Because why is fun?
[00:01:54] Speaker C: Well, I can already go into the neuroscience behind why it's so important to have fun at work. It is fundamentally important. I mean, there's so many elements in terms of learning, memorization, what happens with human beings overall when they're having fun, and also because we only live once. So you would rather have fun?
[00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Everything out of it?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So, for me, if I'm scripting, it's like seeing the translation of different codes or different steps and then seeing them being performed and seeing how that changes people and getting them excited about things. Is that similar to what you're describing as that's the fun part for me, explaining the neuroscience to your customers and seeing behavioral changes or adaptation and seeing how they get to have fun with it as well?
[00:02:47] Speaker C: You nailed it there, because, you know, I'm guided by important principles in life. One of them is something that my grandmother, who was one of the most important, was one of the most important people in my life. She lived to be 97, and she told me that legacy is not what you leave with people. Legacy is what you leave in people.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: That's an interesting one.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: And I'm getting goosebumps right now as I'm.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: I can see that.
[00:03:10] Speaker C: So my entire life is about sharing knowledge with others, but at the same time, empowering them and motivating them as well. Because we always say if you want someone to build a boat, you don't tell them how. You just tell them beautiful stories about the ocean so you can have all the knowledge. If you do not motivate people to get curious, to discover more themselves afterwards, then they will just, you know, get bread for one day.
But then it's so important to motivate them and to inspire them. And to do that, fun has to be part of it. You also have to make it unshackling. So there's a very interesting combination there because it also has to be a little bit stressful, a little bit unshackling. We'll talk about it, but it has to be fun. Very important.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's an interesting one, because during the preparation of this recording, I read that you see people as feeling machines that think. Can you explain briefly what you mean by this?
[00:04:07] Speaker C: So it's. And again, because we're talking with the dutch audience, this will shock you.
Basically, it's very famous neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who said that people are not thinking machines that feel. Rather, they are feeling machines that think.
Precisely why. Because, and we know it for a fact, most or almost entirely, our decision making process is based on emotions. Therefore, if you would not be capable of having emotions, you would be absolutely incapable of actually having any rational decision. So, boohoo hoo, people who say, I'm a rational person, even when you say that you are basing that on a decision making construct, on an emotion making construct. Of course, when we go to talk about emotions, it gets very complex because we think you are being emotional. That's not what emotions are about. That's just how you externalize an emotion or what we call effect.
But very simply, Damasio did an interesting experiment. He worked with volunteers who, for different reasons, had accidents, brain injuries, and their limbic system, which is a subcortical region very much linked to emotional processing, was basically destroyed. Or there were problems. Right, physical problems, which means that their limbic system was not functioning properly. Surprise, surprise. Those people were incapable of making any decision for the rest of their lives.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Like, really impactful.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Really impactful. So everything is based on this decision, on this emotion that we call it. But, of course, then we go into what is an emotion? What is effect, what is a mood, what is a feeling? And we can talk about that. Again, it's complex, but that is precisely what we say.
A person who says, I am rational in my decision making, even making that statement.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I used to say that you.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Are actually somehow using a specific construct of an emotional processing at that point in order to even come up with that question.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: You get me? Yeah. It's really, really interesting.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: So we are feeling machines that think, not thinking machines that feel.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And what role do emotions play in our decision making?
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Well, a fundamental one, if we have to look at how we call the, you know, if we are to look at decision, for example, and again, I will try to simplify everything, because that's why we call it neuroscience for business. We're not here to talk about very specific complex. Neuroscience is a very complex field. It is how we translate it and how we make it relevant to the.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Business so that everyone knows what we're talking about.
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Exactly. Otherwise, if it's not practical, if you don't have your aha. Moment and it's not interesting enough for you to be curious to learn more, then we're just showing us.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: And that's why we have Esther here. So if she has some question marks above her head. Exactly.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: All the time.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: All the time. Dive in and ask, what worked on this meant?
[00:07:02] Speaker C: So, basically, let's put it very simple, because the way we're looking, we're looking at sensation, perception.
Let's say emotion, thought, and then action, right? That's kind of how we look at what happens in the nervous system. And I'll put it very simple with the example to explain difference between sensation, perception, and all that sensation. There's a mosquito in the air, and at that point, that mosquito will come on your arm automatically. What happens? You get the sensation that something is on your arm. Perception means that at that moment, you choose to consciously focus your attention on one of your senses, and you will become aware of the fact that there's a mosquito on you. That is the perception. At that point, there's an emotion coming, and that emotion is like, that's already emotion. That emotion will lead to a thought, and that thought will be like, it doesn't bother me, or smash it. And then the action comes into place where a lot of different neurotransmitters are at play, and bomb, we hit the mosquito, we don't do anything. Right. Interestingly enough, doing nothing, choosing to do nothing in that moment is also an action.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: You might. You do it consciously.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Right. So then the action, basically, that's your final decision. Of course, if it's a longer or repetitive action, that will turn into what we call patterns or behavior or behavior change. But you see, it's all based on that emotion, and everything is focusing on that emotional or effect, as we call it.
[00:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah. So from my analytic scripting perspective, the action is based on a trigger.
[00:08:45] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: So that's what you're basically explaining.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: And that trigger, the way you process that trigger, will have an emotional impact in it, in many different. Is it positive, is it negative? What we call valence, the strength to look in salience. There's a lot of different ways how we look at it. And then, of course, emotions get very complicated, because in psychology, what we call emotion is different than what we will call emotion in neuropsychology. And then what we will call in behavioral psychology, and then what we will call in neuroscience, and then what we will call in. Right. So there's so many.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Stay with us. If it's. Who are we?
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have emotion, mood, feelings. It's a lot of different content contexts there on top of each other.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting because this series is about diversity and inclusion in it and a holistic view. And one of the components is psychological. And for the listeners, I've tried to say this word for 20 times during my drive to the studio, and I hope I'm not seeing it right now. Psychological. Yeah, it sounds great.
Psychological safety in the workplace.
Why is it so important and what is it?
[00:09:54] Speaker C: I would say it's more than important. It is paramount. And I think, let's take it one by one. What is psychological safety? Because, unfortunately, you go on LinkedIn and you find a lot of what we call quasi scientists or pseudo scientists that pretend to understand things. Unfortunately, a lot of us do not. That's a different story. So, to put it very simple, we all know what it means to be safe, to feel safe. Safety is very important. Right. If we're looking at the Maslow's needs, then safety is very important. Now, if we are to look at what we call psychological safety in the organization simply means feeling safe, to speak up inside your organization without the fear of negative consequences later on.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: You say it so quickly, but it is really important.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: It is so important feeling safe to speak up, to comment, to challenge. Of course, there's different levels of it, and not only feeling safe to do that on the spot, but feeling safe to do so without having the fear of repercussions. That is so fundamentally important because a lot of people will feel safe to speak up in that moment, but then afterwards, if there's repercussions, they will never speak up again. So that's what.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: And I think if you ask this question to a lot of people that say, are you safe in the workplace? I think they will say yes at first, but once you're. I've experienced this myself. Once you make this step afterwards, it does feel different.
[00:11:26] Speaker C: That in, and there's one difference between someone being safe, maybe physically safe, someone feeling safe to speak up, very different, someone feeling safe to challenge the status quo, completely different. And someone feeling safe to, for example, publicly confront leadership. So there are different levels of psychology, of safety, and that's a hard one. And if we are to look at different levels, that would be the highest level, which is feeling safe to challenge the status quo of an organization, basically challenging leadership publicly and people saying, wow, that's actually really interesting. Let's have a conversation about it.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's also about doing it the right way, because there are many ways of publicly confronting leadership, and there's. I think they're fair. You say, Esther, did you ever confront leadership or management publicly?
Do you dare to?
[00:12:24] Speaker A: Well, I have to admit that for me, feeling safe is much more about feeling safe within the agile team that I'm part of. So that's much more with peers and not per se challenging leadership. But right now, I'm in a situation where we're trying to make a change and to get other teams to make decisions that will affect our way of working. And then it definitely becomes about challenging leadership as well.
But also speaking up about your beliefs and what you think is the best way forward, also with the customer situation in mind.
[00:13:11] Speaker C: Absolutely. And what you mentioned, that is also very interesting because psychological safety, psychological safety as a term is not a unique thing, is very interconnected. And the example that you gave is LinkedIn to inclusion. Right. Because what happens is you can feel safe to challenge the status quo, right, to challenge your leadership. But if suddenly you realize that everyone in your team rolls their eyes and they think like, ugh, or anything like that, then what happens is that then, although you feel psychologically safe to speak up, you feel excluded from your team, and that is not a good thing. So they come together. Right. You also need to feel included as part of that organization, because a lot of people, when they feel excluded, they start speaking up to challenge the status quo. But very often, that's not necessarily because they want to add value, is because they have a feeling, a feeling excluded, and that's a completely different story. So you see, context is so fundamentally important.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's an interesting angle, because we're now talking about feelings and emotions, but all of those things are happening within your. Your head, in your brain. Can you tell us what happens in. In your. Your brain when you feel excluded?
[00:14:21] Speaker C: So, this is, there's many fascinating things when it comes to our nervous system and what happens inside our brain, one of them being specifically this. So there's a lot of interesting research which showcases that people who feel excluded. Right. And they feel psychologically, I say very. They feel excluded.
What they feel is a pain similar to physical pain. So if we're looking at the neural pathways right inside the brain, the same specific. And I'm not going to start mentioning them, because then we go into very complex neuroscience, and I'm not here to show off, but what we see is that the same neural pathways are engaged as when we have actually physical pain. So, feeling excluded, and that's why I'm slowing down. I'm emphasizing on it. Feeling excluded from a group, from your team, from your organization, for an individual, feels exactly the same, as painful as physical pain.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: That's interesting, because we don't notice it that way.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
It is insane. You know, fun fact. The same way as you can actually have a broken heart, sometimes we see that people who break up from really, really intense relationships, actually, we see micro ruptures in the heart. So you can actually have a broken heart.
And by the way, that's not done by the heart. That is, again, something that happens as a result of our brain. Everything that happens in our body is because of how our nervous system is directing it.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you're telling that this happens in our brain. We can.
Yeah. How do I. Quiet.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: How conscious can we become of those processes that are happening?
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, because I think you're referring to that. If you do a brain scan, you see the same areas in the brain that are lighting up on the scan.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Yes. MRI. Yeah. Yeah. It's such an interesting thing. So we need to look at our history, right? And if we look at our. Throughout our entire history, we are social beings, right? If you are to look at, very often, people say, what do I need to do in order to keep myself healthy? Well, one of the five fundamental things is healthy social relationships independent? Right. If you're an introvert, you need less. If you're an extrovert, you need more. We can talk about that and why that happens in the brain, dopamine and so on. That's also an interesting thing. That's for a later stage. But basically, having healthy social engagements is fundamental for a human being to continue living. And when that doesn't happen, when the social environment is not there, or if it's a hostile social environment, then there is an entire cascade of physiological, psychological, neurological, your entire brain, body, everything just shuts down.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: But if that's true, and of course it's true, you're saying it, so I'm believing you. What is the effect, a prolonged effect of being.
If there's a place you're not feeling safe because at first you might be hindered, but at some moment it might have some real physical effect in your brain.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: It does. It does. So let's take it one by one. That's a very good question, and I'm so happy that you're asking, Emily. So let's take it one by one. I think we all, or I hope most of us are familiar with what we call the fight or flight response. It's what we call the sympathetic nervous response.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: I fly and freeze. It is.
[00:18:04] Speaker C: Normally.
So if we are to look at it normally, it's freeze flight, fight. And you can even have freeze flight, fight. Freeze flight fight, fawn. It just depends. It's very personal. Children freeze, right. If you look at children, what? Something happens. The first thing they do is they freeze. And then either they fight or they flight with. So they run away or they try to fight it. There's also fawn. Fawning means that you try to mimic a situation in order to get out of it. You pretend that you're okay with it as a self defense mechanism. So you escape it as much as possible. Right. And that's fun.
There's different ways how this system works. We call it fight or flight because it's very simple. If we are to look at our automated nervous system, right? Things that happen, subconscious on one side, is what we call the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight or flight. And then we have the parasympathetic nervous system or the rest, and digest. And that's why they rhyme. We always say to make it rhyme. Make it rhyme. So if it rhymes, it's easy to remember. So that's why we kind of simplify it to fight or flight. Now and again. I'm going to drop a little bit of neuroscience here, because otherwise we don't understand, because there is a massive difference between stress or what we call eurostress, which is like short term stress, which, by the way, is very beneficial for learning, it's very beneficial for personal development and what we call long term stress. Right. And that. Or chronic stress, and that is incredibly detrimental to our health, neurological, physicals and so on. So basically, let's take it very simple. There is a specific part in our brain in that limbic structure that I was mentioning earlier, which is called the amygdala. The amygdala is the emotional processing center, but it's also the triggering center for any sort of danger.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: And it's one of the oldest regions in our brain.
[00:19:52] Speaker C: Yes. Yes. So it's a very, very, very ancient part developed together with other subcortical structures. So the moment danger is being perceived, the amygdala is being triggered. And when the amygdala is triggered automatically, what happens? Another region very close to it will start the fight or flight response. That means adrenaline. Right. What happens automatically? The body goes into a state of protection. I'm either going to fight the danger, the lion, or I'm going to run away from the lionesse.
The pupils dilate.
Right. So we're increasing. Our pulse is changing physiological changes. We start sweating. Right. We stop blocking our digestion. We get into that state. Right. For a short period of time. That is good because it helps.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: It helps you.
[00:20:43] Speaker C: It helps you. Right. It helps you also with learning, with focusing and so on. So if these things happen once in a while, then there's a specific stress associated with it, which is good, because we also see that learning is actually positively impacted as a result of that. Dopamine is being increasingly.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: You have to adapt and you can.
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Learn from this, but that is when we're focusing on very short periods of such a fight or flight response. Now, if this continues normally, the parasympathetic nervous system or the pedal breaks, and then we go into what we call rest and digest. And if you go into these states, sympathetic parasympathetic, then actually that has positive impact. But if you are in a continuous state of stress, then another part starts to get triggered, which is what we call the HPA axis, and that's already much more difficult. But as a result, what will happen is that the pituitary gland from HPA. Pituitary gland, another specific region in our brain, will start telling the adrenals, which are on top of our kidneys, to produce cortisol.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: Yeah, cortisol.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Now I'm back in.
[00:21:47] Speaker C: Now we go to the stress, and now we go up to the cortisol. We very wrongly call cortisol the stress hormone.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: It is not.
[00:21:55] Speaker C: It is not. And this is one of the many LinkedIn, we call them neurobollocks, pseudoscience, pop psychology. Like, we use 10% of our brain. That is totally untrue. I'm more right brain or I'm left brain. That is complete nonsense. I have different learning styles. I'm more visual. That is absolutely nonsense as well. So there's a lot of neurobollocks or pseudoscience that we use nowadays. That is one of them. That cortisol is bad? No, cortisol.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Cortisol not that bad. Because I have someone in my family that is having issues with cortisol, is using hydrocortisol.
And it's basically when there is some stress or whether it's physical or mentally, this helps her to stay alive, basically.
[00:22:43] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: It has some. Yes, she died.
She not died. But in the end, if Xinha does not have additional cortisol in these situations, her body is not adapting to this situation and it has a massive impact which eventually could lead to death.
[00:23:06] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's, I think because the prime principle of your body is that it needs to hyper perform. So it's redirecting all energy to that specific action.
[00:23:20] Speaker C: Exactly. So if that happens, then what happens is it has to. The brain is the most expensive organ in our body. Although it only weights 2% of our entire body, 2% as quantity, it spends a more than around 20% of our daily energy. 20%. That's why we're calling it the most expensive. It is by far the most. It's also a very fat organ by, by far the fattest, but that's a different story.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: I'll keep that in mind next time. We're talking about my diet, that I definitely lose it for my brain.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: My brain needs it.
So it is true, actually, because we actually need so much energy. Right. The brain is so much energy. But what happens is it always works with adding and removing, which means if now there's a lot. By the way, like I said, cortisol. Having cortisol is not bad because, you know, you need cortisol to wake up in the morning. If cortisol is not hyping in the morning with your body temperature, then you can forget about waking up. So we wrongly call cortisol bad. Cortisol is not bad. Cortisol is bad when the fight or flight response, and the entire mechanism continues, continues, continues, never stops. Which means that cortisol continuously gets produced and continuously gets sent to the brain. The moment cortisol comes to the brain, then what will happen is that a couple of things. So, first of all, cortisol for long, prolonged periods, something that is supposed to be there to protect us and to help us, is that saying that too much of something good can be bad for you? So then what will happen is that continuous high levels of cortisol, then that's what we call the chronic stress.
And, of course, it's not only cortisol. There's a lot of other hormones and neurotransmitters involved. Then we start to have physiological problems. We're not sleeping well anymore. Because if you have high cortisol, cortisol is a little bit of an antagonist of melatonin, right? And you need melatonin to fall asleep and to stay asleep. So if cortisol is too high, melatonin is not enough produced. That means that you're nothing. Perhaps you fall asleep, but you do not stay asleep. That's a problem.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: And I don't think you enter that Rem phase.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: You don't enter ReM phase. If we're looking at the sleep cycles, REM is the one, right? We're looking at deep sleep. And REM, very important one for physical recovery. Right? And the other one is for mental recovery and for processing emotions, for processing memorization. So many things happen without long periods of, or good periods of REM sleep. Then we wake up. Even if we sleep for a long time, if we don't enter the REM state, we're not rested mentally. And that leads to a lot of other things.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Oh, I know I have sleep apnea. So I learned everything about how not entering that REM stage is affecting you in each and every way.
So, yeah, I fully understand. And I think that's also why we call feeling deprived of energy like a burnout, because it's basically what happened. Your brains basically burned out all the energy in your body because the signals or that stress level is basically activating that fight or flight response too often.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: Yes, yes. And continuous. Right. Because that's important. It is continuous. What is also very interesting there. And to go back, like I said, sometimes it takes a while to actually answer the question. So we're still there. So we're seeing. Already, we're seeing the impact on our organs, right. Very high level of cortisol. That's the primary impact. Then what also we see that happens, like you mentioned, if the brain. The brain has to allocate energy. So then if you're constantly stressed, it will take away the energy. I'll put it very simply, neuroscientific. Doesn't make sense, but I'll put it like this. It takes away the energy from structures which are not fundamentally important to survive, and that is very often the prefrontal cortex. Now, why is the prefrontal cortex so important? Well, because that's where rational processing happens. Executive functions are there, basically, if you want to be good at your job and to focus and to work well and to be creative and to actually impact positively the bottom line, your prefrontal cortex has to be very much engaged.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: So, Esther, if you're losing weight and you're mad, that's not the area you need to.
To lose. White on.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: I love the conclusion.
I love the conclusion.
Exactly. Let's forget about the prefrontal cortex. But so, you see there's such a cascade of things that happen, but there's one which is very interesting there. And we see. We look at what we call prolonged states of stress. Why, if a person constantly gets. Feels unsafe in the workplace and excluded this amygdala being triggered all the time. Being triggered, being triggered, being triggered, being triggered, we see two fundamentally important things happening physiologically in the brain. Number one is that the amygdala increases in size. So if the amygdala increases in size, that means that it will start to get triggered for no reason whatsoever. So that person now gets paranoid, that person gets scared, overreacts, sees overreacts, sees things that are not even there, because the more that fight or flight response is being constantly triggered, engaged sometimes doesn't even stop. Basically, you feel constantly unsafe at work. Then that amygdala gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You start to become paranoid. You start to snap, you start to. Right, that's on one side. Of course, things in the brain happens always in connection. So as the amygdala keeps on increasing, there is a specific area very close to it that starts to shrink, and that is the hippocampus. And the hippocampus is what we call the treasure chest of memories. It's not the one keeping the memories, but it is the one that basically is involved in everything, which is memory consolidation, memory processing, and so on. So when the hippocampus shrinks, you can forget about remembering things. You can forget about recalling things. You can forget about being effective. You can perfectly forget about basically anything.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: So, one really impactful for the person in question. Yeah, but what I'm doubting at some moment, can you just remove the stress or at some moment, this is something that continues on its own even when you remove the external stress.
[00:29:49] Speaker C: I think we were speaking before, Emily, one of my favorite answers is it depends.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: It depends. We always say it depends.
[00:29:55] Speaker A: We will all understand that answer.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: It depends. And of course, it depends on the context. Right. That's why we say we need to look individually at the person and understand what if their life, what is their lifestyle, what do they eat, how do they sleep, what do they do outside of work and. Right. How that is impacted. Because you know what is interesting with balance, we always say, balance is not something you find. Balance is something you create.
And what happens is very often, and I've been that person in my younger age when, because there was so much, I was in one of the most stressful, top three stressful jobs in the world. And because there was so much stress, then when I would have free time, instead of trying to calm down and so on, I would travel more, I would try to do as many things as possible, right? Because I thought that is balance, right. If this is very heavy, I'm going to do a lot of fun stuff as well in my private life. So instead of balancing, it's like a. It's like a balance. Instead of balancing, you sink in, which.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Actually happened or basically repeat the same behavior in a totally different context.
[00:30:59] Speaker C: Absolutely. But then you can forget about that brain resting, that brain having enough nutrients, getting enough sleep, ReM or any kind. So you come back in the workplace where you are even more tired, your amygdala is bigger, your hippocampus is smaller, you can forget about creativity, you can forget about collaboration, you can forget about basically everything. And then that keeps on developing and increasing and increasing until at one point, that body and that nervous system can no longer take it.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: I think this is really interesting topic. We can talk about this for hours, I think, or maybe days, but I'm looking at the time and I want to focus on some topics related to the majority of our listeners that are women working in it. And we see that many women are leaving it for various reasons.
How does a lack of physiological safety there? It is neurologically influence this decision?
[00:31:55] Speaker C: So it's basically linked to everything that I mentioned before, right? Primarily the amygdala and enlarged amygdala. If you constantly feel unsafe with women, we're talking about a far more complexity of hormones. So as a result, when that hormone disbalance starts to happen, then as a result, your psychological state, your emotional state and your hormonal state are changing every species. Look at every mammal. If they are stressed, they are unable to procreate.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:32] Speaker C: Right. So if one goes up, the other one goes down. So as a result, there's so many things that happen that women will be like, okay, I cannot deal with this. The only thing I can do is to get out. Right. You feel not included, you feel not supported. You feel excluded. Right. Because there's a big difference between not feeling included and feeling excluded. The brain perceives indifferently.
So as a result, when this is the equation, then they will just leave the entire industry.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And how can companies be more successful in attracting and retaining those women?
Yeah. By using neuroscientific insights.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: The first thing that I would say would be exactly this, which is bring in professionals who are not patching things up. What we see organizations doing is like, oh, I'm going to bring someone. Give you a massage, hot stones, go yoga, do some sports. And I'm gonna come to. I'm gonna bring someone to tell you about work life balance.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: Oh, that scares me away, but I'm very analytic, so.
Well, even my girlfriend kind of tells me that I have a male brain in how I respond to certain things, and that definitely are signals for me to not feel safe.
[00:33:50] Speaker C: To not feel safe. Right.
[00:33:51] Speaker A: I'm there to do work. I'm not there to relax and to be what I call pampered.
[00:33:58] Speaker C: It feels a little bit condescending. It's exactly. It's like putting glitter on a pimple. You know? You don't. If there's a problem, bring people who will explain to people what happens in their brain and that problem happens. Bring awareness, educated awareness.
Then talk about what we can do about the situation. On one side, talk to leadership, address it. On the other side, talk to the teams and to the employees to understand it. To understand it. And then you kind of take it there. There's another interesting thing, and I will pause on that because it's so important, and I think almost nobody talks about it. And it is called social loafing. It's not social loathing, it's social loafing with an f. It's a very interesting psychological phenomenon where in a team, if the team enlarges or if the team suddenly becomes more stressful or so on, people start performing a lot less. They start to remove themselves, their motivation decreases, and they start performing less, which happens basically every single time. A team grows very quickly. This is a phenomenon called social loafing. And people first participate less. They're being asked why they participate less and then they leave. We see this happening a lot in the, in this industry. And it's a combination of feeling unsafe, feeling unheard, feeling that you don't matter, feeling excluded, and then I. And the whole social law thing in combination with that.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: And how can you resolve these issues?
[00:35:25] Speaker C: And like I said, it's a bring in specialists. And if you truly care about your people, invest in people, don't greenwash it. Right? Don't bring someone once every twelve months when it's international something day, and then bring two speakers all day. You know, it is. This has to be something repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated again. It reminds me of a quote from Zig Ziglar, who said, and people often complain that motivation doesn't last while neither is bathing, which is why we recommend it daily.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: I think that is a nice quote to conclude this episode.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: We just need to keep on doing it.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Can I ask just one question?
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Of course.
[00:36:07] Speaker A: Clarification. Because for me, it feels like a lot of things that I'm not consciously aware of. It will have to become a process of creating awareness with myself and then finding basically that safety ness to speak up and to address behavior, basically.
[00:36:33] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:36:35] Speaker A: But how does this relate for me? What is the difference between what we nowadays promote, as it's good to feel uncomfortable in a situation, because uncomfortable helps you grow as a person. And when does it become not uncomfortable anymore, but unsafe?
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Next question.
[00:36:57] Speaker C: Oh, that's such a good question. To close. That's such a good question. I said to close again. You see, I'm using a lot of quotes because we know that they're actually simplifying very complex things that we're trying to bring into business.
Finding comfort in discomfort is fundamental.
Comfort in discomfort. Why? Because the brain, first and foremost, does not like change.
If I'm spending 20% of your bodily energy, I want to save on energy. So I'm going to try to do everything possible to keep you in your known and safe environment. We are creatures much easier, right? So the moment you're trying to do something which is unknown, on one side I like it because I like there is a reward pathway, but on the other one, there's the survival mode, which is way more powerful than the reward pathway.
If you do it a little bit and you try something and then you sleep, and overnight, my brain will be like, hey, that didn't kill me. That is my new safe. And then the next day you do it again and you try a little bit more and, oh, okay, that's interesting. Then that means that also didn't kill me. And that's what growth is. We only grow by putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations. And remember, we were talking about fun. I love to wrap things up. We were talking about fun at the beginning. This unshackling, uncomfortable feeling with learning is also important, but it needs to be in a safe environment. Right. If you go to a physiotherapist, they will tell you about the concept of green pain and red pain. Green pain is stretching pain is the pain that although you feel, you're like, ah, I'm going to feel so much better tomorrow. Or if you stretch that stretching, pushing a little bit over your flexibility and mobility, it's green pain. But if you go into red pain, which is breaking your arms or, you know, shoulder.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: Shoulder.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Shoulder, right, exactly.
My spine, then that red pain is not helping us. So, yes, find comfort in discomfort, but the same thing, as we say to children, oh, I want you to swim a little, and if I feel that you're not doing it, I'm going to throw you the life vest. It's precisely the same thing. I constantly encourage people to try and very important to fail. We need to constantly fail in order to constantly learn. We need to find comfort in this comfort. So we need to fail to learn. We need to learn from it, and we need to, very important, feel included and psychologically safe in the organization to be allowed and encouraged to fail.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that's really, really important to succeed.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Lastly, what would you like our listeners to take away from this conversation and apply in their daily lives?
[00:39:36] Speaker C: I think a couple of things. First of all, I hope they'll be like, hey, there's so much in this. I need to listen to it again. I hope that they will do that and then they will do that with a pen in their hand. So they write things down and then they go and they google or they write. And I hope they discover this curiosity of, hey, I want. I'm getting goosebumps again. I would like to learn more about this and then really have fun, you know, researching and finding some information. I think that's. That's the most important thing.
[00:40:07] Speaker B: There's a good exercise for all the people are listening. I want to thank you for having you.
[00:40:11] Speaker C: Thank you for having me.
[00:40:13] Speaker B: Thank you for asking all the hard questions.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: The hard questions.
[00:40:19] Speaker C: This is why we do it. It's so much better when we're just having conversations, asking questions rather than following a script. And then that's just so. Thank you so much for that.
[00:40:28] Speaker B: Thank you so much for being here.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Intersert in the community of, in a, on, of offline events, mail to your Darnam theater website of all consocials.
