 Welcome on. I know it's going to be a very interesting session. I've listened to Linda, speeches, talks and always I've always booked myself for her sessions. And so looking forward for her speech now and I'll hand over to Linda. I'm going to begin with appreciation. Thanks for inviting me and thanks for attending. I know most of you spend a lot of time staring at a screen. And so if you think I have something worthwhile to say and you're giving me an hour of your life, I really, really appreciate that. I'm going to share my screen now. Is that okay? Yes. This is good. This is good. Okay. So on the first slide, you have my contact information. If you don't get a chance to ask a question today for some reason, please send me some email. It's Linda at lynda rising.org or let's connect on LinkedIn or I'm also on Twitter. As we go through the slides, you will see there is no copyright. So if you would like to have a copy of the slides and buy that, I mean the PowerPoint, you can change it. You can use it to have a conversation about this topic with your colleagues or maybe even your family. I'm happy to send you the PowerPoint and it's all yours. You can do whatever you want. We're going to talk about elephants. I know it seems a little strange, but it's based on the work of a couple of behavioral economists. I think everyone should read this book. It's called thinking fast and slow and I know that many of you have heard of the book. You might have bought the book and then you read one chapter and you gave up because it's a difficult book to read. But it's so important that I finally began to give a talk that summarizes the models in the book. So you can search on that talk. Just go to YouTube, search on Linda Rising, thinking fast and slow. I'll give you an overview of what's in the book. It's about thinking and how we make decisions and solve problems. Nit Daniel Kahneman outlines a model for how we think. He says your brain behaves as though it has two pieces, two modes. One of them is called system one and the other system two. System one is the unconscious mind. That's the fast part. The part that never sleeps. The part that contains enormous amounts of information about your expertise. It can also handle an enormous throughput. Look at that. 11 million bits per second. System two on the other hand, well, that's the part that we think does all our thinking. It's the very small, the very slow, the very linear mode that we use for solving problems. Unfortunately, we don't have any access to system one. It's the unconscious. Now, this is Kahneman's model. All of his research is based on it. And it is a powerful way to think about thinking. And in it, he describes how big system one is in terms of not only processing power, but also how many of our decisions, how many solutions, what part of our thinking is involved. He says it's like an iceberg that we know the part below the water is huge. He said that's like system one. The part above the water. Well, that's like system two. You can see the part above the water. So that matches the metaphor of two systems. Now, later psychologists have said that is okay as far as it goes. But what we learn now about system two is that it's much smaller than that. So if you can look at the right hand peek, and you can see that little tiny snowball, that little snowball, that's more like what system two really is. And the rest of this above water, and all of this below the water, all of that is system one. System one, the unconscious is enormous. Now, Onaman's models, I think explain a lot. I think right now, they're a valid way of looking at how we think. We know that all models are flawed, because they ignore certain things, and focus on others. They are abstractions. George Box, a famous statistician said, all models are wrong. But some are useful. So I'm going to introduce you to a companion, abstraction or model that matches up with condiments. It was created by Jonathan Hype. He introduced it in his book, The Happiness Hypothesis. But no one really heard of it because the happiness hypothesis is more of an academic book. I don't know anybody except myself who actually read the book, but everyone read Switch. It was a book by Chip and Dan Heath. And in it, they refer to this other model, the one created by Jonathan Hype. And I like it for two reasons. One, the mapping between Hype's model and condiments is so obvious. The conscious, slow, linear thinker, that's the rider. The big, enormous unconscious system one. Well, that's the elephant. And now Hype's model has something that condiments model does not, which is the path. So our brain behaves as though we had a little tiny rider on top of a large, very powerful elephant, and we are traveling on a path. So I have been making this comparison now for years. And I have been saying that if you want to talk to someone who doesn't agree with you, imagine that you are talking to an elephant. That metaphor has helped me in my conversations with people who are resistant to change, see the world differently, have a different point of view. Instead of thinking that the best way to convince someone is to enumerate facts, outline a logical argument. Now I recall what Jonathan Hype said, you can't change people's minds by utterly refuting their arguments. If you want to change people's minds, you have to talk to their elephants. And imagining that has helped me. Of course, system two is there. Of course, the rider is always involved. That's the conscious mind. That's the part we identify with in ourselves. That's the part that is logical and reasonable. That's the part that directs to the extent that it can. The problem is the rider often gets stuck, often struggles with analysis paralysis, and has the illusion of control. When really, the decisions are being made by the elephant. And that maps very clearly to Kahneman's model. We want to believe that system two is in charge, but it's really system one that makes all our decisions. And remember, it's unconscious. The elephant is really in charge. Well, I wrote a couple of books with my good friend, Mary Lynn Mans. And whenever I talk about anything, I always call up patterns from these two books. And I'm hoping that if you have read the books, that if I call attention to some of these patterns that will help tie together how we make change. And now Kahneman's model and Heitz model. So the first pattern is called personal touch. And if we're going to have someone be less resistant, then we have to talk to the elephant differently from the rider. We want to understand how the emotional elephant, the unconscious mind, how they are feeling, what emotions they are experiencing. At the same time, we realize the very small conscious mind, the rider, that's the rational part. And that part of the thinking process is rational and does pay attention to facts. Now what's missing in Kahneman's model that is helpful is the path. We know it makes a difference. The elephant wants to go along the easy path. And sometimes that's all it takes. Not arguing facts with the rider. Not necessarily making the elephant feel good about the decision, but simply making the path easier. Jonathan Heitz says, we are usually focused on ourselves. We don't take the time to see the world from the point of view of the other person. And that means for the other elephant, what's the path like? Where are they going? Does it match their goals? Are they happy? Of course, we do have to talk to the rider. I call this keeping the rider busy. Yeah, the rider likes facts, wants to know some thing about the data. If you have any information, that's very useful to the rider, even though we know the rider is not in charge. And the rider often gets stuck. The rider likes to solve problems. So tends to be negative and see what's wrong in the world. So one of the suggestions from the Heath brothers is to give the rider some data and say what works? What's working well? What are the bright spots? And how can we build on those bright spots? So we're going to focus the rider by directing the attention of the logical rider to what's working well, so that now instead of being caught in a morass of negativity, we'll see the world more positively. How can we replicate those bright spots? We tend to get a little bit heavy on data thinking that this is how decisions are made. When really it's only of interest to the rider, the elephant doesn't care. If we spend too much time on data and facts, then we're going to overwhelm the elephant, who's really more interested in feelings and stories. And we're going to push the rider into analysis paralysis. So we need just enough data, but let's not get too heavily involved with too much. Yes, okay, we know it's important. Yes, we know facts can lead people to make better decisions, but confirmation bias always gets in the way and we can ignore facts that don't agree with our point of view. So facts have limited influence. What's important are stories. The stories that our system one constantly tells us about how the world works and especially how we fit into that story. This is really fiction. The story that our brains create for us really has nothing to do with reality. We think it does. We think we see reality clearly, but it's just our way of looking at things. Jonathan Haidt says we tend to think of ourselves as scientists looking at data, looking at evidence when really we're more like lawyers. We look for flaws in others points of view and say therefore these people don't understand reality. I on the other hand, I see the world clearly. But what does the elephant like? The elephant likes feelings. The elephant wants you to care about its feelings. Most of the time when the elephant is being resistant is because it's terrified. It doesn't know what's happening and you need to reassure. You need to make the elephant feel okay. The primary way you have of doing that is to tell a story. Tell the resistant elephant a story and it should have a happy ending. And it should be a story that the elephant can identify with so the elephant can say, oh, that's just like me. That's just like my problem. That's just like the path I face. Elephants like stories about other elephants that are just like them. And of course, it's even better if you can. Well, the pattern is called do food. Elephants love peanuts. So while you're telling a story, don't forget the peanuts. The most important pattern in the book, Fearless Change, is the pattern for which the book is named Fearless. The way you overcome fear on your part or on the part of the elephant is simply to reassure the elephant that you are listening. I like Chip and Dan Heath's description of good listening. They say, be a trampoline. Let the ideas bounce off you. You give feedback. Say what you heard. Elephants want to know that that you're listening. And they want to make sure that you hear their story before they will listen to your idea. And this takes time. Building trust. Getting people to move in a direction that you choose. It doesn't come easily and it doesn't happen quickly. So Fearless and stay in touch. You can't just tell one story or make one small connection and feel that it's once and done. You must go back. You must ask how are things going for you? How is the path now? Can I make it easier? What else can I tell you about this idea? You want the elephants to know you and trust you. Then they will believe that you have their best interests. Show the elephant that it's making progress. Look how far you've come. Look what you've already done. Look what you've learned. See how much better you are than when you started. The pattern is called small successes. So many experiments, so many psychological experiments have shown that when you can show people some small directional progress, they are much more likely to continue. In one very famous experiment, a car wash gave out cards that are good for a free car wash if you get 10 car washes. And so they were given a card with 10 holes to punch. But they didn't have much success with it. Whereas when they started giving out a card that had 12 holes to punch before you could get a free car wash and two of them were already punched, they said, here when you get 12 free car wash and we have given you two free punches, now the cards should have been equivalent. But those who got the card with 12 holes, two of them punched, could already see progress. The path was laid out before them and they could see they were already on the way. Something to say to a team trying a new software tool, you know, you're not going to have any trouble with this because the interface is so similar to the tool you are using now. It will be easy. It will be easy for you to learn this new software tool. Show progress that has already been made, even with something brand new. And take little steps. The pattern and fearless change is called baby steps. Whatever the journey is, however difficult the path, if you think of it in terms of small steps, showing progress along the way is how we naturally divide up any long journey, whether we're sitting in a car or on a train or on a plane, or whether we're in an educational journey, whether we're in a journey at our workplace, we think of milestones, things to celebrate. Little tiny steps that show, yes, this path is getting easier. Yes, I seem to be able to make progress now in this new tool or in this educational adventure I have started, especially at the beginning. Little tiny baby steps. It's how we all learn to walk. Take a step. Fall down. Take another step. Fall down. It's how we have learned everything, playing an instrument, participating in a sport, learning a new program language. Step by step. Most of the time organizations want enormous change. They want to lay out some initiative, and they want to see an end date when something will happen. They tend to ignore all of those little steps along the way. They focus on what it is that we want to see happening at the end. So the best thing to do is, well, talk about the change in little steps. Ask for small things, and then you can show progress. Take any large effort and break it up into small pieces. I once had a friend who had a very bad habit of drinking three liters of Mountain Dew every day. He was enormously overweight, was suffering from diabetes, and his doctor was very wise. She said, I know you can't just immediately stop drinking three liters of Mountain Dew. This is a long-term habit. How about let's cut it back to two liters and a half, and let's see how that goes for several months. Then let's go back to two liters and a liter and a half, and it took almost two years. But now he's healthier. Every now and then he might have a 12 ounce can of Mountain Dew, but he no longer has his three liter habit. That's true for all habits. It's better step by step. I know we have people who said, I quit smoking overnight. Well, it can happen. It's better though to shrink the change. Almost all large change is the result of little tiny steps, and sometimes they just seem like you're not making much progress at all. So you must encourage the elephant. Don't give the elephant an excuse to give up. I like to talk about the growth mindset, the idea that, well, we're not there yet, but it's not that we have it or we don't have it not fixed. We know we can improve. We know that it's going to be difficult along the way, but we are going to have to work hard. We're going to have to practice if we're learning a new skill. So we tend in the agile community to talk about coaches, and I think that metaphor is a good one. We need the help of a coach, not someone who's simply going to do a series of checkboxes looking at milestones. We want someone who can look at our progress and give us good advice about how things are going along the way. We want a coach who can watch, who can help us, who can guide us. There was a wonderful article in Harvard Business Review just recently from Rosa Beth Moss Cantor who says, everything, everything looks like a failure in the middle. And we tend to ignore that enormous middle where all the work, all the failure, all the stumbling, all the learning, all of that happens. And if we don't account for it, it's so easy to get discouraged along the way. We know that it has something to do with identity. Who are you? There are two models for decision making in the psychological research. One is called the consequences where you talk about, well, what's this going to cost me? What are the long-term benefits? It appeals to the writer or system too. Appealing to the elephant means talking about who you are. Are you a good parent? Are you a good teacher? Are you a good coach? Are you someone who likes to learn? Are you someone who isn't discouraged by failure because you know how difficult it is to make progress in new things? And appealing to that identity, I think the world has forgotten this. And now we find ourselves in a polarized world, arguing facts with each other. And we've forgotten about identity. We've forgotten about small steps. We've forgotten about fear. We've forgotten about how to talk to elephants. And as a result, we're making a lot of mistakes. Heights says change efforts that focus on benefits but violate identities, our doom to failure. We certainly are seeing that in the United States right now. Then Franklin Effect says the best way to involve someone, to get them involved in your idea or to convince them of anything is to ask for help. There are so many things I don't know about this organization. Can you help me? I don't really understand what goes on in that department. I know your team has been doing a lot of work on our latest product. Can you help me understand that? Ben Franklin is famous for saying we all admire the wisdom of people who ask us for advice. There's also some brand new research that shows asking for advice. Is the best way to get feedback? Is the best way to get people involved? Is the best way to make people feel like they're important? To whatever your cause or idea or product might be is simply to ask. I need some help. Could you give me some advice about? And once that happens, another pattern, sincere appreciation. We often forget that one and it is so powerful. It's the best gift you can give. Thank you. Thank you for what you did. You really helped me. I really appreciate it. The pattern is called bridge builder. Sometimes you can't reach a particular elephant who is really, really resistant. So you might have to bring in a friend. An elephant that the resistor knows has experience with trusts. Whereas the resistant elephant doesn't really know you, doesn't really trust you, not yet. So bringing in someone to build a bridge, make a connection is a very good way to start. It's a small step to start building trust. And the absolute best friend, elephant to bring in is someone who was formerly a skeptic, someone who used to not really understand or believe in or trust your idea, but now sees the benefits clearly. That converted skeptic is a very good way to make the bridge to a resistant elephant. And one of my favorite patterns from fearless change has to do with high ranking elephants. We tend to think that we can get all the executives or the high level managers in a room and we can explain our new concepts so they will all understand it and answer any questions they might have when we really know that high level executive elephants will never ask a question in front of others. It would indicate there's something they don't understand, something they don't know. Most of the time, high ranking elephants who are resistant are afraid. And what they're afraid of is there's something about this new idea that they don't fully understand and they have no place to go. They have no one they can trust to get help to understand, to even make a decision. So the pattern suggests that instead of meeting in large groups that you always meet with high level ranking elephants one on one and you do it on their schedule and you let them drive the conversation. What is it that you would like to know? What can I tell you? How can I help you make a better decision about whether your department will go along with this agile transformation? And then be prepared to make your explanation in terms that mean something to this particular elephant and to make it as easy as possible for this elephant to go the way you want to. And once that one-on-one conversation is done, that you never share anything that went on in that meeting with anybody. That is the first step to building trust with a high ranking elephant when they know they can trust you to answer their perhaps simple questions and then not immediately run out and tell the rest of the world, hey, you know, the CEO didn't really understand some basic concept of no, never share anything. Then the elephant will begin to trust you and the next time there is a difficult situation, a different set of fears that you might be called in to help make that decision, that's a powerful position to be a trusted advisor to a high ranking elephant. I have used that pattern several times. It is powerful. Of course, what we're talking about now is easier path. Just make it easier. Don't worry about the logical argument. Don't worry about convincing the resistant elephant of anything. Just make it easier to do what you want. So it's a very famous experiment with popcorn where people entering a movie theater were given really horrible, weak, old popcorn in either a small or a medium sized or a large container. The popcorn was terrible. It didn't taste good at all. But the people that had a large container ate a lot more than those given a medium size or a small one. So we will do what's the easiest thing for us to do when it's right in front of us. And unfortunately, we don't use this tactic often enough because we think we will not be impacted. So why would it impact others? It's a recent study of the folks at Google who were concerned that in their kitchens, people were eating too much junk food. People were gaining weight. They have metrics on this kind of thing. And what could they do about it? And so the experiment involved just taking the M&Ms, one of my favorite candies, and putting it in a corner in an opaque container. And all of a sudden, the consumption of M&Ms went down. It wasn't inaccessible. All they had to do was walk a few feet. All they had to do was open the container. Everybody knew where it was. But in seven weeks, 2,000 people consumed 3.1 million fewer calories. Just make it easier to do what you want. We know elephants are elephants. We don't have much control over how their brains work. But we can change the path. So instead of arguing facts, remember the elephant doesn't care about facts anyway, just make it easier. And this is true for you. You have an elephant. Your very tiny, logical rider might realize it's not a good thing to eat M&Ms or whatever your problem is that you face at the end of the day. So the answer is don't buy it. Don't buy those M&Ms. Or if you do, put them in an opaque container on the top shelf in the very back of your pantry. And just that distance, just making it a little more difficult to get a hold of those M&Ms will decrease your consumption. Easier path makes a huge impact on our decisions. And that includes all of us. We are herd animals, elephants and humans. We do what others do. It's one of Robert Cialdini's influence strategies, social proof. So if you can show that other elephants are headed in a given direction, then most elephants will follow. We want to do what others, those people who are just like us. We want to do what others are doing. This has survival benefit. It's what we've been doing for tens of thousands of years as various flavors of human species. We lived in small groups, staying with the herd meant survival. So this is hardwired. It's deep in us. When we see people moving in a given direction, if there are the people we associate with, if there are the people who are just like us, we go where they are going. And we do it without logical analysis. The rider is not involved. If elephants are stampeding, the rider has lost control. The elephant sees others moving and will follow. One of the most interesting books I read over the past year and a half was called Rising Out of Hatred. It's about someone who really, really, really changed his elephant. Eli Saslow is a white supremacist who was being groomed to lead the white supremacist movement in the U.S. And he encountered a group of friends who began to listen to him using fearless, who began to tell him stories, who talked to his elephant, who listened to his elephant. And over time, he changed in a significant way. Anytime you believe that people cannot change, that especially people who have severe beliefs are stuck. I encourage you to read this book. It's an eye-opener. It shows how these very simple things that I have just outlined can move even the most resistant elephant. Even the elephant who has been traveling down a particular path forever only knows one way of looking at the world. That person can change. It is such a hopeful message. And to that end, I joined an organization called Braver Angel, where we have facilitated workshops where we listen to people on the other side. For those of you who don't know what's going on in the United States right now, we are severely divided. The elephants are charging in different directions and no one is listening to anyone. No one is even proposing, except for Braver Angels, that we listen to the other side. This is our only hope. We don't have to change what other people think. We want them to do something. We want them to adopt this software tool or get this vaccine, whatever it is, its behavior and the focus on behavior is important. Because if you think that in tackling resistance, you want to upend a set of beliefs, you're likely to fail. That shouldn't even be on our agenda. We want people to do something. We want them to take some action. So I'm hoping that maybe you now have a metaphor, some way of thinking about people who don't agree with you in a way now of communicating with them. So that image, that visual of an elephant has been of enormous help to me. And whether you remember all these tips or not, just thinking in terms of the enormous elephant and a little tiny rider might help you in your future encounters. So I want to end with appreciation again. I know you spend so much time online. I hope it was worthwhile and I hope you stay safe. I've got a couple of visuals. Remember, you can ask for the slides and I'm going to stop sharing and see if there are any questions. Yeah, there are three questions, Linda. Do you want to read? Yes. Why elephants like story? Because we like stories. You can actually put people in a brain scanner and you can do one of two things. You can make a nice logical argument to try to convince people of something. And when you do that, you can see the parts of their brain light up as they attack, as they find things that are wrong with the argument. When we hear a logical argument, we try to find out what's wrong with it. We try to find the holes. Now, if we're in a brain scanner and someone begins to tell us a story, you can watch and see the parts of the brain light up because now our brains begin to light up in the same way as the storyteller. In English, we often say when we agree we are on the same wavelengths and that is exactly what happens. We love stories and we want to hear that it has a happy ending. Will the beautiful princess marry the handsome prince? Will they live happily ever after? And instead of attacking, we begin to follow and we want to hear, well, what happened next? Well, what happened next? So now we are with the storyteller. The storyteller brings us along and our brains are hardwired to do that, to react that way to stories. When logic know we resist it, we attack it, we look for things that are wrong. So if you want to convince somebody a story, a good story about someone they can identify with is infinitely more influential. So, Linda, we are out of time. It's usually an amazing session, Linda. Thank you for doing this and thank you. Have a great day. My pleasure.