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You Are Not So Smart
341 - Positive Rants - Heather Barnes
00:45:20
Communications professor Heather Barnes teaches us how to truly engage with difficult people through the power of positive rants.
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- [00:01]
Heather Barnes
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- [00:30]
David McCraney
You can go to kittedkitted shop and use the code Smart50Smart50 at checkout and you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers in a box. If you want to know more about what I'm talking about, check it out. Middle of the show. Welcome to the you are not so Smart Podcast, episode 341.
- [01:35]
Heather Barnes
One of the things that improv taught me is it's not about me, it's about the team. It's about the people that you're around. And so with anything that I teach, I teach the theory. And then I have some kind of exercise, many of them pulling from the improv world. And then we debrief how it tailors to the topic at.
- [02:03]
David McCraney
That is the voice of Heather Barnes. And Heather Barnes is a professor at Northwestern, where she teaches classes on leadership development and communication. And as part of all the things she teaches, she shows people who are going to business school, to management school at this very nice university, how to give presentations, how to speak in front of people, how to capture an audience's attention and keep it and not waste their time, how to make PowerPoint slides that aren't awful and ugly, and how to present those PowerPoint slides in ways that makes it so your lecture is not tedious. So that if you're in the audience, you forget you have a phone. You forget that it has apps that would be more interesting than what you're going through at the moment. I met Heather at Northwestern when they invited me and her and about a dozen other people who are fascinated with disagreement and argumentation to help them create a Center for Enlightened Disagreement. That's what they've named this wonderful place that has brought us all together, the Litowitz center for Enlightened Disagreement at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. It's a lot of stuff. We're just calling it the CED now. And you can go back through the catalog of this podcast for many of the recent episodes and find all sorts of shows that are devoted to the CED and to the people who went there to help them create their program, I encourage you to do so. There's one episode that just sort of covers the whole thing. And I wanted to invite Heather on the show for an episode just about what she does, because she did a thing that the students who attended the big pilot program, they just couldn't stop talking about it. And they couldn't stop talking about it because it was the first thing that they put together as a module. Heather and I were both recently invited back to Northwestern to lead modules with students. They were like workshops, in person activities, all of it part of the pilot program that they did earlier this year so that students could get a certificate in enlightened disagreement. And her module involved taking everything she has learned about communication, working in museums and aquariums, working as a professor who teaches people how to engage with an audience, and what she has learned as a skilled improv performer. So skilled that Heather Barnes spent years at Second City in Chicago as a faculty member. Second City is a legendary comedy institution with alumni like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Chris Farley, and Bill Murray. Heather taught improvisation at Second City. She auditioned and selected cast members, and she did a lot of improv. So Heather took all of that, and she kicked off the program at the center with something she does specifically in her workshops. And we'll talk about what she did in a second. In particular, we'll discuss something called Positive Rants, which I think everyone should add to their conversational and rhetorical toolkits. That's going to be the title of this episode, Positive Rants. But first, I wanted to ask Heather, how did you find yourself in this world?
- [05:19]
Heather Barnes
I was an information technology consultant, and I started taking improv classes for fun. Because I was dying a thousand deaths in the IT world, I didn't feel creative or fun. It was hard. We worked long, long, long hours. It was intense. There was a lot of pressure. It was classic corporate America. And I had gone straight from undergrad. That was my first job. And I just felt after three years, I was losing touch with myself, the creative part of me. So I went to a Second City show. My mom knew the cast member. I asked if there were classes. They said yes, and take them. And I did. And I was immediately bitten by what we call the improv bug. I had a blast in my second or third class. The director said, you really ought to audition for some shows. You're great. You get it. You're supportive. You're a good scene partner. You listen. And I had no formal acting training growing up. My Sister was always the star of the family. I can't sing. Although at Second City, when you get in shows, they write songs, they test your range, and they write songs based on your range so they make you sound like you can sing, which is super fun. So I guess in some cases I can. But I was doing Second City for fun while working in information technology consulting, and I didn't want anybody to know that I did improv because my world was so professional. It was like two separate Heathers. And I won't forget the day a deputy director from the state of Illinois, because I was working on a state of Illinois project, consulting project, came up to me and said, I saw your show, and I thought, oh, my God, now I'm going to get fired. This is the day that it all goes out the window. And she said, I thought you were brilliant, and I'd like you to make fun of me at the Christmas party coming up next month. And I said, no, now I'm really going to get fired. This is not a good situation at all. And I did it in a safe way. I said, yes, and I did it in a safe way, which is what Second City teaches you. And it was really fun. And a few other people had seen those shows. Now, why do I say all this? Because the vice president of the Museum of Science and Industry saw one of those shows while I was at the state of Illinois. She also was working at the state of Illinois, and she recruited me. She said, we would like to integrate more theater at the Museum of Science and Industry. We need to change the way we approach engaging people in science content. And would you be interested in applying for this job? I said yes. And I didn't have a museum background, and I had imposter syndrome. So I went to the museum three Saturdays in a row, and I took notes of what I saw, and I wrote sketches and I pitched ideas about how I would transform some of the experiences. And it took six, six or seven months to get hired. It was a rigorous interview process. I had to interview with the actual CEO at the time. And then I was hired. And I worked there 12 years, and I just loved it. I was creative. I was able to apply my business skills and background. We launched 67 new programs. We transformed our teams. We used the improv approach, where you start with the topic and get. Get your audience's input as to what they already know about the topic and then build on that. You're constantly integrating the audience voice. It was a lot of fun. And we did open a science theater. We just, we really shifted the way we did programming, and I truly thrived. And I loved it. It was great.
- [08:45]
David McCraney
I love all this. I met you at the, this Northwestern thing and you brought something there. And I mentioned this before we hit record, when I was talking to students doing my module stuff, and I would ask them, tell me about your experience. Every one of them brought up what you did first. That was the first thing they talked about. It was the only thing they wanted to talk about. And they, they loved what you did. Right. And they knew your. They remembered your name. And they, they all talked about how they had one expectation of what this was going to be like, and then you destroyed all those expectations, expectations, and then they couldn't get. They couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next after that module. So. And I know that you, as you said, you brought improv into this fun thing that you do with institutions, organizations and such, and then you did a modified version of it for the express purposes and sort of mission statement of the center. What did you bring to those people? And after you tell me about it, we can give it a go for the show.
- [09:50]
Heather Barnes
Yes. That would be so fun. I would love it. I taught a little bit of background information and some data and statistics on people and disagreement in our world today. Then I shared a different approach about how you can listen for core values through people ranting through an exercise called Positive Rants that I learned at the Alan Alda center for Communicating Science. And then we experienced it together. People paired off. They actually got to do practice in real time that theory and see what it feels like. I think you can talk all day at people, but unless they experience it, they don't fully get it or understand it or know how to implement it or know how to use it. It's just theory, and that's an important step. But I like to take it to the next level, then we experience it, and then we debrief it together. And I led three different exercises in that hour and a half or hour and 15 minutes. And the comments of what the students were taking away were so different than any other times or places in which I've led these exercises at other law firms or organizations or museums or aquariums. So it was really enlightening for me, too, to hear how the students could apply these skills. It's great to hear that that truly resonated with them. I think part of it, I feel almost like, I don't want to say a gimmick, but for lack of a better word, because I'm having them do it in real time and I'm immediately creating a safe space. And I set that up in the introduction. Say, hey, we're going to practice this stuff, we're going to work together, we're going to be supportive, we're not going to judge each other. And those are the foundations of Second City. And when you say those things and lead by example and say there's no mistakes, obviously be respectful and mindful. People are willing to try these skills and they need a safe space to practice these skills. And I think that's. It's not necessarily me, it's the format that I use that I think resonates with people.
- [11:57]
David McCraney
All right, lay it on me. Let's give it a quick run through so people can understand what we're talking about.
- [12:03]
Heather Barnes
Great. So I did three exercises at the center for Enlightened Disagreement. The first is called three things where you have to find a highly obscure thing you have in common with someone. We won't do that one. But what that teaches is the main takeaways there that our brains are taught to go to the differences we have with one another. How do we try and find some kind of common ground? How do we ask good open ended questions, have 50, 50 airtime, listen and also be vulnerable and share specific information about ourself? And that's hard for people to do. Everybody likes to play it safe. I'll ask you right now what's more interesting if I say hi, I'm Heather, I like to travel or hi, I'm Heather, I just turned 50, I hiked 50 miles in Banff, Canada and saw three grizzly bears. Who can you relate more to or who are you more inclined to want to have a follow up conversation with?
- [12:49]
David McCraney
I'm a little torn because travel is great, but I want to talk about those grizzly bears.
- [12:57]
Heather Barnes
Yes, yes. And so being, working with people to be specific and vulnerable within certain settings is one of the things that we work on that people often don't do. Then the second exercise I led was what I'm hearing is, and that's about listening to understand, not listening to respond. As a society today, while people are talking, we are preparing our response, we're solving our problems, we're saying what we're going to say. If there's a disagreement, we're sharing, we're composing in our head while we're listening the opposition statement, the way that we can refute what they're saying. And boy, I was guilty of this all of the time. I would solve people's problems left and right. When I started at the Museum of Science industry, I had 12 direct reports, 160 staff, and 600 volunteers. And I would tell people exactly what to do and when to do it by and how to solve their problems. And I thought I was killing it. And some people felt that I was micromanaging and didn't listen to their ideas. And that was horrifying for me. So, anyway, I learned this exercise. I learned how to lead with empathy. And that one way that you can do that is to paraphrase people what they're saying to show that you understand them. And that was a powerful lesson. So I teach that exercise. We go through that and then we debrief. And then the last one I teach, the one I think we should do now, which is super fun. It is called Positive Rants. It is one of my favorites. And you let someone rant for one full minute about a pet peeve that they're having, like a genuine pet peeve. And then I have to accurately represent that pet peeve without using any negative language. So I'd love to do that one with you now. So all I'm going to ask you, I'll set it up right now. David, think of a genuine pet peeve that you have. Like people talking with their mouthful or kids at restaurants on their iPads. Whatever is a genuine pet peeve that you have. Think of it. And I'm going to time you for one full minute, and I want you to rant to me about that pet peeve, and then I'll pause us.
- [15:03]
David McCraney
Cool.
- [15:04]
Heather Barnes
You have a good rant.
- [15:05]
David McCraney
I think I. I think I do. Yes.
- [15:08]
Heather Barnes
Okay, I've got my phone. I'm going to time you. I'm going to keep you going. Even if you think you're finished, I'm going to keep you going for that full minute. Okay, So I call scene and give you a round of applause. Cool. On your mark, get set. And action.
- [15:18]
David McCraney
Okay, cool. I. I have this pet peeve. I think it may be a kind of a common pet peeve, and it may be something that illustrates or it may be something that communicates your age range, the era in which you grew up. People oftentimes in grocery stores, in movie theaters, in airports, and pretty much every other general public space, commonly will have conversations, casual conversations, not emergency conversations, with their phone on stereo, on speaker, with their phone on speaker mode. And they're just openly speaking. And it's loud. And I that the phone is magnifying the voice of the other party. And oftentimes they're letting that person rant because they're just shopping for shampoo or something or they're trying to get through a line. So I'm just hearing another person discuss life and I'm not even really hearing.
- [16:19]
Heather Barnes
We will give David a huge round of applause. That was perfect. You went and I could tell you were just getting warmed up. So my job is to introduce my friend David, accurately representing this rant using only. Only positive messaging. So this is my friend David. He likes it when people out in public places are aware of their surroundings and choose to hold private conversations with people on the phone in more secluded spaces and in spaces where both sides of the conversation cannot be heard. He likes to be mindful himself and really appreciates it when people are respectful of other people's space and sound and appreciates it when they use their cell phones in secluded spaces. Secluded public spaces. This is my friend David. How did I do?
- [17:08]
David McCraney
That's great. That's fantastic. And I love that it makes me immediately want to have a convers conversation with you about that. So I can like, shave off the edges of it. Say, like, it's not quite that broad, but it's close to it. But. But it's in the domain of it. And I. And I, most importantly, I was heard, I was seen. And you didn't even say how you felt about it. Even though that made me feel validated.
- [17:32]
Heather Barnes
Yes.
- [17:33]
David McCraney
I don't. You might love that. You might be one of those people. You might
- [17:38]
Heather Barnes
actually. This was a in it all rants. So positive framing is a really important skill in life. It builds resiliency. And with the center for enlightened disagreement, what I focus on in this exercise is how can you listen for what people value? What is it they do appreciate? What is almost the opposite of the rant? What is it that they value and you value mindful people. That particular rant actually drives me crazy too. I don't want someone on your cell phone. I don't want to hear both conversations loudly when I'm on the L commuting for work. And it is in grocery stores. And I think it's. It's. It's over the top, it's. It's rude and it's invasive of other people's spaces. But. So that was a good rant. I could definitely relate and I wanted to jump in and say, oh my God, me too, me too. But that's the other part of this exercise. Instead of just agreeing with you and going down this negative path together, I'm Able to truly listen and reframe who you are as a person based on your values and understand you. So even if it was something that I disagree, agreed with you on, better identifying what your core belief system is allows me, the listener, to connect with you and it allows a negative space to become a more positive space without misrepresenting. And then I go on to say, this is for the listeners. This is a challenge. Early in my information technology consulting career, corporate America, I stormed in my boss's office. It was late one night, 10pm And I said, we are not gonna finish the State of Ohio project on time. We are all burned out. We are working 80 hour work weeks. This is too much. We're not gonna meet the deadline. This is horrible. We're all miserable and we're just, this is awful. And she shut the door and said, heather, make that positive. And I said, there's nothing positive about the situation. How are you not listening to me? She had me in there 45 minutes and it was awful. And she and I did not get along to begin with and I was really tough. And she looked at me and she said, heather, I'm going to teach you two things. One, you don't speak for the entire team. And two, you need to positively reframe without misrepresenting. So she had me in there 45 minutes. And if we had a whiteboard, I would say this. We are not going to meet the State of Ohio deadline. We are all working 90 hour work weeks. I wrote that on the board. And then before I left, what I ended up saying was in order for us to meet the State of Ohio deadline, we either need an extension or more resources so we can work 40 hour work weeks. And she said, your problem, Heather, is you're going to rant and run around and you're going to disengage people. You're going to be perceived as this negative complainer that no one wants to work with, you need. And then they send you to Washington D.C. at the time, this is 20, 30 years ago. And you had a textbook, a thick textbook of rants that you had to rephrase positively. Problems that you had to phrase in solutions. And she said, you need to be able to speak in solutions and more people listen. And I took that lesson through life, even with my team, when I was leading large scale teams at MSI and Chad, if people came with problems, I'd ask them to come up with some solutions too that we could talk through. So it wasn't just a rant session,
- [20:53]
David McCraney
More with Heather Barnes right after this. Hey, this is David McCraney. This show has a Patreon page and if you go there and contribute to the Patreon for this show, it will support the show and keep the show going and I'll give you stuff you can't get Otherware Otherware elsewhere but otherware is a cool word. Search for my name, David McCraney or click the link in the show notes which is otherware. I like it the School of Thought I love this place. I've been a fan of the School of Thought for years. It's a non profit organization. They provide free Creative Commons critical thinking resources to more than 30 million people worldwide and their mission is to help popularize critical thinking, reason, media literacy, scientific literacy, and a desire to understand things deeply via intellectual humility. So you can see why I would totally be into something like this. The founders of the School of Thought have just launched something new called Kitted Thinking Tools K I T T E D Thinking Tools and the way this works is you go to the website, you pick out the kit that you want and there's tons of them and the School of Thought will send you a kit of very nice, beautifully designed, well curated, high quality. Each one about double the size of a playing card, matte cello 400 GSM stock prompt cards and a nice magnetically latching box that you can use to facilitate workshops, level up brainstorming and creative thinking sessions, optimize user and customer experience and design, elevate strategic planning and decision making, mitigate risks and liabilities, and much, much more. Each kit can, if you want to use it this way, interact with this code. Crazy cool app. Each card has a corresponding digital version with examples and templates and videos and step by step instructions and more. You even get PowerPoint and Keynote templates. There's so many ways you could use this. Here's some ideas. If you're a venture capital investor, you could get the Investors Critical Thinking Kit and use it to stress test and evaluate different startups for Series A funding. If you're a User Experience Designer, you can get the User Design Kit to put together a workshop with internal stockholders for a software product. Or if you're an HR professional, you could mix and match these kits to create a complete professional development learning program tailored specifically for your team over the course of the next two years. So if you're the kind of person who is fascinated with critical thinking and motivated reasoning and intellectual humility and biases, fallacies and heuristics, the sort of person who listens to podcasts like you are not so Smart. You're probably the kind of person who would love these decks. If you're curious, you can get a special 50% off offer. That's right. Half off offer right here. You can get half off of one of these kits by heading to Kitted Shop K I T T E D Shop and using the code smart50 at checkout. That's smart50 at checkout. 5% of the profits will go back to the School of Thought. So you're supporting a good cause that distributes free critical thinking tools all over the world on top of receiving a set of thinking superpowers in a box. Check all of this out at Kitted Shop or just click the link in the show notes. And now we return to our program. DAVID I'm David McCraney. This is the youe Are not so Smart podcast. And this is the rest of our interview with Heather Barnes.
- [25:01]
Heather Barnes
Yes, and my name is Heather Barnes. I am the founder and CEO of Improv at Work and I help organizations like museums, zoos and aquariums either evolve their guest experiences or employee experiences. I help with culture transformations. I also work quite a bit with US based corporations, law firms, universities, companies on a number of things related to strategic communication, people, leadership skills, leading with empathy. And I am a professor at Northwestern University, which I am excited about. I teach MBA students executive presentations and I dabble in teaching executive presence, navigating difficult conversations and I love it.
- [25:46]
David McCraney
Before I met you, I did not know that you could that this is something you would take a class in. In college. Giving presentations is a thing because I didn't go to business school or even ever thought about what business school does. You can take a class and how to give a good presentation. That's. How did you become a professor who does that sort of thing?
- [26:08]
Heather Barnes
Okay, well, I was recruited so I didn't set out to become a professor that does this sort of thing. In fact, I too did not go to MBA school. I did get a master's from the University of Chicago, more grounded in social work and public policy, and I have translated some of those skills. But I learned a lot of executive presence through being at Second City. So I was also a faculty member at the Second City Training center, which is an improv based comedy club here in Chicago, Illinois. And one time I was cast in a show purely because I had strong executive presence and commanded the space and I could project and I could engulf the space with my full physicality. And so many other people auditioning were like Hi, my name is Heather. Hi, my name is David McGranny. Nice to meet you. And I come on with confidence and with a stage presence. And I wasn't aware that that was a skill at the time. And I now teach that. And I was recruited, like I mentioned, because I was in charge of the aquatic presentation at Shedd Aquarium. And I also was doing faculty training at Northwestern University. And one of the faculty at Kellogg attended one of my workshops and said, we have an open position for teaching executive presentations. Would you be interested? Actually, at the time it was called Presentation Fundamentals. But I called my dad and I said, wow. I just, you know, we went through that, a traditional interview process and I had to submit quite a bit in a formal application and be reviewed by others. But I said to my dad, I got hired as a faculty at Northwestern. And he paused for a beat and said, are you even qualified for that? I said, they called me like, I'm not sneaking around trying to budge my resume to make sure that I'm applying for jobs I'm not qualified for. Dad.
- [28:06]
David McCraney
So dad, right? That's what this. Like that for me, the Christmas vacation moment where he's like, one of your lights isn't blinking. And then Clark Griswold is like, thanks for noticing, dad. That's, that's that.
- [28:22]
Heather Barnes
His second question is, does it come with health benefits?
- [28:24]
David McCraney
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Is she a qualified for that?
- [28:28]
Heather Barnes
Right.
- [28:29]
David McCraney
If you, well, if you trick them into giving you that job, does it have health benefits?
- [28:33]
Heather Barnes
Right, right. Well, quite truthfully, I was nervous. I didn't know if I would like working with that population. Most of my work was in nonprofit. I worked at the Museum of Science and industry for 12 years. I did lead large scale teams and then Shedd Aquarium. And prior to that I was an IT consultant, information technology consultant leading large scale teams. But I wasn't sure it would be a good fit. I thought they would be asking me questions about value proposition or. I just didn't know that I would be able to hold my own. And having not been to business MBA school myself, and I absolutely love it. I love the diversity of the student body at Northwestern. I love the global perspective the students bring. I love how eager students are from around the world to learn communication skills and strategies to best position them to succeed in conducting business globally. And I really thrive. I also learn so much. They have to do a final presentation on anything going on in the world. And the things that these students are talking about today, I learn a ton. It keeps me relevant. I'm talking everything from fast fashion sustainability to putting regulations of social media and iPad use and kids under 18. I mean, it's just fascinating the topics that they are so passionate about.
- [30:00]
David McCraney
I had a great experience hanging out with the students too. They really are up to something there. It's not the business school I thought it would be or the management school either. It was really cool.
- [30:08]
Heather Barnes
Yeah. And they're intentional to drive many social functions. It's funny, I also work quite a bit with Feinberg School of Medicine and they have even highlighted in working with me how much Kellogg does to drive social interaction and to build a community. Community and to build relationships.
- [30:24]
David McCraney
It's evident. It's evident. Yeah.
- [30:25]
Heather Barnes
Yeah. And that's what we have to do more of in this world today. And I mean, they've got it, they're nailing it. And it doesn't have to take a lot of time or money. It's just a strategy in relationship building. And I think they've got that. They do that better than anyone I've seen.
- [30:40]
David McCraney
Yeah, I, I loved that that was true. But it's also true. It's like the journalism school felt like a journalism school I visited there. The psychology school felt so much like a psychologist. You go in there and you're like, there's a brain in here exposed. Like, I can feel that. And in the journalism school, I could feel like everyone here has seen some things and, and, and so their posters are tasteful. I have one quick question from what you just said that it occurs to me, I could ask you what seems to be the thing that you most often correct people on when it comes to PowerPoint presentations? What's like the. The thing most people get wrong before they're told that you're doing that incorrectly?
- [31:21]
Heather Barnes
Often with an actual PowerPoint presentation, people pack too much data on one slide or it's busy, or the graphs aren't clear from an audience perspective. And I love sharing the quote. Boy, David gave a great presentation. I just wish he had more slides, more content on those slides. Said, no one, no one says that people leave presentations and go, that was information overload. Too much data. I got lost in the detail. And so people have what the Alan Olda center for Communicating Science refers to as the curse of knowledge, which is people think that their frame of knowledge is the same as everyone else's. So when they talk in these details and when they take deep dives into the content without talking about the application or the context or the why it matters to the audience, they lose their audience. I Think those are some of the most common mistakes. Today I saw a presentation. I was part of a conference this week, and one of the participants stood up and told a personal story. Then he used Minty, which is an interactive tool, to get the audience's input. He had personal photos or photos of humans, lawyers engaging in some of the activities he was talking about. He nailed the presentation because it integrated so many elements of what audiences look for today. Interaction, storytelling, personal connection, relevancy, including the audience voice.
- [32:46]
David McCraney
I did, I used to do that when I was just getting going, lecturing. And I do a lot of lecturing now, so it's like a third of my life. And I, I, I have gotten to the point where I will. Most of my slides are just a picture and I, and I just talk and I tell you, I don't ask you to read this. I don't read it off the slide to you, which is one of the worst experiences you can have.
- [33:07]
Heather Barnes
Exactly.
- [33:08]
David McCraney
And I love the Alan Aldous center too. I adhere to many of their principles in both lecturing and writing.
- [33:14]
Heather Barnes
Nice. You do. I've seen your lecture, and you have incredible slides with images and you ask the audience to interact with the slides. You ask us to think and make our own decisions based on what we're seeing. I mean, it's, it's exactly what we need to be doing more of. How do we engage and include the audience in the content and the subject matter in which we're talking about, not just talk at people?
- [33:38]
David McCraney
Oh, yeah, I tell, I like to. I'm going to tell you a story. At least since I'm a on the ground journalist for a lot of my life. It's going to be something I did. So you basically just have to pretend we're all sitting around with a cocktail. I'm going to tell you about this crazy thing that happened to me. There's going to be some science, but I'm going to do it as an as picture form as possible so that we can get through this together. I'm very aware of cognitive load, which is something that I, since I write about science topics, I'm doing this right now because I'm finishing up my new book. And the number of things you need to understand before I can get to my main point, there's so much stuff that I can't even tell you what I'm about to tell you fully. What I just need to do is slowly build up the foundations and then when we get there, it's going to feel like this is the right part. Of the book for you to start talking about this thing.
- [34:30]
Heather Barnes
And that's, that's very theoretical. I'm very interested in learning more about your new book.
- [34:37]
David McCraney
I, I, this book started out. I'll break this brief, but this book started out as what does the word genius mean? Period. Not that it, it's. I wanted to know, is there a scientific definition for this word? Because we use it a lot. And then very quickly, I learned, no, science doesn't believe in that. And, like, it used to, but it now it doesn't. I'm like, well, that's neat. And then I got more fascinated with the idea that, well, is there a definition at all? And there isn't. And I eventually met this cognitive linguist who was like, oh, you found you've stumbled into the territory. You stumbled into madness. And I was like, what do you mean? She goes, you're at the precipice of madness. And I, I was, I don't understand. But she was totally right, because if you go down the, the path of trying to completely define any word, you'll get into the madness places. And I found that, and it was beautiful. And I was like, I went back to Penguin at a meeting we had in New York, and I was like, I think I want the book to be about this instead. And they were like, go for it. So now the book is actually about something that I'd never really talked about, even though this is in my wheelhouse, that called the. It's called the fallacy of reification. And that's when you take an abstract, like, awe or joy, and you, for whatever reason that happens for many different reasons, it'll become a concrete. And at the moment when it becomes a concrete, it's always false, and that causes bad things to happen. And I Using genius as my example, because genius became a thing that is real, it exists, and we have a test for it, and we had to abandon that. And that's something that's always dangerous in any field. Right? So that's what the book's about. And it's like, oh, that's weird. There's no. Why would you read that book? And I have to convince you in reading the book. Oh, we're going to get there. You'll see.
- [36:26]
Heather Barnes
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's really interesting, and I love your approach to looking at the current world around us and how we live today and integrating history and moments and lenses to, to take. I think it's really innovative.
- [36:42]
David McCraney
You mentioned that there was crossover here. There's overlap. There's like A Venn diagram thing with something with some of the stuff you learned in the Alan Alda stuff. I want to know more about this, the what is this Alan Alda science communication thing. I'm a huge fan of all that, but I've never gotten an opportunity to actually get, you know, inside there and do the stuff. What's going on with that?
- [37:01]
Heather Barnes
I was fortunate to attend. When I was doing my work at the Museum of Science and Industry, they were coming to the University of Chicago and I wrote them a letter talking about how I too am using improv to change the way we communicate science. At the Museum of Science Industry, I'm meeting our teams in the center for Advancement of Science Education. They wrote me back and they said, we'd love to come visit you and see the work that you're doing. They did. They showed up and they saw the work that we were doing and they said, wow, this is so in alignment with what we do and who we are. Would you like to attend? And so they invited me out and I spent the week and I learned all new exercises and the way they were working with the medical professional, field medical professionals on removing jargon, distilling your message, checking with your audience to make sure they're with you. And then we were trained to lead these activities. The positive rants is also so similar to my experience in the room with my boss when she had me refrain things without misrepresenting. So I think positive rants is a quick exercise that hits at those same points.
- [38:07]
David McCraney
There's so much in there. You get so much out of it.
- [38:09]
Heather Barnes
There's so much.
- [38:09]
David McCraney
Yeah, yeah.
- [38:11]
Heather Barnes
And it's, it's about listening. And it feels good to rant. And I'm not, it's not saying please don't rant or your life is roses or I have rose colored glasses on. And I'm no negative things happen all of the time in my life. But it is how I reframe them that builds resiliency, that helps me consider solutions that I maybe haven't thought of before. And I find it a really powerful tool. And I'm stuck in a rut. It's like, how can I. What might I need to get out of this? How can I positively reframe this without misrepresenting notice? I didn't say we're all happy at the state of Ohio. We love it here. And this is great. And it's funny when I ask rooms of professionals from C suite to the students at Northwestern, people try to reframe it and they're like, we are committed to this project, and it's a hard skill. And people miss the mark each time they misrepresent. It's like, no, no, no. You got to still stay accurate. In order for us to meet the state of Ohio deadline, we either need an extension or more resources. So I think it's a valuable skill that not many people have. And I'm really impressed with all the research on resiliency today. And positive reframing is one way to become a more resilient leader, a more resilient person. And so I just. I. I embrace it.
- [39:29]
David McCraney
I love this. There's a. There's a connecting point here, too. This positive. So much is. You get so much out of this. You get. You. You learn how to be a better active listener. The other person gets to rant and get something off their chest. They also can feel like they're not insane and they haven't been judged. Judged that they are legitimate in their complaint. And then.
- [39:49]
Heather Barnes
Right.
- [39:49]
David McCraney
They get to feel seen and heard. And they also get that revelation that epiphany that, oh, this could have been. I could have put it that way. And then all of that is all wrapped up in all of this exercise, and you're doing it with another person. So you're not just reading this off the Internet or watching a YouTube video.
- [40:09]
Heather Barnes
You're experiencing it.
- [40:10]
David McCraney
There's so much in that you're trying it.
- [40:12]
Heather Barnes
And it's so funny when people. This one takes a bit to master because even participants will say, David is concerned when people talk on their phone with speaker in public places. Well, that's negative. Concerned doesn't like. David appreciates it when people are mindful to hold personal calls on their cellular phone in secluded areas. So you also don't want to just reiterate your point negatively. You have to reframe.
- [40:38]
David McCraney
Yeah.
- [40:39]
Heather Barnes
What it is.
- [40:39]
David McCraney
And it helped me hearing you say it back. I was like, you know, the thing that's really got me going is just. Just being mindful like you. I feel like you aren't. You're actively not caring about the people around you. And I didn't necessarily rant it that way, but now I have a better understanding of my. Of my rant.
- [40:57]
Heather Barnes
Yes. Oh, I love that. That's awesome. And that is. That is something that I've heard in our debriefs from leading this. But I'm so glad we got to play it too. That was the best.
- [41:08]
David McCraney
Yeah. There's nothing. And in there also are to positively reframe it. You have to identify the deeper values that are driving this frustration. It can't just be the surface level. Like you can't just say David doesn't like cell phones. Like that's not right. Like, what is driving you to be upset about. That would be. Would be true in another domain that has nothing to do with talking on speakerphone. It would be something else where people aren't being mindful. Right, Exactly. This is like standing up when you land on the airplane even though you've got at least 20 minutes before we're getting to get off this thing.
- [41:41]
Heather Barnes
Like another pet peeve of mine. Nailed it.
- [41:45]
David McCraney
But see how the categorically they're coming from the same emotional space.
- [41:48]
Heather Barnes
They are. Yeah, exactly. David likes people that are mindful, that follows the rules and FAA regulations and are aware of others.
- [41:56]
David McCraney
I don't even need. I don't even need you to follow the rules. I just want you to note that we are all in this together and it will get worse if we don't remember that. I love it. These are actually practical applications of things from the world of science, communication and communication in general that leave people. They won't just talk about it. They'll do it with their friends and family. They'll do it in their personal lives. And I think that's stellar and fantastic and cool and I like it. And I don't really have anything else to say there except that's a positive rant about the things you do.
- [42:32]
Heather Barnes
Yay. Awesome. And I do use it in my personal life. I have a few fun personal examples too that I share in workshops. It's really, really relevant.
- [42:41]
David McCraney
What wisdom from your former employer. What wisdom. I hear what you're saying, but here's how you're going to have to say it if you want to get anywhere with this.
- [42:50]
Heather Barnes
Right? I wish I could thank her. I left that meeting huffing and puffing and furious and angry. And that just goes to show what 23 year old Heather and how I rolled in the face of adversity and I was just mad at her. And I wish I could. I should find. I could find her and say thank you. That was a valuable lesson.
- [43:13]
David McCraney
I want to challenge you to send that email.
- [43:15]
Heather Barnes
Okay. But I'm afraid of her still. She and I did not get along. I even know her name. All right, all right. A challenge accepted. You're changing the world.
- [43:43]
David McCraney
That is it for this episode of the you are not so smart podcast. For links to everything we talked about, head to you are not so smart.com or check the show notes right there in your podcast player. My name is David McCraney. I have been your host. You can find my book How Minds Change wherever they put books on shelves and ship them in trucks. Details are@davidmcraney.com and I'll have all of that in the show notes on my homepage davidmcraney.com you can find a roundtable video with a group of of persuasion experts featured in the book talking all about it. You can read a sample chapter, download a discussion guide, sign up for the newsletter, read reviews, all sorts of things for all the past episodes of this podcast. You are not so smart.com you can follow me on twitter and threads and Instagram and Blue sky and everything else that's like that at David McCraney symbol David McCraney follow the showtsmartblog. We're also on Facebook. You are not so smart. And if you'd like to support this one person operation, no editors, no staff, just me. Go to patreon.com you are not SoSmart. Pitching in at any amount gets you the show ad free. But the higher amounts that'll get you posters and T shirts and signed books and other stuff. The opening music that is Clash by Caravan Palace. And if you really, really, really want to support this show, the best way to do that? Just tell people about it. Either rate and comment on it on all these platforms or just tell somebody directly. Hey, you should check out this show. Point them to an episode that really meant something, that really connected with you and check back in in about two weeks for a fresh new episode. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones Member, SIPC.