What the Return-to-Office Debate Gets Wrong

on your FYP. I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, don't swipe away. It's called

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Welcome to the CuriosityShop. A show from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Hi, everyone. I'm Brittany Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're having fun on the podcast. More than I expected. So what's been surprising to you about the podcast so far? I think what's been surprising is how often we agree. That's interesting. I think I think I'm surprised by how much I'm learning. You didn't expect that. I coming in and come on. I mean, I expect it to learn, but I

I can feel it shifting my thinking. Oh, for sure. Yeah, and uncomfortable ways.

“I wake up thinking about things that we talked about several weeks ago thinking, "Oh, no.”

I missed a chance to ask about, and wait, we do this every week. We can follow up." No, that's one of the biggest things for me is the hangover. The residual like we should have said this, or I want to press him on this, or wait, how does that work? So I- It's a pretty damn good hangover. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right, we're going to do three things today. We're going to talk about the return to office debate.

We've been avoiding this one for a while. I know. I actually don't know if we're in violent agreement on return to office or really deep disagreement, but maybe both. Maybe both.

The second thing we're going to do is I am going to introduce a tool from system theory that I am

obsessed with. We use all the time to look at problems. I thought we could apply it to this question about return to the office. Oh, interesting. Yeah, to see at what level of the issue does our cohesion fall apart? Great. If it does. And then as the third item, I've pulled some listener questions for us. Let's do it. Let's get started. Okay, you launch us off. Return to the office. Yeah, because you're very committed. I am committed to following the

evidence, which I've been doing for the last decade. And I think the evidence is very clear that if you give people one to two days a week to work from anywhere, they are at least as productive if not more so. They're more satisfied. They're more likely to stay. And there's no cost to

“relationships or collaboration. That is going to be really boring. I think I agree. Really?”

I thought you were, I thought you were much more against that model of hybrid work. No, no, I think I agree with what you just said. One of the things that I, what I was anticipating disagreeing with you on was that the frame of return to office just being about productivity is not the right frame. I think we're in agreement on that. Okay. So I have my 24 page lit review because I really came, I mean, I came like, you want to dance? We'll dance. Oh, I'm ready to dance. Did you bring

Nick Bloom's research? I did. Did you bring the good gender and that all meta analysis from last year? I did. Okay, good. But I also bought other things like in my T Sloan's Linda Gratton on kind of what productivity metrics miss. Hi, I hope you all caught on the camera when he went like this. Yeah, no, I got a fricking lit review here, dude. So let's go. Okay. So Bloom and colleagues, this is the 2024 nature, right? A equivalent productivity equivalent performance reviews scores

in equivalent promotion rates for hybrid workers compared to full-time office workers. Correct. So quoting here from Bloom's HDR article, hybrid and fully in office showed no differences in productivity performance review grade promotion, learning or innovation, hybrid had a higher satisfaction rate. Okay. So I'm going to go now to, this is MIT Sloan, Linda Gratton, London Business School, three decades of workplace research argues that the productivity debate

is largely fought with the wrong metrics. I'm doing this. Oh my god, you're doing it.

face. Alright, I'm going to hear it. Okay. Most roles, strategy coaching, creative work, lack

easily verifiable comparative productivity measures. She's going to argue that hybrid work is better understood as a job design option. The question isn't where do people sit, but what tasks need

“which environment? Yeah, I agree with Linda. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I think the key aspect of work design”

is asking how independent are people in their jobs. So in organizational psychology, there are three kinds of interdependence. They're called pooled sequential and reciprocal. It's easier to think about them as gymnastics, a relay race, and basketball. So if your job is gymnastics, where everyone does their own beam, vault, floor routine, and then you just add up the individual scores, you hardly ever need to be co-located because everybody can do their own thing and have their

own focus time at home. But if you're running a relay race, then you need to have some time with the people that you're handing the baton to and receiving it from. And if your work is mostly playing basketball, where you're passing the ball back and forth and doing a lot of dynamic coordination, that's, I think, when you need the most time physically together. Give me an example of the gymnastics. Call center work. Sales teams are almost exclusively designed this way. Everybody has their own clients,

they have their own customer base, they have their own industry, potentially, and the teams

metrics are basically the sum of the individual metrics. Okay. So I'm trying to think through this,

rationally and calmly because I wish you the best with that. I think I disagree. Good. Tell me more. I should just say the Nick Blume data often are looking at all center jobs. Right.

“Where people are pretty independent. Yeah, I think. Do you, would you consider those knowledge workers?”

I think of them doing service work more than all. Maybe there's a mix. Yeah. Okay. So let's let's go here. So this is, this is me making my case for in-person, in-person. Culture creativity and mission. Okay. I agree right off the bat on culture and mission definitely not uncreativity. Okay. So the evidence for in-person work I think becomes strongest around three kind of interconnected organizational dynamics that I want to get into and I want to talk about it because

I'm open to learning. Me too. Like a little crack in the door. Weak Thai innovation networks, tacit knowledge and cultural transmission and shared mission organizational identity. Okay. So let's

“talk about weak Thai, weak Thai is the hidden as kind of I think the hidden engine of creativity”

and innovation. So weak Thai is connections with colleagues outside your immediate team,

are the primary carriers of novel information, cross-disciplinary insight and breakthrough ideas.

Robust finding. Robust finding. So who are you? I'm Yang at all, 2021. I mean, there's a, there's yeah, there's a, there's a Marcus Bare meta analysis that spends 50 years of evidence that yeah, you get more fresh ideas from people you don't know well and don't talk to every day. Right. So I'm thinking that being in the office is less about socializing and more of a creative infrastructure that when it disappears, I think there's two things that happen.

I think there's less innovation that is the product of those weak ties and I think teams without weak Thai in or I don't know why we call it weak Thai. Why don't we call it classic grant of better. Yeah. Sociology. Yeah. Um, these kinds of strong ties. Yeah, of strong, yeah, like a loose relationship exposure. I don't know what's another way to say week time. Yeah, loose. Yeah, I think they also help prevent teams both, I think all teams have to be innovative and creative these days. But

I think they reduce teams from turning into self-referencing systems. Yeah, they prevent group think there's another way to say. Yeah. Okay. So I agree with all that. And I think your instincts are right that when people are physically together in person, they're more likely to bump into their

has to walk by each other to get to the bathroom. Right. I think that there are counter arguments though that don't get weighed when people say, well, we need people to, you know, to come in to have

these creative collisions. The first one is there's no reason why you can't structure that unstructured

interaction and remote work. So there's research on pairing people up randomly for virtual lunches, showing that their productivity goes way up afterward because they end up just learning from week

“ties. And you don't have to, what I mean is you don't have to randomly bump into them, right?”

You could have just a, hey, every week we're going to connect you with somebody that you don't know and you're going to compare notes and you're going to learn from each other and we'll create that way. I think the, the second thing is we don't need constant week ties stimulus because this is Ethan Bernstein's work intermittent interaction is actually better for creativity than constant communication. Because we also need some distance from other people to not get

sucked into their ways of seeing the world. And that separation then allows us to develop divergent perspectives and then come together and get a good mix of convergence and divergence. Last thing is the, there's a study by science teams showing that up until around 2010

remote science teams that published, you know, breakthrough kinds of discoveries,

they were less creative than teams that were co-located and around 2010 that reversed. And ever

“since, remote teams have massively out-innovated teams that are in person. Why? We think there”

are two things going on here. Number one, the remote technology was just bad before. We didn't have good systems for sharing files, editing documents together. We didn't have good ways of communicating for over-distance. Now we do, right? Secondly and more importantly, you have access to the whole world's talent and remote teams, whereas you're stuck with the people who happen to be in your science lab, if you're together. And so I'm like, yeah, you can have creative collisions with the

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rich BFF. So what I'm listening to this, what I'm wondering, and I know this is a kind of a constant debate that you and I have. Stepping away from the data, like stepping away from what you're citing, stepping away from my 25-page-let review. I can't step away from data. I know, but let's just step away from it. You're stealing my identity. I know. All right, let's do it. Unwanted identity, shame, episodes six. How do you reconcile this with just who we are as human beings, like, from mirror neurons

to? Yeah, I mean, this is why I'm not saying we should work remotely all the time. This is why I want us to be collocated three or four days a week, so that we can build meaningful relationships so that we can establish culture so that we can live experiences that become stories so that we can

“connect in the mission and identify with the organization. I think all of that requires shared time”

in the same room, but I don't think we need to impose that five days a week. I think I know what you look like. We have a relationship build. We can have great conversations by text and phone and zoom and email. And so I think it's arbitrary to say all the time needs to be in the same place. No, I think I agree with that. It's so interesting to me, especially, you know, we're filming this while Artemis 2 is up and just blowing my mind. It's like I'm such a space nerd. I know

you're a space nerd. You're clever. Yeah, let's go. You know, and I think I have, you know, as a historian of that friends at Workford, I obviously talk about remote work. Yeah, yeah, a lot

down astronauts through dear to lead. And we talked about the ability, maybe, to do it remotely. And it was so important for them to get them in the same room for these three or four days that we spent together. And for my friends who are engineers, when they get to something that's very difficult, even if they're on remote teams and these are globally remote teams, they find

“a way to get together in the same room. And so it's like I, I mean, I think we're a pilot agreement”

because I actually am a big believer in hybrid. I'm not, I'm not in a forced return to office five

days a week. Yeah. And I'm not at all a believer just as a human being that we never have to

be together physically. Yeah. So I think we're on the same page there. And just to, I've come back to the data now. Yeah. There's a ding-in-mob paper from 2024, looking at four years of return to office mandates showing that they fail to improve from financial performance metrics, but they reduce satisfaction and work-life balance. Yes. And then there's follow-up research showing that you also struggle to attack great talent when you have a return to office mandate.

So all the people who are claiming, well, but the tech leaders who are demanding everyone comes back to the office and the finance leaders who are demanding that they were doing a whaling and calling strategy. You're trying to get rid of people who are committed without having to pay them severance. Guess what? You failed to attract great people moving forward and also the people who are most likely to leave, it turns out are the most talented people who have options everywhere and they want

flexibility. So it sounds like we have mostly landed on the same page about this NASA. Yeah,

“lots. So I think it's one of both of our favorite organizations to study. I learned so much from John”

Cannigator who led, you could call it, almost dare to lead beta for NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts for years. And one of the really interesting haze that I had when I was studying John's work and working with some of his teams was they did not care about making sure that astronaut crews were together for weeks at a time doing training. What they did was they picked short windows to do very deep dives. Yes. So they would get lost in the Utah wilderness. And John was a

nose guide and he would say good luck, find your own way and then disappear. And they had to navigate

those situations together. And what the astronauts would always come back staying is one or two days

with a group getting lost in the wilderness and having to navigate our own way. The stress we underwent together, the problem solving we did the other, so much more meaningful than if we had sat at desk next to each other for for a year. And so I'm curious to hear how you think about this idea of at Lassian does this, right? They've shown in their data that how often you come to the office has no bearing on how much belonging you feel. But attending a quarterly 3 to 5 day offside

is very powerful for connecting you to your team and to the firm. What do you think about the idea of we do, we do a deep dive together and then we go off and do our own focus work and then we

“reconvene. It's probably the way I think about the future of medicine, which is personalization,”

personalization, personalization. I want to, my objection to return to office, not return to office, bring them together for offsides, not bring them together for offsides. My objection to the whole that of that discussion comes down to an overwhelming frustration that I cannot pin leaders down to a why that makes sense. It's not intentional. They're not examining beyond the problems they can see. They're not getting underneath to mental models. They're not getting underneath to and so

for people who I think I'll be honest with you, I think it would be I would be very challenged to understand anyone that says everyone's back all the time for everything and I'd be very challenged even if it was call center work to say no one ever has to do anything because I worked in a call center in Spanish. Gracias, buddy, you're my accent, but they must have that in his video. Yes, see. And so that is brutal work. The churn in that work is huge. So I don't, I come into

that research with a different understanding of what that work is and I do think it's gymnasts.

Oh, yes, and I think we're in agreement there too. My first real job was in the AdSos and I needed

other people around me after the 19th rejection in a row to process that. But also after studying call centers. It is really easy to see how people are better able to focus when they don't

and like, you know, in cubes. So I think it really comes down for me to what is driving your decision, what are, you know, maybe this is a good place to introduce this. So this is a, this comes out of Dana Meadows work from, she's a systems theorist. I'll link to her book and her work and I'll

share the PDF with you that we used to teach it. So it's basically a problem solving method

with systems theory where you have the iceberg, which is the problem you see. So leaders are like, okay, here's the problem we see. Do we let them work remotely? Do we force them back into the office? Do we do a hybrid? And they're just looking at the top of the iceberg. They're not getting under what are the patterns of behaviors that we need to build, deemphasize, strengthen, get rid of, like what are the patterns of behaviors that we need? Underneath that, what are the systems

and structures of support that lead to performance and impact? Yeah. And then even below that, at the deepest level in this iceberg, are the mental models? So what, you know, if I ask a leader, like if you're running a company, flowers ink, let's say, or, you know, I'm looking at the wallpaper,

“pink flowers ink. And as, you know, you're like, I'm having everyone come back to work. Why?”

Because I need to see them. They need to be there. Like, what kind of strategy is that? What kind of strategy is that? And I want to, so tell me what your mental model is. Tell me how you're making sense of work. Well, how do I know if they're working? Well, you don't know if they're working in the office, unless you're staying near for them, or, you know, you don't know either way, so I don't get that. Yeah. You know, they need to have friends. Well, that's not really what does and they could have

a lot of friends. It's better for them. Have you asked them? No. Yeah. Right. And the thing I love about this problem solving with systems thinking iceberg is we know from the research that the lower you go in the iceberg to answer the questions, the greater leverage and more lasting and meaningful the change. Yes. Does that make sense? It does. It's very similar, actually, to the shine, culture iceberg. Oh, oh, God. Yes. Which, I mean, it's almost identically. Yeah. You see the artifacts and

practices that are the most visible manifestations of a culture. Those ideally are created to reflect and reinforce a set of values. But the values themselves are not as transparent. And then underneath those values are these deep assumptions that you are barely even articulated. They're just taking for granted. Those are the hidden mental models. The mental models. Yeah.

And mental models, man, people always say, when you go in to do work in a company,

Renee, how do you know whether it's going to be incremental change or transformative change?

“Like, real, and I said, listen, if you have to change mindset and mental models,”

you're talking about transformation, because you have to break very sacred things. Yeah. So let's take a concrete example. Yes. Last year, I was at an event where a CEO who had very publicly announced to return to office mandate was on stage. And the moderator asked for questions. I couldn't resist. I put my hand up. And I summarized the evidence we've been talking about. And I asked the CEO, what do you know that organizational psychologists and economists don't?

And he said, well, I just believe that we're better at mentoring and innovating when we're all in the same room together. And I just thought that was such a primitive mental model. Like, okay. Yeah. But how many hours a day do we need to pee in the same room together? How many days a week do we need to be in the same room together? Have you thought about different ways of solving for mentoring that, you know, deal with the fact that you are a multinational

company. And some of your most important roles are not physically in the same country as the

people that you expect to be doing the mentoring. What do you do when you work with someone who's mental models are not fleshed? Because I just wanted to smack that tip. Yeah. I think I think what's really hard is in my experience. No matter who that leader is, and I could take a while and guess about who this leader is and be so right. But you know exactly who it was. Yeah. I think the problem is it's the parenting equivalent. And I don't like to

use parenting stuff with work because it infantilizes work. But here it, you know, it's the parenting. I can say infantilizes parents. It's the parenting equivalent of because I said so. Yes, exactly. And it actually creates a lack of respect and distrust. It really creates distrust. And I think what we've seen working because we were working so closely with leaders during the pandemic and right after we're as they were making these decisions.

“That if you believe it enough to mandate it, then you should have the discipline to get”

under the mental model and walk people through it. Yes, and explain why. Right. And if you can't be

Yes. And not because even they have to go in because they don't want to work for someone who's

treating them, infantilizing them, because I said so. That's a great meta argument. I wonder what would have happened if I made that point say that again. Well, just just see even say back to the CEO, that sounds a lot like when a parent says, because I said so, can you walk me through what is your evidence and what is your, what's your proof that this is so important? So, so here's where I think I would differ in the way that I would challenge someone like that. I don't think I'd ask

“for evidence. No one's going to be able to out evidence you. I know. That's why I'm--”

That was just what I'm going to go in there. I know. Well, so that's the highest quality information

available, right? But I think I've never had experience using that to get to someone's mental model

because they immediately get defensive. Yes. So, I think what I would say is, what are your core beliefs about what happens when people are at home? And what are your core beliefs about what happens when people are at work? Yes. What are you--what keeps you up at night when people are working from home? That's so helpful. Okay. And then, one of the core beliefs is, I think this is obviously easy to debunk. But, you know, there's still a, you know, well, people are, you know, they're

they're slacking off at home. And once somebody says that, I can say, you know, that's interesting because when Nick Bloom has shown in his experiments is that when people are given a chance to work from anywhere, a day or two a week, they save about an hour on average of commuting time. And guess how much of that time they spend working more than half of it. Yeah, I've read that. So, you just got an extra half hour work plus out of your employee and guess what? The other, you know, 24 or so minutes,

they get to use on family time, health, hobbies, friends. That's a good way to deliver it recovery. Yeah, which, I'm like, wow, you have literally found a way to do something that biologists and physicists told me it was impossible. You created more hours in the day. And I can't have that

conversation without them being defensive until they've told me here's what my belief is.

“Yes, so, and so I think the way that you get to that is the question about what's on your”

heart in mind. What are you afraid of? What do you make up as happening? I think if you can get on the table, the fears, the mental model, the how people make sense of their world, how people think people contribute value. And you can say to them, that makes sense. Are you open to challenging it with what we know to be true from research? Yes, or complicating in the end? Yeah, yeah, but I think if you missed the step of, I've never successfully had anyone including myself, like we just did

this with our company. We got into some mental, mental models. And one of them was super painful. It took us like three hours. We had to stop. People had to walk out. People went like under the line and to get back out. But one of the mental models that we uncovered was that we make excuses for our behavior during unique situations. And when we gave three examples of unique situations, there was nothing unique about that. Right, there's a pattern. There's a pattern.

Yeah. We had handled things exactly like that in different contexts for ten years. Yes. But we use uniqueness as smoke screen. That's a covering. Yeah. To come out of our integrity and what we know is best in terms of leaning sometimes. Yeah. No, that's that's really helpful. And it makes me think about what this also unlocks is a chance to then even redirect the conversation away from what might be a bit of a red hair. So I'm thinking about George Kelly's classic work

on slot rattling. Do you familiar with this? Oh, I don't know it. So George Kelly studied the

“mental models. He thought of them as goggles that you wear to make sense the word. I always remember”

this this case that he wrote about of. There was a guy who got discharged from the military and his life fell apart and Kelly was analyzing why and it turned out like he had spent his whole career in the military analyzing things through that lens. His mental model was military good, non-military bad. And so once he was even honorably discharged, he had been he put himself in the bad category. So what most people do when one of their constructs is violated, when one of their

mental models is challenged, is Kelly described it as slot rattling where he's like, oh, okay, well, now I have to convince myself that non-military is good and maybe military is bad. Yeah. And you just kind of end up playing this here, you're on a seesaw. And what Kelly said

beyond military non-military in order to to complicate your world view. Wait, wait, I guess I'll be

“there. Yeah. This is so interesting. So the mental model made something good and something bad.”

The answer is to not just switch them. Yes, exactly. But to get on, get a whole new pair of

goggles. Exactly. You need more mental models. And I'm thinking about this in the context of the hybrid work to bake because we're doing this slot rattling right now. It's often a tug of war between leaders saying, I want you in all of the time and I'm going to force it and employees saying, no, you can't and I don't want to work here if you do that. And then, you know, well, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to measure, but can you really measure and are you really

going to fire me if you value me? And it's, it's a wrong conversation. The conversation should be how do we achieve organizational goals in ways that are respectful of individuals' lives? If we have that

conversation, I mean, one thing that jumps out in the data very clearly is the flexibility

people want most is not where they work out. It's when and how much? Yeah, that's it. They want to control their time, not their place. And so if a leader were to realize that, it would be very easy to stay to somebody. Hey, are you telling me that if I let you leave the office at three o'clock, so you can be home with your kids? Yeah, you will, you will come to the office every day. Maybe that, that works. That, that requires another mental model. I mean, this is so, this is so

interesting because it's getting caught in the binary, even if you switch sides. Classic binary bias. Binary bias. Yeah. So this is why I love this tool because this is how I spend so much of my time that I get asked to come in and see a problem. And my work is really, so, you know, I have to get on my scuba gear and do this deep dive to be like, you know, are we, can we go below the patterns of behavior, below the systems and structures to figure out how do you make sense of the world?

How do you think people contribute value? And if you think they contribute value by with mentoring, coaching, feedback, there are many ways to build that into remote work. Yeah, exactly. And you know, what's the old joke about consultants that do you know this one? No, I don't know. A consultant is somebody who borrows your watch, tells you the time, and then charges you for the privilege. I think that that could something really fundamentally wrong, which is when I'm not

good at consulting, but as an advisor or a researcher, when I come into an organization, I'm holding up a mirror and helping them see their mental models. And once I've done that,

“they are much better equipped to solve their problems than I am. Yes. And that's why, you know,”

someone asked me to do, they're like, when did you become an expert on manufacturing and supply chain? And I'm like, that's the problem you see. Underneath it is mental models. And there's a finite group of those, you know, that we have to challenge and then we use data and then, but getting underneath there, even challenging my own mental models is really hard. So this is interesting. So violent agreement. Yeah. I mean, a ton of it. Have your why?

Understand the mental models from which you work. Challenger mental models with evidence and data. And I think that that lands us at, we want people to be together a reasonable amount of time and not for the right reasons for the right reasons. Yes. And when you ask the last thing, I do think the one thing I would say about companies that, and I'm not this is not a endorsement or our criticism of how Lassian does it, because I am not familiar with it. But what I would say

is for purely remote organizations that rely on all hands. The one thing I would say that I see consistently being helpful is scheduling in more white space. Yes. And more open time

and not scheduled, planned time for people who don't always get to get together. Yes.

Yeah. They need time to actually incubate ideas. It's our programmed. Yes. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Okay. Good. Got a questions? Yeah. Let's, let's go to questions. So there were, there were two that I thought were, were really interesting. One has, I thought, I thought it had nothing to do with our conversations from the first part of the episode, but

“it does relate to mental models, because I think a lot of our mental models are wrong on this.”

The question this comes from, "Bree" was, "Can the two of you talk about birth order?" Yeah. So, where do you want to start on that one? I just feel like there are some things where you and I are not going to see eye to eye, which is birth order, anyogram.

unless it's a good one for the day. But I am a huge, but I think birth order is really

“can be very significant and very helpful. I don't think it's predictive, but I think it can be”

a data point. How did you know I was going to land in a different place on that? Because the research is so not compelling. Yeah, it's a mess. Yeah, but the lived experience is super compelling. I think it's hard to study. I think it's hard to see. And I think there's so many complex variables that interact with birth order. But let's put something on the table. I think there are a lot of theories that people hold about birth order that just do not stand up

to evidence. But there are a couple that are supported in some very careful large-scale studies. One is that there is convincing evidence that laterborns are more likely to take risks than firstborns. What do you think of that one? I think that's true. And I think what would you say about the studies that showed disproportionate number of firstborns in certain roles and certain

“leadership roles? I think it's the converse of that, right? The standard explanation of that”

is as a firstborn, you are drawn toward conventional ways of pleasing your elders and, you know, kind of being the model, oldest sibling. And so you get good grades and you run for student government. And that niche is not available anymore to laterborns. And so they need to find a different way to stand out. And they often do that by repelling, by differentiating, taking risks, trying things that are not proven. And then also I think there might be a parenting component of

this, too, which is parents are much more controlling with their first child than they are with their

fourth. I mean, my younger sisters were juggling knives, five. And I will say that, I don't know. This is where I get really frustrated because there's such, you can say something that's very emotionally resonant. For example, I came across a meme on Instagram that said, "Where are you really a pleasure to have in class? Are we just the firstborn daughter with it and diagnosing anxiety disorder?" You know what I mean? Yeah. And I was like, yeah.

“But then I think what ends up happening is I think this is fine. This is true,”

you know, firstborn daughters. I could read a room before I could read a book. You know, like, you know, just there were things that are both resonating, helpful and painful about some of that. And then all of a sudden, the grifters get a hold of it. And now there's a trauma protocol based on, you know, this. And then now there's a, you know, and now that if you take this supplement, so it's like, then you're like, this is why we can't have nice things. This is why we only have

research. People have bastardized. Yeah. And they're turning it into, like, if you sleep this way, this is your diagnosis. You know, like, do you fuck off? Like, you don't have any idea what you're talking about? What is your background? Like, so then it's then you just go to this world that I don't live in as a deep person of faith that if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. Like, now, I believe, like, if you could accurately measure it, is it really that important? That's a great question.

Okay. So let's, let's go back then to the birth order finding on, you know, kind of conventional achievement versus risk taking. I think part of what's interesting about that is it's a really small effect in most studies. It doesn't show up in all studies. And it depends on how many siblings you have and also on age spacing. So one, I think common way of, you know, trying to make sense of this is, well, if laterborns, you know, are separated by five or more years from their older sibling,

they kind of get a fresh start in terms of, like, they don't have to compete with that other siblings. Right. And so they can go more in the conventional achievement route. If, if they're only a year or two apart, it's anybody's guess how am I, might play out. And then you look at this, but you're lumping all laterborns together. What about being the lastborn versus the middle child?

The middle child never gets covered in these studies. It would be, yeah, it would be, yeah,

possible truth to that, but families are so complicated. Why do you want to reduce everything to the order in which you arrived? I don't know, because we're desperate to make meaning. We are. We're desperate to make meaning and to make things make sense. And, you know, it's like, and then when we see something that deeply resonates, it gives us a sense of belonging and place. And like, you know, I'll see all the Gen X, you know, show up. We drank out of a water hose.

We left on our bikes at 6 a.m. and came back at 10 p.m. and that's actually true. We did. I got dysentery playing organ trail. Yeah, so it's like, so it's also a way for us to

really unspoken connection to other firstborn daughters. And, you know, so I think it's something

very human about it. It's just that anything that emotionally resonates and gives us something

“is very vulnerable to being misused. Yeah, and exploited. And exploited. Yeah, I think that's”

right. Yeah. Okay. Let's go to the other question. I thought this was this is an interesting meta question that actually a bunch of different people have submitted. The basic question as I tried to synthesize across them was, how do you think about the trade-off between authenticity and just releasing a podcast as you run it and editing to deliver your best material? And I don't know that we have fully figured out how we're going to do that moving forward, right? Yeah. I'm a

no edit person. And I am a not editing disrespect the listeners time person. Let's cut out the the

fat, which might be a third of the episode. And I'm more of a believer that we're trying to challenge

each other in caring, respectful ways. We're trying to think of new ideas. We're trying to challenge ourselves. And I want a podcast that reflects the fact that this is that's not a fast moving process that there are empty spaces that people are uncomfortable with. And the rush to fill them is one of the greatest barriers to deep thinking, deep conversation and meaningful. So I don't want to edit something. It would be like asking someone to take my wrinkles out. It's like this is this

is it. I've earned all of these, the smiles, the cry that you know. And so for me, I don't think of it

“as being disrespectful to the listener. I think about it as being honest. I love that framing of it.”

How do you think about then the dilemma of, I've gotten messages over the years from people saying, yours is the only podcast I listen to because it's every minute as well used. And I feel like I can fit it into my day. I don't want to lose those people. No. The biggest fans, the people who read all of our stuff are probably going to listen regardless. I don't know. I mean, I guess finding a happy medium. I think one of the things that we're doing is we're trying new structures. So we're

doing like 30 minutes of this and we're giving people the playbook at the top. I'd be open to listener feedback. I would have a very hard time. And I know this is like, this is my number one in the program, which I believe in, that I make everything a moral issue. I mean, you're a huge moralizer. It's true. Correct. She says it's one of your best and also most challenging qualities. Okay. Whatever. But I would almost feel unethical to take a conversation where there were

pauses and it was hard and we were trying to figure it out and we were looking like we're struggling to be respectful and make it sound like to do, to do, to do, to do because that's not the way the world works and everyone's need to do, to do, to do, to do is dangerous. And so I guess where it comes in for me is maybe the, I've been thinking about this. Maybe it's more structure letting listeners know what's going to happen, being explicit why we leave some pauses in and finding a happy medium.

Like one thing that is like one thing that's for sure, I hope that people don't confuse

organic conversation with a lack of preparedness because I'm always prepared. You're always prepared.

Like, now we don't prepare together on purpose. This is much more interesting. It's more interesting. We only think we've done so far, it's just a line on the topic. That's it. And so I think that's

“important because I think that's how conversation is real. Yeah. Like I don't, I don't say,”

hey Steve, babe, at 6 o'clock I want to have a conversation about these things. Let's prep it together. I'm going to say this and actually I don't always need Steve for my conversations. I just have them with him and then I let him know whether he's in the shit house or not. But, but yeah, I think we're just trying to get it right. I think there's, I think there's value in maybe a distinction that that just became clear to me, which is there are conversations where the process is important

to show in their conversations where we're trying to share useful content. And I think the former requires more let the, let the episode run. Yes. And the latter, if we went down a 17 minute rabbit hole, maybe people only need to hear 10 minutes of that. I think it's a huge watch out

with studies. Oh, yeah. Wait, wait, wait. But let's talk about that one more. Yeah, yeah, I know.

“Well, just keep practicing. And we, I love the feedback. I get a lot of feedback constructive and”

positive on LinkedIn, which is where my comments are open and I like to get in there and respond

to people. So yeah, I'm open to it. But I do think it's meaningful to show that if you're actually

actively, and I have to do this with leaders a lot. When we teach active listening, the hardest thing that we have to break is you preparing your response while someone else is talking.

I don't want to miss anything you're saying when you say it. Therefore, if I'm going to respond

in a meaningfully respectful way, I need a minute to think about what I'm going to say that.

“So I brought my notebook. Yeah, that's why, but yeah, I mean, like, I need to capture that. So it's”

not taking up space to my brain so that I can listen to you. Yeah, and maybe there is something about edits to make it easier for a listener. I'm not convinced that people, in fact, I've seen a lot of feedback for both of us, that these people, one person use this term exactly. Thank God,

“you're not in-site machines. That's not what we need. We don't know how to talk to each other.”

I thought that was a compliment. I want to be an inside machine. Yeah, I do not. I wouldn't be like a but happy medium. Yes. That's true. And we'll experiment and correct. Yes, based on data. Okay. And if you're pulling from LinkedIn, I'm going to draw from Spotify and Instagram. Oh, perfect. I will have a range. Yeah, and we'll use the one I like best. The one we like best. See you next week. Yep. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brune Brown, Education and Research Group,

and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.