145. Radical Curiosity: The Intersection of Brain Science and DEI with Eric Bailey
Communication, Relationships and Your Brain
How does brain science connect with communication and relationship building? And how does that intersect with empathy?
Utilizing brain science has the potential to shift conversations and dynamics around race, diversity, empathy, and healing.
Eric Bailey joins Erica for a discussion of how brain science influences our relationships, our imperfect allyship, and how both are ongoing processes.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
Conversational principles for when you don’t agree
The brain science of defensiveness and why we can’t learn until we calm down
How the illusion of certainty thwarts allyship
Two questions to engage in discussion with radical curiosity
Facts and Feelings
Honored as Diversity Leader of the Year, Eric is the creator of the Principles of Human Understanding™, a leadership and communication methodology based in brain science and psychology. Eric’s unique style blends fact and emotion and finds ways to appeal to the analytical thinkers, the emotional feelers, and everyone in between. Eric has a unique ability to communicate seemingly complex concepts in practical, easy-to-comprehend ways, aiding in self-awareness and knowledge retention.
As a honoree of the prestigious 40 Under 40 award, Eric has been featured on CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Fox Soul, Huffington Post, Forbes, the Consciously Unbiased Podcast and has helped leaders and teams across the world see common problems from new and different perspectives. Eric works with Google Inc, the US Air Force, Los Angeles County, the City of St. Louis, MO, Phoenix Police Department and many more. Eric also runs a YouTube series of 2-minute executive lessons called The Walking Meeting.
Eric has a Master’s degree in Leadership and Organizational Psychology from Saint Louis University and is a lifetime learner of human and organizational behavior. When not working or researching, you can find Eric and his wife Jamie racing on their road bikes, being cheered on by their three children.
Productive Dialogues
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Eric Bailey begins by explaining that brain science is actually a collection of different fields that are related to the brain, including psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and even anthropology. His particular focus is how these fields combine to impact how we experience and move through the world.
“What’s really fascinating to me is understanding the ways in which our brains work so that we can understand the world around us.”
Eric says his focus isn’t on controlling our brains, but on understanding why we and the people around us react in certain ways. “Once you understand that foundation, it becomes so much more easy to interact with people on a different, more human level.”
He says that his interest in this kind of brain science goes as far back as his childhood, when he would find himself mediating arguments between friends, and trying to help them see each other’s sides.
As an adult, he says, seeing multiple sides of an argument may mean having to let go of the need to be right, and put ourselves “in a really uncomfortable place of vulnerability and trying to learn something from [someone] who’s very obviously frustrated and offended [us].”
He tells of an instance of engaging with a Facebook comment decrying systemic racism by asking the poster question about how he defines systemic racism rather than listing off facts and figures to disprove his views.
“Because I opened up to the possibility that someone else had something meaningful to say…we actually got to a place where he calmed a lot because he got to vent out his frustration and he got to say it out loud and he knows that I heard him…And that's the power of understanding these kinds of brain science principles in the context of the D, E, and I conversation.”
Erica asks about using these principles in the context of the current debates around Critical Race Theory.
Eric says he has successfully used the same conversational tactics of asking how they define the concept with people who are afraid of Critical Race Theory.
“Counterintuitively…what I’ve found most effective is giving them the platform to vent. And try to understand where they’re coming from, what unique experiences or insights they may have, and then speak to that instead of trying to prove that they’re wrong from the outset.”
Erica adds that in her experience, “the space where I can have the dialogue and remind people that I am not here to tell you as a human being that you are wrong…can sometimes create an opportunity where the shoulders do come down and there is an opportunity to actually have a productive dialogue.”
We Can’t Learn When We’re Defensive
But, Erica continues, sometimes we do wind up in these interactions frustrated, hurt and offended, and the dialogue comes from a place of defensiveness which stems from a place that needs healing. She asks Eric where brain science intersects with healing.
Eric says that when people are defensive or their fight or flight response is engaged, the brain actually diverts blood from the frontal lobe and language processing centers to our extremities and at that point, they cannot be open to learning from us.
He continues that when you understand the signs and symptoms of that defensiveness in yourself and others, it gives you the opportunity to calm yourself down, calm the other person down, and then have a conversation when they are mentally and physiologically in a place to learn.
“It is an exercise in patience in always being the other who has to take the step forward first… [but] understanding the brain science really gives you the tools necessary to keep down your own defensiveness, recognize their defensiveness, and then use whatever methods are appropriate in that moment to help diffuse that.”
The Brain Science of Allyship
Erica asks Eric what happens when you’re the person who’s trying to navigate their feelings and have a teachable moment when they are likely frustrated themselves.
Eric agrees that these are not easy conversations and employing these brain science-based conversational tactics won’t always work. The point is to keep trying to approach others with patience, empathy, and understanding, “if we can get better at that as a society, then we’ve done the right thing.”
He continues, “It’s tough because sometimes we just want them to know how wrong they are…And one of the brain science principles that is really important in that context is…the illusion of certainty.”
Our brains project certainty, even if there is none, making us sure that we’re right, even if we don’t have clear evidence that we are.
The illusion of certainty, he says, takes ideas, turns them into beliefs, turns them into feelings, and they get bigger and bigger until we are certain about them.
If we can learn that we’re not always right, “we can hold open the possibility that there is something out there for us to learn.”
Erica says those gray areas where both people are right somewhere and wrong somewhere is where imperfect allyship shows up.
If you’re an ally, she says, you don’t assume you’re always right or that you have nothing left to learn. “We all have learning and unlearning to do, no matter how much we have already done.”
She adds, “it’s such a necessity to remind yourself that being wrong is not always a negative thing.”
Eric agrees that some of the most important things we can do are learn to acknowledge when we are wrong or that we don’t know something and to apologize when we’ve made mistakes.
He says, “the only things in life we can learn are things that we don’t yet know.”
The problem comes, he continues, when we project that we know everything or that we have no room to grow. He says he notices this in people’s resistance to engaging with DEI work, that they don’t want to make mistakes.
He says, “you’re going to make a mistake…The important thing is how are you going to respond when you make a mistake? Because that’s how we move forward.”
When someone points out your mistakes, you have an opportunity to learn, or to get defensive. “When you understand those principles, it’s like, oh, there might be a lot more in this world for me to learn.”
Erica adds that a lot of people don’t recognize the gift they’re being given when someone you’ve intentionally or unintentionally offended is still willing to engage in a conversation with you about the harm.
“When there's an opportunity to be in conversation, and again, this person does not owe you that, but when they are choosing to give you that, I need you to understand how much of a gift that is.”
Radical Curiosity
Eric says the way to dismantle the illusion of certainty is through radical curiosity.
“What if you went through the world saying, what do I have to learn in this situation?”
He says he tries to ask this question of himself every time he’s in a disagreement with someone, whether it’s a family member or a stranger on Facebook.
He asks the person he’s in a disagreement with, “why are you so passionate about your position?”
Asking that question acknowledges, with a positive connotation, that the other person has a position that is different from ours and that their strong feelings about it are valid.
This question gets beyond proving their position with facts and figures, underneath the argument to the emotional or experience-based motivations for their position.
“That question can fundamentally shift the way you show up in conversation and it will change the way that they show up in conversation, because they’re going to feel your curiosity, they’re going to feel your empathy, and they’re going to react differently than if you try to tell them that they’re wrong.”
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