Harvard Psychologist, Psychologist for the Boston Marathon Medical Team, Author of “The Winner’s Brain”

1Huddle Podcast Episode #101

On this Bring It In podcast episode, 1Huddle’s CEO and Founder Sam Caucci sat down with Dr. Jeff Brown, assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, psychologist for the Boston Marathon, and author of  The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use To Achieve Success.

As a champion of cognitive-behavioral psychology, Jeff was on the scene during the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 as a first responder and has helped countless runners who were affected by that event. He is committed to attacking the root of psychological problems not just in the sports world, but in general, at a time where people feel more isolated than ever post-Covid.

On this Episode of Bring it In season four, Dr. Jeff Brown and Sam discussed the importance of training the brain to not fear failure and making sure that employers and employees are connected on a personal level.

Audio available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

TOP 3 HIGHLIGHTS

Below are some of the insights Dr. Jeff Brown shared during our chat, edited for length and clarity. You can find more Bring It In podcast episodes here.

• “A leadership skill is actually being able to communicate with your workers.”
• “It’s okay to fail.”
• “Let them mess up and screw up “

FULL TRANSCRIPTION

Sam: Well, Jeff, to kick it off, do you mind sharing, I guess, a little bit of background on yourself and maybe what led you to write, The Winner’s Brain.

Jeff: Sure. I’m a clinical and sports psychologist, and I have enjoyed always taking information from research and translating that into usable pieces that humans, you, me, our neighbor can actually take and put into play because sometimes research is quite lofty and detailed and so forth. And honestly, it’s hard to wrap our heads around them. 

So in writing The Winner’s Brain, we knew that. There’s a lot of books about pathology and psychopathology, things that go wrong with the brain, but we wanted to write something about the brain that lets us know what the brain’s capable of doing, what its strengths are and how do we sort of implement that.

So we did that. We looked at the current research at the time and found some pretty impressive things. Also had a really wonderful opportunity to pick our own brains to find out and ask ourselves: well, “who do we know that does this, does what the research says?” And we went to those people, people that your listeners may recognize and asked them:  “This is what the research says. What do you think? Does this make sense to you?” 

And got to incorporate their stories in the winner’s brain as well. So it’s not just about pop psychology type book, it’s also a bit biography where some of the people share how they utilize their brains, things that they confided in us and gave us permission to share.

Other things that we found out were some of the pieces of information were so simple, but they took time to change the brain and the landscape of the brain. Neuroplasticity is the word for that. A lot of people have maybe heard that word by now, but the neuroplasticity, think of it as like,  some people would argue if I said, think of silly putty, but it’s, in some ways, when we take something like clay or that, and we shape it. 

The brain has the capacity to be shaped, although the changes in shape are very, very, very, very, very slight. Nothing like the squished, silly putty on the bottom of your shoe that, you, you didn’t pay attention to when you walked across the room floor and the kids left it behind.

Sam: What was, I guess, the favorite part of the book for you to write? 

Jeff: Oh, I tell you, it’s easy to tell you. And that was to get to speak with some of the most wonderful brains out there that we could connect with and who were willing and what was very interesting is in those interviews, those were interviews that allowed us just to literally sit back and talk and hear how someone’s brain worked and let them chew on that research.

Keep in mind, the people that we spoke to were not researchers. They were profoundly expert in their fields, so they then took that information. But. I will tell you this, that when we reached out to people who we wanted to interview. Most of the ones that agreed to do the interview were very interested in the brain.

Much like your listeners, I’m sure they wanted to know, well, what do we need to know about the brain? I’ve always been interested in the brain, but it’s always the liver, kidney hearts, joints, aches and pains that get the attention and the brain’s at the center of all of it, but, for these people that are really good, they too, are curious about the brain and, and were willing to talk.

Andrew Wyeth comes to mind. Andrew Wyeth, very, very well known artist. He passed away and, and in fact, I am 99% certain that I did the last interview that he did with anyone before he passed away at age 90. And to sit and listen to Andrew Wyatt at his home in Maine, talk about the different aspects of the people that he observed and that he painted, and, he had some. interesting relationships with neighbors that were just, across the field or through the woods. 

And he would go in and had permission. Even though there’s one, I can’t recall the name of the painting, but  I believe the neighbor’s last name was Kerner. And the Kerners allowed him to come in before they woke up in the morning and paint their pictures while they were sleeping.

And so there are pictures like that. But what’s interesting is that he had a brain somehow. figured out those opportunities and the way he described different things. So I always think of that interview as one that was very special in that,it’s in the archives of the Wyeth Museum. But it’s also special because,  the way his artistic brain described things certainly let me know that his brain was unique to him, and one that would rarely be replicated.

Sam: One of the things  I was taking outta the book is it, and it’s right here. And as you can see, and it’s pretty marked up, Jeff. I like to see that, I mean, and the beginning you went deep on how the brain works, which was,I had myself coming back and reading, rereading and rereading.

I guess, one of the things I thought about is how, in the workforce today, an organization’s ability to learn and continue to learn from its successes and its mistakes to people’s ability to continue to learn is really critical and important. And like you mentioned, the brain plays a, that’s right, at the center of it. 

Right. I guess are there any things that you would pinpoint that are really critical today for business leaders who are thinking about coaching and development, is there, any of the eight strategies you would really double click on in this moment as companies who are thinking about how they create

Jeff: Sure

Sam: High performance learning environments? 

Jeff: Well, yeah, there are several things we could probably apply most of those points to that environment and into that, to that job, skillset. As you were saying that, I’ll just tell you what. It came to my mind just kind of freely, and that was the first one, was the opportunity radar that we talk about.

The opportunity radar has to do. We call that, basically looking for an alternative way of doing something that everybody else is already trying to do it in a certain way, you wanna come up with a different plan altogether and come up with that opportunity and look for opportunities. Now in a lot of workplaces, sometimes those opportunities that are created or identified to try don’t come from leadership.

Leadership has to get those ideas to come from those who are actually doing the job and working. So, a brainstorming session or an ongoing conversation about how we can do something different and looking for an opportunity to be successful in a different way, is very, very key.

And I think that that’s something that good leaders can do is to tap into that resource of their workers and see what other opportunities, because leaders, I talk to a lot of leaders in my practice and, and when I’m consulting with groups and what one of the concerns is they feel like everything rests on their shoulders as the leader. 

Well, that’s actually a leadership skill is to be able to communicate with your workers, the people that you supervise to get the best out of them. And if you’re doing that, then you’re actually being a very good leader. 

It’s oftentimes people feel like they have to compete, and they use strategies that keep them up at night late. They think that everything rests on their shoulders, but that opportunity radar is there for a purpose.

And we think that that’s successful, for people with winner’s brains. I’ll give you an example. Some people may recognize the comedian’s name Phyllis Diller. And Phyllis Diller was known for years and she, she ended up having the opportunity to play and, and be paid quite well on one particular stage, but she wasn’t very well known yet.

But she knew that another name some people may recognize is Bob Hope. And Bob Hope was going to attend another function at  that same night, and she had the opportunity to perform there at no cost. They didn’t pay her to perform, but she got to perform in front of Bob Hope and that’s the opportunity radar, perfect example. 

How she looked for an opportunity, because most people, what would they do? They’d grab for the money and they’d grab the stage because I’m getting paid. It’s kind of like what you hear people say now, “oh, I’m, I’m looking for a paid internship.” Okay, well that’s great, but I tell you what, it may be an internship that actually launches you into your career, that launches you into something new, something exciting, something that is novel and unique to you.

So don’t do what everybody else does. Standing around, waiting for that cash to transfer to your hand, because that shows your value.

Look for that opportunity, like Phyllis Diller did and speak on the stage, and she said she did such a terrible job that she went and hid behind a column, after her performance. She said, but Bob Hope still came around and found her. And they were introduced that night and they had  a lovely friendship over the years and she always spoke fondly of him, maybe even in our interviews.She spoke highly of him. 

Sam: That’s great. I had read recently in, I believe it was one of these Accenture studies that, that came out and they made the claim that a young person today , maybe, and that’s Gen Alpha by the way. Now we’re on, we’re to the top of the alphabet, I guess, will have, will probably live to a hundred, could potentially live to 130 to 140 years old and may have a 30 to 35 hold, 30 to 35 different jobs in a lifetime.

And, as I was reading the book, I read this one passage you wrote, you talk about memory and you talk about the concept of how there’s so much emphasis on how to get information into the brain, and keep it there to regurgitate it later. And, so many organizations are, maybe deploying learning and training in this very stage on stage old fashioned method. 

What are some of the critical pieces backed by your research from how the brain works that you feel are critical ingredients? If I’m an HR leader out there thinking about how I onboard the next class of team members effectively and quickly, and develop them, what are some things that I should be doing that maybe are contrary to what I might think when it comes to teaching and learning and onboarding?

Jeff: That’s a great question. I think there are multiple ways of answering that. I would say I have to answer that with the same answer that people ask me why I got into psychology. And a lot of people say, well, you probably like helping people. And it’s nice to help people, but I love problem solving, and I think that’s what leaders need to be teaching their people now is problem solving.

And what’s most important is knowing if someone knows how to solve a problem. I think that sometimes those skills,now because of technology, have been lost. People don’t readily recognize a formula for solving a problem. I’ll give you a good example. Two Christmases ago, I received a big box on my front porch and it had someone else’s name and someone else’s address.

But it had been delivered on my porch, so I thought, and this was a few days before Christmas day, and I thought, somebody’s gonna want that. So I looked up, I Googled the name of the company, called them, got ahold of someone and explained the situation. I said, “something’s been dropped off here. It’s way off. It’s not just across the street. I’d just drop it across the street. But it needs to go to a different place. Considerably different. I’m not sure why I have it.”

And her response was, “Well, can I get your number and call you back? I’m not sure what to do about this. And I said, well, I said, “you’ve got the information that you need.

I said,” do you have, and I walked her through the problem solving on the phone. I said, do you have something to write with and a pen?: She said,” well, yes, but I’m trying to use my computer and there’s no field for this on my computer. “And I said, “there won’t be a field for this on your computer because it’s not predictable and you have something to write with.”

And I talked her through that, wrote everything down, and she wrote things down, including my phone number. And then I got a call later from her manager thanking me. For doing the training for her on how to deal with this package. And it was a matter of basically having the shipping company swing back by, cuz they were in the neighborhood a lot, swing back by, pick it up and take it to where it needs to go.

And she was wanting my address and the address where the package was supposed to go. What were the contents? I said I didn’t open it. So that’s a good example of making sure the people that we are in charge of, and I don’t say just in charge of, I mean in charge of their learning, in charge of their development, in charge of their confidence, in charge of their self-esteem.We need to help those people problem solve well, I think memory is so important. 

My favorite example of memory is, I know we’re, we’re doing this in an audio format, but it is the circle of knowledge. And if you picture a circle that’s in the air and you picture the perimeter, the circumference of that circle,  everything inside the circle is everything you know.

Everything outside the circle, outside the circumference, everything you don’t know. And the line that makes up the circle is everything, you know. And as everything you know gets bigger, the circle gets bigger, but you also are able to now recognize more of what you don’t know. And that’s the key.

Getting people to ask for help on what they don’t know, so they can learn to problem solve at that layer and at that level. I’m far more concerned when I work with interns or I do, consulting with individual leader or whoever. I’m very interested in how they solve problems and so that’s what we’ll do sometimes is spend time coming up with scenarios that will never happen.

But it starts exercising those problem solving muscles in the brain, and, and helps with that. Now we do have access to so much more information. You and I we’re both guilty, Sam, of like googling something, but I know that I’ve Googled it a dozen times. and I still can’t remember it. Well, it’s because, and it’s perfect, it makes perfect sense.

I didn’t encode that information into the brain. Like the brain likes to store it. I used it in a very quick and dirty. I Googled something, there’s the answer. I used it and never really let it soak into the different stages of memory that our brains are there to accept and take. So that was that, that’s one reason why we do that.

And I still laugh at that. You know, we Google something that’s so mundane, but we now through technology, have been trained to do that. And again, that’s, I’d have to admit that it’s also us practicing not remembering. I think that’s one of the things that technology has taught us and unfortunately, I should say, has taught us that we are learning not to really think for ourselves as much as we need to.

And I think that’s where we get into these black holes of button pushing. And if you need this, press one, press two, press three. But then they haven’t been updated and they don’t go anywhere. And then it just disconnects. And so like, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of like, it’s kind of like a microwave or something back in the day that just never did heat something.

I don’t know. There’s some parallel there from a different generation, but we need to make sure that we’re trying to encode that information and recall it so we can be more efficient in that moment and good leaders are gonna try to help their folks do that. 

Sam: Yeah. I think one of the sections I liked was the kind of area, the area of the book, talking about resilience and failure to that point you just made. Why are, why are we so afraid of failure as we grow older?

Because it’s not true. I have a five year old daughter and it’s funny, she’s not afraid to fail at anything. Jumped offs, all types of stuff in the kitchen. She’s not afraid to fail, tries, learns, thinks she can make eggs in the morning. You know, but as we get older, it feels like maybe not just as individuals, but even as managers, leaders we’re, we sometimes create these environments where we’re fragile and afraid for failure to take place.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think the reasons are probably multiple. I guess I would want to ask the question of somebody who was afraid of that. Why are they afraid of that? What do you suppose somebody would say? If we ask them, why they’re afraid of failing? So I would ask the question, well, if you failed, what’s, what’s the bad thing that will happen? I wonder what they would say. Do you have any ideas? What, what would you predict? They would say, what would they say to that?

Sam: I think they might say, I think they might take it in a different direction. I think you might hear a manager say something effective, well, that’s not the way it’s been done. You know? 

Jeff:Yeah. 

Sam: When you’re going through a, you’re training a new bartender for a role, and the one thing you can do is let them learn on the job with the right coaching over their shoulder, around them, challenging them, but that might create too much chaos. So instead, we maybe put them in front of a video that they click through. So, I don’t, I think it might be a response of that’s just not the way it’s been done before. 

Jeff: So, and the reason I’m asking that question is to get at the belief of underneath that feeling, so  the feeling is: I’m afraid that I’ll screw up, and so that you’re really uncomfortable. It feels uncomfortable to do something different and new.

So that’s where a manager would actually, and I’ve done this with different people in different areas where it’s possible, go ahead and let them mess up, screw up and let’s test out failing and see if it is. If it’s as intolerable as you think it’s going to be. And did the world fall off of its axis when you screwed up?

And so if you ask somebody to make an old fashioned, but use lime juice. Okay, well we’ve never done it that way before. Okay, well go ahead and do it anyway. Let’s taste it, see what it tastes like. And then it consolidates for us what an old fashioned really tastes like. We already knew that. We already knew it when we tasted something and it wasn’t, but to use your bartender example, that’s what we would do and say, okay, so we screwed it up and we don’t have to be uncomfortable with that. 

We just let it be what it is. And that sometimes will neutralize that fear for people. Now, there are different things that are more systemic, organizational charts, different ways of dealing with production. And you have to just go in and, and expect that it’s okay to fail.

And if you’re trying not to fail, then you’re not really. Spending time on the job, you’re trying not to fail, and we really want to, want to do that. I worked with a lot of athletes. I’m the psychologist for the Boston Marathon Medical Team, and I’ve done that for over 20 years. And so I get to talk to a lot of high performing people, and  I love hearing about their fears and their angst and things like that, not because it’s exciting, but it’s usually pretty easy to fix because people are pretty bright and when you give them the way to think about it in a healthy way, they’ll usually respond to that. 

A great example of that is, after the bombing in 2013. And yes, I was there for that as a first responder and was about 75 yards from the first bomb.But we had runners for two or three years after that, still coming in to run a 5k, a 10k, and feeling tremendous guilt for having run. 

And they weren’t there even for the bombing, but they just felt terrible. That kind of survivor guilt experience was what a lot of those were going through, and it was easy to remind them that we feel guilty for doing something intentional to try to hurt someone and unless their lives fit that model or fit that formula, rather then they could go ahead and let go of that guilt and be pleased to run in an event that was associated with something that, coming back to resilience,  Boston showed that resilience so you don’t have to feel guilty because you didn’t intentionally do anything to draw harm to someone and that’s how we, I’m gonna say manipulate.

Manipulate usually has a negative connotation, right? Sam,where  well, we’ve manipulated,” I don’t wanna be manipulated”, but we tinker with, we manipulate, we rearrange probably is the better word, how we think about things. So we can get rid of those nasty demons that are the negative thoughts that we have that lead to negative emotions.

So, if you don’t watch it, I’ll just keep talking. So you probably should interrupt me about now so you can keep me on. 

Sam: That was good!

Jeff: Because it’s, it’s really fascinating and it’s a process of learning and it’s a process that I go through as well. I wanna learn how I think and how I can think better and be a better thinker.

Sam: Yeah. I want to throw one thing at you. You know, today in America, it’s said that one in two workers are low wage. They’re a $400 parking ticket away from poverty. That’s 80 percent of those workers are service sector. Two and three. Don’t have a college degree. They are, they are workers on the front lines who can’t work from home because it’s which job do they work from home for?

Is it the first one, the second one or the third one,  given the environment they’re in. And as I went through the book, I thought a lot about as a, I was a business, you know, as a business leader, a coach, someone who’s trying to develop their workforce, create a world where every one of their workers compete.

I want to create winners brains is what I want to do. I guess speaking directly to the C level executives that are out there today, we’re kicking off 2023 with a potential recession. Layoffs are the theme of the last few weeks and maybe the next few months. What, what can a C level executive take from your book when they think about all of the chaos happening around their environment and the things that their employees are thinking?

What, I don’t know if there’s maybe a specific strategy in the book that you feel more than ever. If you do this one thing, what should we be doing? In order to create a world where not only every worker is in a position  to win, but by extension an organization can then win as well. 

Jeff: I think the answer to that, in one of our chapters, we talked about the self and you mentioned resilience and, and,  we actually had the opportunity to interview Laura Lenny, who is on Netflix, Ozark popular show.

And, we talked about being the real self cuz you’re, you can be a public self where the faces that you give to people, everything’s fine. But your real self is like really what’s going on in your life. And I would encourage managers to get to know the real self of their employees, even if that’s tough because you need to kind of know the backdrop of those lives as best you can so you can try to help meet needs that they have.

We have a tremendous growing problem, I believe, with social media, technology. We have research that’s showing that 20 minutes or more on social media per day can make you feel a little bit flat and depressed and add to loneliness and isolation. We need to have relationships. I think that was one of the things that almost scared me a little bit about Covid was that a lot of people just weren’t around other people. 

We used to talk about it in developmental psychology that, well, human social behavior is very important for individuals to feel connected. And so, okay, well that went away. We took that very fundamental something out that we glossed over in developmental psych and now it’s gone.

And I even had people calling and saying, I don’t remember how to even kind of, Behave around other people. Like I’ve been in my house, I’ve been closed up, I’ve been in my own world, I haven’t talked to people. I maybe have been on a phone call or something like that. But if you’ll recall, we didn’t do that right away.

We had a lot of isolation. And so we still have isolation through social media. And those companies too. They need to have good leadership, but those companies are also set up to help generate sales and the algorithms and things that are aimed at you based on what your preferences are.

It gets a little bit scary. It’s like reading,  keeping somebody engaged in isolation on something that draws them in. It’s just something. So what your original question though, Sam, and that was what, what can we do? And that is for the leaders to actually know their employees and to actually know something about them besides just what they do at work and get to know that person, understand that person. It might surprise people that, oh, I didn’t realize you were working two other jobs.  

Never knew that’s because that person’s public self was presenting that this is what I do. But their real self is, is hard at work, trying to keep things on track and, and keep the wheels on the wagon.

Sam: And when you think about that as also as you talk about motivation being critical to performance. I mean, as you get, I would assume as you get to know the people on your team more, you’re in a better position to be able to connect things that you’re doing as an organization to each person’s individual motivations.Is that fair?

Jeff: That’s very fair. And, not just their motivations, but their strengths. You know what, it’s always good to hear a story about how somebody started out low person on the totem pole and now they’re the director of such and such division. I love those stories because it shows resilience, persistence, learning, motivation, self-confidence.

I mean, it just goes on and on and on, and usually you get to hear that person, oh yeah, I started out at this job, but now I’m over here. And that’s just really cool when you see somebody have success like that and they really deserve a pat on the back, but who doesn’t get the pat on the back probably is the leader or mentor that said, “Hey, you can do this.

Let’s go make this happen. Let’s get this to happen.”

Sam: Yeah. And again, in the research in the science, it’s saying that that motivation results in longer lasting retention. That’s what I took away was it’s not even a nice, it’s not a nice to have. Right. You know, this isn’t you, you can do it or not. If you want better outcomes, you kind of have to.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. And it goes back to also what we know about athletes and coaches. Coaches need to know about, not just a slugging percentage or at bats or, fielding percentages, whatever they need to know. You know, if that athlete’s grandmother’s sick, they need to know if that athlete’s having trouble at home or if that athlete has trouble sleeping at night because they live in a loud neighborhood. 

They need to, they need to know those things. So that’s, it’s really good when whoever is the supervisor checks in with the supervisee, how could, how could life be better? And then if there’s anything you can do to cause that through either teaching that individual something or just providing it, that’s great too.

That’s great too. People wanna be successful. We want them to be successful. I think in some circumstances, unfortunately, people have also become far more entitled that they think they deserve to be given success. And that’s a whole different conversation to have. But I think in general, humans, and our brains are wired to be good workers, to be thinkers, to be problem solvers, and to really want to do well and enjoy being competent at not just one thing, but probably several things. 

Sam: It’s just everything else that screws it up. 

Jeff: Yeah. Things just kind of can kind of get in a way of life and, some people don’t know how to address that and assert themselves to try to rid themselves of those things that get in the way. 

Sam: Yes. It’s like the brain’s under attack. One of the things I was thinking about, it’s doing a lot of these things, but whether it’s technology. New cycles. Yeah. 

Jeff: Well, I think one of the things that I like to remind people about, I wrote another book related to the Boston Marathon and the running stuff and, it’s the reticular activating system in our brain that picks up cues in the environment. 

And we can choose to give cues to that reticular activating system. It can only hold so much. So we want to give it good cues. It’s the one that, like, if a car backfires, you jump because your reticular activating system picks that up as something that you, you gotta pay attention to that well, when we give ourselves information that’s negative, the reticular activating system is listening to that, and we need to flip that on its end and give the positives to, our brain and to the reticular activating system and feed that and, and help us help ourselves to become more in line with the identity that we want to have. That’s where that chapter focuses on people who don’t really consider themselves runners.

So I tell them, well, Go get your new running shoes. Go get some running gear. Subscribe to running magazines. Buy running books. Start telling people that you’re going for a run. Get yourself some good music, that fits whatever you wanna play, and you start telling your reticular activating system that you’re a runner and start shifting that identity around.

And that’s a beautiful thing to do. And  it’s all right there. Now, some people may be rolling their eyes. Well, yeah, every bit of that takes money. It does to a degree. But there are other things that you can do to kind of mediate the cost of that and still use your reticular activating system because it’s free, it’s already paid for, and it’s the most important piece in that formula.

Sam: Great. I love the section talking about how exercise affects memory and the brain. So now when I run on the Peloton in the morning, Jeff,I read as I do it and I feel like I’m getting smarter. So I dunno if that’s a double, if I get extra multiples, if I try to learn while I’m running or not, you probably might say no, but, that’s how I interpreted it.

Jeff: I think there are different modalities for learning and movement. Moving while you’re learning is one of them, would be one where you could absorb information. As a kid, I was telling this recently to somebody as a kid. I would read everything I could read while I was eating cereal in the morning before school.

And that was a learning modality for me, was eating, I’m just glad that I was eating something that was somewhat healthy and not like ice cream for breakfast, although that would’ve been tempting, right? 

Sam:Yeah, totally. Jeff, I appreciate your time. I got one, one final question. A lot of the  stuff we’ve been talking about is affecting workers in the future of work.What is your hope for the future of work? 

Jeff: Oh, that’s a tremendously good question. My hope is that we will do exactly what we’ve talked about today, and that is learn from where we’ve been and utilize what we know now can work in situations. For example, here we are on a Zoom call, but I don’t want us to neglect social interactions and human contact because that’s very important and I think that we’re seeing that socially, I think we’re seeing that across different demographics that people are not as connected. 

And so for work, I want people to feel like they belong, at work. It’s not just an assignment or job description, and they’re there to you know, complete that one job description in their spare bedroom online, and then go on and do other things.

Yeah, it has improved contact and family time. A lot of families have been around their kids a lot more, but then there were also, parents who were working two jobs and they couldn’t be teaching their kids at what the school was sending home. So what I hope is that we use the stuff that we learn, not try to force the stuff that just didn’t work, and make sure that we’re pushing toward people being connected and feeling that human connection. 

Because that’s what’s also driving up a lot of isolation and isolation drives up other mental health issues, depression, anxiety, suicide, those things, people need to be connected. And so that’s what I would hope for work is that we are as connected as we possibly can be and be very deliberate and intentional about doing it.

Sam: Jeff, thanks for joining us. 

Jeff: You bet.

Topics Discussed: Training, Leadership, Isolation, Mental Health, Psychology