Silvija Seres: Hello and welcome to Lørn.Tech. My name is Silvija Seres and our topic today is the crossing between technology and society especially focused on human behavior. My guest is Sangbreeta Moitra. Third award-winning keynote speaker and global strategist that talks about human relationships and their effect on how we think, how we build and how we buy. Welcome Sangbreeta Moitra

Sangbreeta Moitra: Hi, so lovely to be here. How do I say hi in Norwegian?

Silvija: Hei

Sangbreeta: Okay hei, thought it would be very complicated  

Silvija: Hei works really well. You came to startup extreme to talk about human relationships

Sangbreeta: Human behavior. For me, I love hacking human behavior, I love hacking our patterns and I truly believe that, as we were saying before, we were talking about it before. Ever since I studied neuroscience, I realize that human beings are the world's weirdest animals. Sometimes I think we are even weirder than the wild animals in the world.

Silvija: there is a social side to us that is so complex. 

Sangbreeta: We are illogical, irrational and unpredictable and I sometimes find it almost hilarious and ironic that because we make such unpredictable decisions, we are so obsessed with predicting the future. And if you look at patterns, like thousands of years ago, you don't have technology, but you would, at least in Asian countries, when your child was born you'd go to the astrologer and ask oh, could you predict the future of my child? Why are investment bankers, like if you look at the greatest jobs there's ever been in the world, it's been about people who would predict the future, whether predict the future of your health, predict the future of how long you would live or predict the future of your money. So, we are so obsessed with that, but we often don't realize that that as creatures we are so unpredictable.

Silvija: So how can we hack that?

Sangbreeta: That’s the thing. The first thing to understand the absolute killer machine that is your neural network. To understand your brain and to even more understand your, how you work but get yourself out of your head after that and understand the mind of the person you serve and the crazy and for me what's funny is I call myself like a pattern detector, if that was a job it would be so much fun but it's basically about identifying

Silvija: Are we all pattern detectors?

Sangbreeta: I think it's like something in us that we often, it's like you have a light in the room but you have to choose to switch on the bottom and I think often times we don't choose to identify those patterns even though, we have the system in us to identify. We don't identify the most dangers of which I think we don't I don't identify our blind spots and when I work with, whether it's training teams or whether I'm mentoring startups, I think the s biggest danger is, when you don't understand or find your blind spots. And blind spots may not always be your biggest weakness, it also can be what you think is your biggest strength and you realize after years that what you thought was your biggest strength is actually “meh” but what is really your biggest strength you've never even focused on it. Which is why we end up following a career or service-based around mediocrity. One thing is, of course, understanding your own behavior. The other is truly being able to get out of your head because we're so worked up in our own version, my objective, my mission, my vision. Get ourselves out of our head. Put yourself into the head of the person you're serving and then see yourself from that perspective. Why would I choose to give this person some (4:10???) any of my time, attention, trust or money. Why would I ever do that? 

Silvija: Because I’m curious 

Sangbreeta: Yeah well, I wish everybody who is curious about me hires me. I would be a millionaire

Silvija: Haha

Sangbreeta: So, yeah, that's where it starts.

Silvija: So, Kahneman and Tversky. They work on these human biases, even have a bias for this bloodiness and then the funny thing is, how we all say that well, I see the theory of that, and I can see how that bias works for everybody else but I’m not like that. Why do we people want so desperately to believe that we are more rational than we really are?

Sangbreeta: I don't know is it because of ego? Is it because of grandiose self-estee? But I don’t know. I love Daniel Kahneman and he's actually the supervisor of my favorite speaker of all times, so it's crazy that you mention him. My favorite speaker of all time, I love his mind, he is Dan Ariely, he is a behavioral economist and I think his Ph.D. Supervisor was Daniel Kahneman. And something Daniel Kahneman said that really ignited my mind. He said our brain is not a critical thinker, it's a confirmation seeker and the day I read that line it just was like lightbulb moment because I was like he's right. We do you know, we like to work with people who believe what we believe. We like to keep work with people or collaborate with the organizations whose values match. We are actually just confirmation seekers, we’re always seeking confirmation for existing. Yes, you were saying?

Silvija: I'm just thinking we wouldn't be humans, or the human society would be human society unless we all had that need to be liked because that's you know how you belong. But really being able to free yourself from that and decide for yourself, I think probably the biggest kind of sign of both maturity and strength we can have.

Sangbreeta: I think it's a balance of both, don't you think? Like one part of it is, of course, the alignment and alignment is a positive thing. And a confirmation seeking sounds like you know you're insecure and looking for validation but the powerful part of it is that, it aligns you with the things that are absolutely important to you and the people you serve so that's beautiful, but then equally important is critical thinking because really what is changed? Me changes jumping right in the middle of an extremely comfortable pattern and then messing it up. That pattern you've come to love and be so peaceful with. You just muck it up with your hand and your fist and you jump on it and your brain’s like, “what are you doing whoa whoa”. As soon as it tries to settle down again, you jump with the middle of that and then disrupted.

Silvija: This is why I think diversity matters because I have moved countries and everytime I move to a new country, you do that with all your patterns. Things that you thought were completely here obvious truths about how the world works and how people work suddenly got completely messed up. That's not how you bring up your child. There is no evident truth of having to put them to bed for this or that. And so, I think people who have been in situations for your system of truth has been all messed up several times become much better at trying to figure out those patterns for themselves.

Sangbreeta: Oh, this is such a lovely, I wish this podcast could go on forever because this is such a fun topic. Have you read this book called Black Box Thinking? It’s by Matthew Syed. I would recommend the story. If anyone's listening; read that book, Black Box Thinking. It's fantastic because he said something in that book that I've been thinking about because I don't know my answer yet. But he said that when someone has a really, is obsessed with a certain belief system within them and they are challenged with a reality or with facts or truth that, sorry when they are confronted with facts and truths that challenge their belief, logically, again Daniel Kahneman loves logic. So logically you would think that they would reorganize their belief system, but what humans do, is when they are confronted by challenging truths and facts, they reshape the evidence to fit with their belief. And he gave the example of a village in US somewhere in the rural US where this woman, who became cult leader. She said we're gonna have up apocalypse, I think it was in the 1970s or 80s, and she said apocalypse is coming and then the entire village decided we’re gonna support her. We have to run for shelter, God is going to end the world and they stocked up supplies and they waited in her house and they waited and waited. The rest of the country, as you know writing about it this was like PR gold. Then that day came, everyone's counting the clocks. Okay, apocalypse is coming. Nothing happened and then they thought is coming in a week's time and then nothing happened and then a lot of people went to them and said hey, where is the apocalypse? And they said no we divert of the apocalypse because we stocked up. They reshaped the evidence and actually what happened was as a result of the apocalypse not coming which they thought would come, their beliefs grew even stronger than before and that to me is just fun.

Silvija: I have very lately read the Homo Sapiens. I read Homo Deus some time ago. I kind of delayed Homo Sapiens, I don’t know why, but I loved it and one thing that keeps popping up in my mind as we talking is this concept of if you try to understand somebody's cultural beliefs, their set of rules, don't go asking for their most cherished and evident truths, go ask for the set of the rules and packs that are in contradiction. Every society has these, you know, inconsistencies that we have to live with and we learn to navigate them as humans and that's what makes us humans and that's what really gives us the interesting dilemmas that define our culture and I thought, you know, we humans are really good at navigating these things and then justifying and rationalizing with something that sort of work so you never got go to the bottom of it because it works good enough. I think we are the lovely animals

Sangbreeta: Aren’t we? Oh gosh, it’s so much fun. 

Silvija: But you and I are trying to help people to navigate this new world of exponential transformation. Which kind of challenges really many established truths, but it does so in a way that requires action. So, tell me, how do you help them navigate this?

Sangbreeta:  So, my intention with all my work is to help people transform their personal presence and to be able to transform and humanize the relationships we build at work. I focus on work because that's my comfort zone and when it comes to life and personal relationships, that the domain that's..... 

Silvija: that’s unsolvable 

Sangbreeta: Yeah, unsolvable. Even a therapist needs a therapist. So, I am fascinated by, how can we really amplify human connection and make sure that the technology and all the advancements that are happening right now, they're going to build bring us closer than drive us apart.

Silvija:  But do you mean by optimizing, making efficiencies for teams or leadership kind of structures or?

Sangbreeta: Yes, so it's all people-centric. t's all people-centric sometimes some organizations come to me saying we are creating a service, how can we enable our human connection through this and then we talk about it. With most of my work it’s working primarily with people-centric. Leadership team, company employees, like how will a company that's trying to transform its customer outreach, how will they do that, how will they engage the customer, how do you create customer loyalty? So, it's really about inserting, literally like an injection of ethos and pathos, like those are the frameworks. The basic foundation I think it's first being able to understand your true credibility and why are you the best person right now to even share this opinion. Why you, why now, why this? And why should anyone give you the gift of their time and attention trust or money? Trying to understand people's ethos and many times people don't really know and sometimes, and in big organizations, the problem is that they hide behind the job title. So, the first thing I do is I'm taking away your job title for me right now, I don't care whether you're recruitment manager or a CEO. You must tell me right now; what is the value you offer people? What is the value with which you serve your people? And if people are unable to describe it, that means their ethos is not crystal clear yet. Because it's very easy, the larger the organization gets, the bigger the team gets to hide behind a job title. So, the number one for me is to understand whether people are able to define the true ethos and as I said to you and another part of ethos is, I really learned from that.... Was I telling you about Barack Obama?

Silvija: No

Sangbreeta: Oh gosh I'm sorry I'm confusing conversations. I was thinking about leadership a while ago and you know so many books, so many articles, podcasts, but what is a true leader? And then I came across this documentary about Barack Obama, and he said in that documentary when a request reaches the desk of the president of any country, that president knows that we have to make a decision that is so painful and stressful that nobody wants to take it. We have to be the ones who take the pain of making a very, very difficult decision. And that was like boom in my head cause I was like, right now we are pushing choices on our customers, on the people we’re working with. So many options, so many options, but instead of pushing choices on people can we take away the pain of decision-making for them?

I will give you a very funny example of this, very basic. I was in Napoli, just before this I spoke Italy and I had to take the taxi from the Napoli train station to my hotel. It's a four Minute taxi ride the guy tried to offer me three ways to pay money for it. He said, “we can do 15 euros fixed rate, we can go by meter or how we make a deal right now”. And I said why are you giving me three options for a four-minute car ride? Come on, let's go by the meter. So, we are offering, we're bombarding people with choices, but those choices are making people really stressful. How are you serving them? How are you taking away the pain of decision-making? That was number one. And the number two was how they want people to feel when they work with you?  I don't know if you watched my TedTalk already?

Silvija: No, I didn’t

Sangbreeta: So, and that, maybe I'll keep it a really brief. I use the example of paintings. You know The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci was painted, what, 500 years ago. It's just a painting, think about it, it's just a pretty painting. Very well painted of 13 men eating and drinking Italian stuff, Italian food, Italian wine. So what? Who cares? What is it that we’re chasing? Is it that for 500 years we’re fascinated by this painting, people make fakes across the world because it's a nicely painted stuff? It's because of that feeling. That feeling conveys premonition, suspense. Jesus has revealed one of them is going to betray him. We stare at that painting looking at those faces trying to gorge those feelings. If you look at the world of the most powerful brands with phenomenal customer loyalty, they are not saying “we’re the number one in business or best price ever”. They are saying «we want you to feel. If you have a body you can do it, you can just do it, put on your shoes, run, run like the wind». They're saying you use our product, we want you to feel like you're worth everything. You are phenomenal, you are beautiful, you are a queen. Apple will think differently. They say you're not one of those many followers, you dare to disrupt. You dare to think different. so paintings are doing it, brands are doing it. What about us? How are we making people feel? What is that feeling that is synonymous with me? That’s different from every single person who wants the same thing as me, who does the same thing as me. I think that's the core foundation where I start. And just to understand, people's responses is the baseline and then we build from there.

Silvija: Very good. Where should people start to try to understand each other better?

Sangbreeta:  I think the number one is first understand yourself with your ethos and patos, the second will be to get yourself out of your head and to put yourself into the mind of the person that you're going to work with and this kind of second person, third person inwards observation, I think is very powerful, extremely powerful. And the third suggestion which many people find difficult to do, I did as well in the beginning, but it works really well, is to be a part of Mastermind groups.  It's such a random suggestion but I really recommend it, especially with unlike minds. Don't sit and talk to people you always get along with because in those brainstorming... It's like a buddy mentoring system it's actually sparring, and I do it with at least six people and these are people who are doing completely different careers than me. Theirs are very unlike mine is completely different perspectives, but in order to disrupt you to be around someone who doesn't think like you. So even with companies I sit down with their HR teams and I create Mastermind groups for the leadership, where we make sure that the people were sitting together aren’t like best buddies. Mastermind groups around people who are unlike minds, who will disrupt each other's patterns, who will find blind spots and places you don't think it existed in your thinking. For me, actionable strategies are these.

Silvija: Do you have a quote you’d like to leave as a little pattern gift to our listeners? 

Sangbreeta: My favorite quote, so many. I would say “it is your attitude, not your aptitude that will determine your altitude” 

Silvija: Very nice. If people to remember one thing from our conversation what would you like it to be?

Sangbreeta: That you are such a sharp lady and I am very curious to know what is the future of digital and I think always be fascinated by this amazing master machinery that is your neural network your thought process and your human behavior.

Silvija: Sangbreeta Moitra, we will look for your TedTalk now. 

Sangbreeta: It is called Transform your Presence

Silvija: Transform your Presence. And thank you so much for coming here to, lovely but rainy Voss and start-up extreme and reminding us about the importance and the necessity of understanding the human in the human relationships.

Sangbreeta: Thank you so much. The pleasure is mine.

Silvija: Thank you for listening.