Keith Greer: Stop Trying to Be Right and Start Getting Curious

That's wonderful.

I must admit, I too am fascinated by the whole conversational intelligence thing because that's the science part of it, right? Isn't it? You talked about art and science in the beginning, but that's the science part.

It's not fluff.

It's genuine how the brain works.

So tell us a little bit about that because that is fascinating.

So, you know, I'll ask some of your listeners to think about, I don't know, you meet somebody for the first time I don't know, somebody, it's their first day of work at your company and they walk in and you lay eyes on each other.

The research would tell us that it's somewhere about 0.07 seconds.

that both brains start to determine, can I trust this person? And I need people to really, because I know most people understand what fight, flight, freeze, appease is, but I need people to really understand where that mechanism came from.

So, you know, it's a million years ago and I walk out of my cave and I'm walking down this path on a beautiful day.

What do I need to be on alert for? I need to be alert for some predator bigger than me that wants to make me their lunch.

And that's really the origin of fight flight.

And I would make the argument fight flight is the only reason human beings still walk the face of the earth.

It is this incredibly finely tuned mechanism in our brain.

And when the brain perceives threat, sometimes I think about this as a computer with limited Ram.

When the brain perceives threat, that is its primary process.

is to keep us physically safe.

So a lot of other things that our brain does, it doesn't do well when it perceives threat.

And so what CIQ looks at is when we interact with each other through the transaction of conversation, everything from the nonverbals to specific verbal patterns and habits that when, if I use them as you and I are talking right now and they cross the room and they land in your ears, does your brain immediately perceive it as threat? You go into some level of fight flight because you, you just don't trust me.

Or am I interacting with you in a way that causes your brain to say, oh, I kind of like this guy.

I feel a little bit safe.

I'm curious.

I'd like to get to know a little bit more about him.

And as you said, what, you know, one of the coolest things about it to bring it into the leadership world and the organizational world, I'm in these conversations all the time where people are very quick to say, well, isn't this all kind of touchy-feely, fluffy, as you said, stuff? No, it's science.

Like, you know, you can argue with me if you want.

And maybe I'm not the person you want to work with, but it is hard science because while we don't think of trust this way, how two human beings develop trust for each other, our brains look for hard, cold evidence.