Perspectacles the Remix

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[00:00:00] Ross: Hi there, and a very warm welcome to Season five, episode 55 of People Soup. It's Ross Macintosh here, pea Soupers This week it's a cup of soup and a remix. I bring you a refreshed version of one of our most popular episodes from season four. want to talk to you about perspective taking and how that relates to the world between our ears.

[00:00:19] I'm recording this new intro in Granada, Spain, where I'm attending the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology conference. And yesterday, with some colleagues, we presented some research and a glimpse into the workplace delivery. Now, if you could just try on these perspecticals, please, and read the bottom line of the chart over there.

[00:00:39] For those of you who are new to PeopleSoup, hi, hola, welcome to the community. for those who are more familiar, dedicated Peasoopers, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again. We're an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioral science in a way that's practical, accessible, and fun.

[00:01:11] Our mission is to unlock workplace potential with expert perspectives from contextual behavioral science..

[00:01:17] The now get a brew on and have a listen to my reflections on per spectacles.

[00:01:23] so P supers, I'm going to have a go at exercising, my creativity, experimenting with ways to illustrate my point. My point is that we all live inside our heads and often we can assume other people are in there with us, think like us and really GET us.

[00:01:41] In my work and life. I constantly marvel that workplaces can function. Relationships can happen and be sustained and agreements can be made because I reckon we can spend a lot of time assuming that people are thinking just like us

[00:01:56] and what's going on in someone else's had can shape how they look at the world, [00:02:00] experience the world and how they show up in that same world. And that applies to us too.

[00:02:05] and this was brought to life by an experiment conducted by Elizabeth Newton in 1990. So let me explain the experiment. in pairs, people were allocated the role of Tapper or listener. The Tapper was invited to tap out the rhythm of a popular song from a list of 25, such as happy birthday or the star Spangled banner.

[00:02:25] The listener had to guess the song just from the taps. So P supers, it would be remiss of me not to have a go at this with you. So let's have a go and try and bring that experiment to life. So I'm going to tap out two songs. Can you identify them? And I'm going to tell you that in the people soup version of this experiment, the song could be a Christmas Carol, a nursery rhyme, or a well-known Beatles track.

[00:02:51] And I ain't going to tap them at with two pencils. Okay. So here we go. Song one.

[00:02:56] Okay. So that was someone. and here we go with some too.

[00:03:10] so how did you get on? Because in the next part of the experiment, before the listener guest, the Tapper was also asked. How many people would get it. Right. And they thought about 50%. Now, in reality, how many of the listeners actually got song right?

[00:03:36] When it was actually 2.5% dramatically different from the result that the Tapper predicted. Got it. So how did you get home pay Serpas? did anyone manage to identify song one or song two

[00:03:48] before I reveal what I was tapping, let's just think about what was going on there. The different roles of the Tapper and the listener. the difference is when I was tapping out the songs for you. I was singing the song in my head, but [00:04:00] you went in there with me. Where are you?

[00:04:02] Let's reveal the first song. Why else?

[00:04:05] the shack, those gone to see up buckles on his knee. He'll come back and marry me, Bonnie poppy, chef and that's Bobby chef DOE a nursery rhyme. That's probably quite particular to the Northeast of England. and song to wonder if anyone got this

[00:04:26] Holly and D I V when they you're both full grown of ball, a trees that ran Norwood Holly, pass the crown.

[00:04:37] Right. So how did you get on P supers? When we talk to our partners, our friends, our children, our work colleagues, they don't have the context that's going on in our heads. They're not experiencing the inner world that we're experiencing, which could well be based on a whole range of factors and experiences we've had in our lives.

[00:04:56] then date, it depends which nursery rhymes they grew up with. As I said, mine was quite specific, I think, to the Northeast of England. And whether they're familiar with Christmas carols, all the beetle

[00:05:07] at work. Other people don't know the soundtrack that's playing in our heads. They don't know our work songs.

[00:05:13] So no, I've got an exercise from one of our recent guests, Diana Hill. I think this exercise Okay. And help us expand our perspective and imagine we're playing with a pair of the spectacles.

[00:05:25] audio_only_16780290_Diana_Hill: So for example, with perspective taking, I might have people take their hands and make them into two O's and you could do this now with me, take your hands and put them into two O's and then you put the O's right over your eyes. Like you're wearing goggles. And these goggles are, are often our self stories, our beliefs about who we are and who other people are.

[00:05:44] And if you look around, you kind of move your head from side to side, you can see how your periphery vision is really limited. And your view is really limited, right? So with perspective taking, we do there's two steps to it. The first is moving our [00:06:00] hands away from our face and taking a look at our hands and seeing that we have a little bit more room like, okay, this is a story and I can start to identify.

[00:06:08] Maybe my right hand is the I'm not good enough story. And my left hand is the I'm better than you story. And we can hold both. For so such so interesting. I can believe that I'm not good enough. And at the same time, believe that I'm better than right. So we can have these self stories that are limiting.

[00:06:25] And then the first step is just noticing that like, wow, okay. I can take perspective on this as a story. And then the second step is I want you to take those hands and keeping your focus forward slowly, separate your hands and move your hands to the side as if you're slowly peeling away and opening and notice your brain's tendency to want to choose a hand to focus on, but just keep your attention forward as if you're expanding and opening your awareness all the way to a more panoramic view so that your hands come all the way to the side.

[00:06:58] And you can see in the corners of your eyes, your hands, but really you're focusing your mind forward. And then you can even drop your hands and keep that spacious panoramic view so that now you have a fuller perspective on you. On your story, but also one that is interconnected and that's really a three 60 perspective.

[00:07:18] Cause you can feel it expands all the way behind your back and all the way around the room. And so that's, that's the power of something that's so simple, like perspective taking now that's hard to write in a book, so I don't always do exercises like that, but, and once you've, once you felt that in a workshop with you Ross, and I'm sure you have really cool stuff that you do with people, once you felt it, when the workshop and then you go home and you have the book, you can start to say, okay, yeah, that's what perspective taking is it's that that's that expansive awareness where I'm interconnected and bigger than the small me that I get caught up in.

[00:07:50] And Oh yeah, here I am goggles on. I'm only saying, you know, you're in a fight with your partner, with a friend, with your mom, with your dad, with your kid, you know what you're doing, God was [00:08:00] on, you know? And so I can feel that feeling of, well, this is when my goggles are on that. I'm caught up in a South story and now I also know the feeling of what it's like to be.

[00:08:10] Not caught up in the self story, even though the self story is there. I didn't cut your hands off. I didn't strap him behind your back. I just gave you a little bit more room to take perspective on yourself and your life. And then with that room and that openness, we have more flexibility to move about the world we see with a little bit more clarity and we move more freely, which is really what psychological flexibility is all about.

[00:08:36] I love that exercise from Diana. who talks about ourselves stories and beliefs, those beliefs about who we are and those beliefs about who other people are in the workplace.

[00:08:46] This is like our soundtrack, our work song. That's constantly playing and influencing how we show up

[00:08:52] and Delta people can't hear our work song and sometimes we don't appreciate that. And that's when things might go awry.

[00:08:58] P supers that set in the bag. The perspective girls are now back in that case until you next need them. Thanks to Diana for her wisdom and goggles. and you can hear the full episode with Dan EVI the links in the show notes.

[00:09:10] Ross: I'd really like your help in reaching more people with this behavioral science, so

[00:09:14] you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, we'd love you to do three things.

[00:09:18] Ross: Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, subscribe and give us a five star review, whatever platform you're on.

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[00:09:54] Thanks to Andy Glenn for his spoon magic and Alex Engelberg for his vocals. Most of all, dear [00:10:00] listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves, peace supers, and bye for now.

[00:10:04] the shack, those gone to see up buckles on his knee. He'll come back and marry me, Bonnie poppy, chef