Rolando Rosas 4:21
sure, I haven’t written a book, but I know sometimes putting things down on paper can be very difficult in trying to bring forward the right words, like you’re saying and part of the words are also telling a story. What are you finding that is captivating? Because you can write stuff, but you’re really famous for telling people how to craft a narrative and frameworks and what will effectively tell a story. Can you tell us what’s happening in the brain? Because a lot of people say you should do storytelling, storytelling, because we’ve done it for millennia. What’s happening in the brain when stories are being. Invade in the way that you’re talking about them. It’s actually
René Rodriguez 5:03
one of my favorite questions, because when you realize why we tell story, and first, the role that story plays for us, and so let’s use story interchangeably with narrative. Narrative is a beginning, a middle and an end. We think it’s a narrative of a story. It’s a narrative of a movie, but then it’s also the narrative. When we say we’re going to shift the narrative, what do they mean by that? Really, what they’re doing is they’re shifting doing is they’re shifting what’s being said, which really contributes to what’s being understood and perceived, which really contributes to how we formulate reality and how we understand the world. And so when we buy into something, we bought into a narrative of value. If we rebel against something, we bought into a narrative of we don’t want that around. And so at very early age, between ages three and four, narrative starts to take a role in our life. We in our life. We look at the sequence of things, and we start understanding the world based on it like, you know, Dad’s hungry. There’s the beginning of the narrative. He walks to the fridge and consumes something middle he’s not hungry anymore. And so when hungry, when I feel this way, Watch dad do this. And so engage in that three step process, that three step narrative. And so, you know, by ages nine to 13, we start realizing that those narratives are guided by set of values. And so who’s around between ages and nine to 13 is critical, because we’re kind of learning this generosity important is giving and caring, important truth and hard work, all of those things, fun and loyalty, and all the certain sort of core values are formulated through watching who’s around us and the events unfold, and then how people respond to them. And then by age 21 they’re sort of locked in. And then we realize that those narratives aren’t situational. They’re pervasive. So if I help somebody when they’re hungry, or when I help Johnny because he’s hungry, well, it’s not just Johnny, it’s anybody who’s hungry, I’m going to help. And so whatever the reality is. And so what’s interesting, though, is we spend upwards. This is where what happens in the brain. We spend upwards of 50% of our waking hours daydreaming. So we’re running what if scenarios. If this than that, how’s today’s podcast gonna go? If I universal
Rolando Rosas 6:51
50% of the 50% upwards, you know, 33 to 50%
René Rodriguez 6:55
of our time. And if you think about it like, think of how much time you’re planning ahead, how much time did you spend planning today’s podcast? What questions you’re going to ask? Hey, how am I going to show up? Does my chair need to be perfectly centered? Because it bothers me. That’s not. So I’ll do one of those, and it gets me more centered, right? You know, it’s more of a where the chair is, and I’m running that scenario is like, if I don’t, that’s going to look stupid on camera. So that’s a daydream I’m running out into the future. It’s a part of the function of the prefrontal lobe, which is a lot like a future simulator, and it’s running scenarios to help us navigate the world the way the future simulator works. Would be pretend that Ben and Jerry said an ice cream, and it was called liver and onions. Would you want to try it? No, probably not, right and but how do you know you’ve never tried it? Well, your prefrontal lobe takes all past experience it runs out into the future, concocts this disgusting ice cream and gives you sort of a feeling, in a sensation where you can taste it and it’s not something you want, even though it didn’t happen. It’s a daydream. It’s a fictitious, hypothetical situation. But it runs through all that, and it reports back saying, not something you want to do based on past experience. Now, past experience also is based on values. It’s what we decide. If we’re going to say, Hey, I get you a million bucks. You want a million bucks? Of course, of course. Great. All you got to do is wear this mask, walk into this bank, hand this lady, this note, already talked to the security guards. You’re going to be fine. You won’t ever get caught. You still want the million
Rolando Rosas 8:14
Whoa. I don’t know. It’s precarious. I don’t know, maybe you’re lying to me. Well, no, what if I was
René Rodriguez 8:19
telling you the truth, but you had to. You had to look yourself in the mirror afterwards. In the mirror afterwards and say that you’re a thief. Would you still want the million No, no. So now it’s saying that’s against my values, is what you’re saying. So you run out in the future, and you run through all that scenario planning, and you come back and you go, nah, not something I want to do. And so this future planning and this future scenario is really so we understand the world. So now there’s two times that we don’t daydream. One is under life and death situations. Somebody holds a gun to your head. You’re not going to daydream. The other is when someone else is telling a story, and the reason that you stop daydreaming is because the other person is daydreaming for you. And so think about the power of that. Let’s break it down, we Daydream to construct narratives. We use narratives to construct reality. And if I stop daydreaming and you daydream, and I accept the Daydream, I accept your narrative, I’ve given you space into my brain to implant any narrative I want to then shift any reality you want. So whoever owns the narrative, everyone is the best storyteller. Is usually the one that owns the narrative, and the one that we look to, which is why leaders are so good at storytelling and need to be good at storytelling and sales people too.
Dave Kelly 9:29
René, so it sounds like you’re saying daydreaming is important, the fact that it’s happening subconsciously, it’s important. Yeah, it’s part of our survival. So I was in a conversation with some folks over the holidays, and we were talking about before social media was here, before everyone was holding phones and daydreaming came into it, and everyone was we do a lot of that. So it’s kind of funny that you’re bringing this up, but the conversation was that people aren’t. Day dreaming as much anymore, and someone had suggested it’s keeping them open for a narrative to be pressed against them. So I’d hear you say, this is confirming what this individual had said. You know,
René Rodriguez 10:15
sometimes we take daydreaming from the lolly down, oh, I’m in the Florida. That’s a daydream. Yeah, basically you’re in the day day dreaming is any sort of future fictitious scenario planning, scenario running. And so like to your point, imagine this, if I can take over your daydreaming time, meaning your construction of the future reality, the vision of the future, and I can implant it with Doom scrolling. And through those Doom scrolling, I capture your attention on things that are negative, like, I gave up scrolling six months ago, and so I haven’t scrolled once on social media for six months. And what’s funny is that my kids say, Hey, Dad, you’re not talking about aliens anymore or prepping for the end of the world. And like, you know, you’re right. I still think there’s aliens out there, but I’m not talking about
Rolando Rosas 10:59
Why not? That’s a question right at the heart of all of us, right? Billions of planets and stars. I just heard Mark Roper talk about this in one of his videos. There are more planets and stars than there are grains of sand in all the oceans in this world. Can’t
René Rodriguez 11:19
imagine we’re the only ones. And you know, there’s evidence for it. But my point was, is that look at how much social media shaped my conversations, and I don’t really talk politics anymore, because I’m not talking about just the stuff that the media decided was important. And so instead, I gave up my phone, scrolling and doing that to say, okay, my team is going to tell me when something’s important, and if I feel like something’s important, and if I feel like something’s important, I can go out and find it like I’d heard about a 17 year old girl who’s six foot six and can just do post two step dunks on people and they hold the ball like it’s nothing. And now I want to go find it, went to YouTube, searched it, found it, consumed it, showed it to my friends, and went away back to work instead of me going, huh, I wonder what the world thinks. And scroll, scroll, scroll, what’s the world going to think that’s important? Oh, man, you know, this might be important. Well, they had a good hook, so I’m going to pay attention to them. And so they’re the ones deciding what’s important to me. And so I said, I don’t like that anymore. I want to be the one that is deciding what’s important. And if I need something, I can proactively look at it. And it’s funny is that I re upped on newspaper subscriptions so I can actually go and just read sections as I want. And it’s a different way to approach it, but it’s been good. Been very helpful. Let
Rolando Rosas 12:32
me ask you about something, because I want to tie a couple of things that you just said together. The frontal lobe helps us daydream. Social media kind of does that for us by taking our attention and giving us that Daydream that it would do. What happens in the brain when that function like you’ve been able to pull back and you made a decision to okay, I’m conscious of this. I’m not going to do this. But what happens to individuals where that process goes haywire. Well,
René Rodriguez 13:01
one of the reasons I did it was because of the amount of dopamine addiction that you create. So dopamine feels very good, by the way. It feels like a reward. It’s secreted in the anticipation of reward, if that makes sense. And so every time you scroll with your thumb, there’s a potential of something interesting, meaning a potential reward. So every scroll, every I don’t like this. Let me try not something else. Is that potential for something better, which is more dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So you’re just like hitting the button on dopamine every time you scroll, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. And after a while, you need more and more. And so then you need to scroll longer, look for more. It’s it just becomes as endless cycle. And of course, when I stopped, I felt like I disconnected from the world, and I felt like I’m like, what else am I going to do with my time? Well, okay, I went back to crossword puzzles. Yeah, crossword puzzles. And I set aside, if I really feel like I need to, I can just do a crossword puzzle. I love crossword puzzles because they make my brain think, and there’s all sorts of benefits to those sorts of puzzles and things like that, but to me, it also gave me more time to be creative, to create better content. I started creating video series and started thinking differently. So just it opened up time to think and the time to be creative, time to re evaluate. I started a branding agency. Was something I’ve been wanting to do for six years. And I said, Gosh, just 90 minutes of scrolling on tick tock. It’s 45 hours a month. That’s over a week’s worth of work. And I know most people are two and three hours a day of scrolling. That’s two weeks. That’s almost half the day. It’s like you would get fired if you worked for somebody and you were half the day scrolling. And so I go, okay, that’s time. I can get back immediately. And so let me stop doing this and replace it with something
Rolando Rosas 14:50
else. You know, you and I went to school at around the same time in the Upper Midwest, in Minnesota, actually less than two miles apart from each other. Yeah. And your experience going to school and mine at that time reminded me what you were saying, like, you know what? Cell phones were just coming out. There was no smartphone. There was really no social media to speak with. You were forced, really forced so you’re in the school, nobody had cell phones. You’re really forced to engage with others in that interaction. As you’re coming through, you’re going the hallways, you’re in and out of the dorms, you’re going to the cafeteria, at the sporting event, all these other things in today’s environment, we’ve lost some of that, because clearly with what you’ve said, but what I’m real curious about, because a lot of our work has also changed, in addition to going from completely in person to what the Bureau of Labor Statistics has about 35 million Americans working from home today in some form or fashion. Well, what do you think is going to happen five years from now, if we fast forward when that number probably is going to go up, because more people want a little more balance in their life. They don’t want to travel as much. They don’t want to be on the road, hitting the road one hour in each direction, from making that drive from Blaine into the city right, or from Connecticut into the city. What does that world look like if we fast forward and we continue on this more virtual world? Well,
René Rodriguez 16:21
there’s the Doom view of that world of us continuing to scroll. And then there’s, I would say, more of a realistic view of it. I try to remember what I was like when I was a kid, and how my parents would say, and adults would say, well, their music was the best. We ruined music. And then I go back. I’m like, I listen music today. I’m like, these kids have ruined music. And so then I go, okay, fish only knows what water is when they’re out of water, just it’s the only thing. So that we know life through contrast. So kids growing up in this world don’t know any different. And so there’s a piece where we have to say, Okay, well, we have to be able to ebb and flow and to integrate with the changes in the world. And I think that’s where the people that are special can do both, where they can say, okay, let’s bring forward what really worked well, human relationships, engagement, eye contact, and let’s add in technology and AI to enhance all of it. And for example, I had a client literally 10 minutes before our podcast call me and said, Hey, I was thinking about this. In your event, we’re doing a three hour event together at his office, and he wants to do on a presentation skills and training. And he’s like, I was thinking, Can we give him homework? And in my thought, I’m like, I don’t have time. I got four virtual events and two podcasts just today. And am I going to do this? I’m like, You know what? Hold on a second. So I went to chat GPT, who I’ve spent almost this last year training it on my book and articles. So I have a very specific chat bot that really represents me. So I dictated, here’s what I’m going to be doing, here’s the training. I recorded the conversation with the client. I literally recorded it as a new feature in the iPhone that allows you to record and recorded it and said, Here’s what I need the outcome to be. This is what I wanted. It went simple, and in 15 seconds I had my homework. I read through it. I’m like, That’s exactly what I would have said. And I texted an email to him. I’m like, hey, what do you think? He goes, Oh my god, this is perfect. Now I used AI and tech to enhance a relationship in that moment. I did the work ahead of time by writing the book and training it on who I was and what I believed. I did the work on iterations back and forth to make sure that it really was what I wanted, but it took my thinking and fast forwarded it so that my client could get value I also could then be focused on here today for us, everybody wins in that scenario. I didn’t default to it, and I could have done out of my own, but it’s like I could have walked to the grocery store, or I could drive. Driving is not cheating, as long as I’m also working out, right? You know? So using AI is not cheating, as long as you also keep learning the skill of writing and things like that. So there’s a healthy use of all of it to really advance us all forward. And of course, there’s the abuse, just like
Rolando Rosas 19:07
anything. Tell me about brain health and technology, because this is getting really, really interesting. What you’re jumping into with AI social media convergence of both work play. They’re folks that are out there saying this is really bad for our youth, like you were talking about, getting back to the Doom scrolling, but there’s the use cases like you just talked about, what does the neuroscience beside the dopamine aspect that we just talked about, what’s the impact on our brains that you’ve seen in your research?
René Rodriguez 19:40
You know, there’s been a lot of talk around the emissions. I’m not an expert in that arena. I do know that there are warning signs in terms of how far you should keep the phone next to you and all that sort of stuff. There’s some common sense too. This thing, this device, is going to emit something do I want it near reproductive organs or things like that? Probably. Not the thing that I want. And so to me, just like anything, we have to keep in mind what’s the logical pieces we wear, those blue block or sunglasses to stop the rays. But we know we need sunlight. We know we need some basic pieces. And so I think we just have to pay attention and keep watching what the research says. And literally, let’s say there was one study that I just read about. I could read it right here. It says that frequent exposure to digital devices, especially social media, can shorten attention spans on the average human attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 down to eight seconds in 2015 now that was 2015 think about where we’ve come now. And so there is a need. And the thing that I look at for me is I go back to my kids TV shows. And so I had them watch, what was it called, Blues Clues. And Blues Clues, if you remember Blues Clues, the guy, I think his name is Joe, he would come out, he’s quiet, and he’s like, Hey, how are you? Yeah, today we’re gonna, we’re gonna play this game. Go back to Mr. Rogers, yep. Hey, their neighbor, real quiet, a lot of space, a lot of silence that was okay to think and connect. You watch the shows now it’s like, hey, using all the sounds that our phones make that trigger dopamine, because it’s an incoming text message, and you know, all these and it’s just constant, and what they do is just like, even in social media, they have apps that will remove silence. So the words, yeah, because we can’t handle that silence. And I watch and I listen, especially get three kids, three different iPads all doing that, and the TV on, you’re going, wow, wow. And so my thing is, we have to teach, and I do it with my kids. We have to teach what’s called attentional narrowing. And so attentional narrowing is really what happens of elite athletes. They used to think that an elite athlete, let’s say an extreme runner or a Navy Seal, sort of had this periphery of what was going on when they were in trouble, and what actually happened is the opposite. When they were focused, it would narrow in on the objective. They wouldn’t see anything else that wasn’t important. And so you can create narrow detention by, let’s say, selecting a.on the wall, and start with 30 seconds and just stare at the dot, and then move to 60 seconds, and then 90 seconds, and then maybe two minutes. And so if a kid has ADD or a kid is hyper active, one of our kids has got a lot of energy. I wouldn’t say he’s hyperactive. He just got a lot of energy. And again, the label matters. And this kid is just constantly running, constantly doing things. He’s great in sports, and he’s in fantastic shape, because his body is always moving, but sometimes he has a hard time stop talking. And so I’ll just say, hey, let’s see what that magic site looks like. And he knows, I bet you can’t stare at that pattern for 30 seconds, and all sudden, from the hyperactive to just looking. He was hyper active, and now he’s just staring, but you can’t do 60 seconds, and all of a sudden he’s just honed in and after that 30 seconds and 60 seconds moments, he’s just calm. So before doing a big project, doing your taxes, going on stage, narrow in that attention, hold it for 3060, 90 seconds, and work your way through that process. It’s a really powerful way to start bringing our attention back, because that’s what everyone’s after, is our attention.
Rolando Rosas 23:08
You know, the hardest thing for somebody that’s a leader, right? Is that attention, because people are pulling on you for all kinds of stuff, right? Hey, I need you to this and sign that, approve that this fire is happening, put that out. And you’ve talked to a lot of leaders, a lot of people in and around the world. What do you say the biggest challenge when you consistently talk to different leaders around the world? From your perspective, what’s the biggest challenge that you see over and over again?
René Rodriguez 23:39
Well, COVID had a really big impact on leadership. And 50 years ago, people died to very close to where they lived and where they worked. We lived in tight, knit communities. You went to the grocery store, you saw co workers there, your boss was there. If you your kids played little league, your boss probably was the coach. Went to church, saw people there, the barber shop, we saw him there. And so we had a lot of interactions with each other. And when you have a lot of interactions with another human, you learn the nuances, the facial expressions you learn when they’re congruent, when they’re incongruent. Meaning. Think of your best friend, family member, somebody you know based on a text message, what their mood is. You know what it is they’re based on the timing of their text? Do you know what their mood is? So those are the little nuances that really get a chance to know each other. If you remove that and say, replace it with tech, which is what happened. We had advancements in transportation, communications and travel, right? And so we just all these advancements in all of these areas. And so we started moving further and further away from these tight knit communities with a consoling illusion that we still knew each other, because we could log into a CRM or an ERP or something that said, hey, I can see where my people log in. I can see, look, my data says, everything’s good, but we don’t know each other. And territory started expanding. You could run a territory of six states and expect to know people. And what happened then COVID shifted. Our values. It used to be that things like patriotism was number one, and all these things were there. Then it shifted to connection and meaning at work. Back 50 years ago, the promise of work was also a lifetime employment, like I will employ you for the rest of your life. And so no, now it’s I want connection and meaning. And of course, some people take that to an extreme, and that’s part of the change process. And so when you think about like how that is, leaders need to learn how to tell their story to bridge that gap between what person thinks about you versus who you actually are, because if you don’t show up, my brain is forced to make up a story, and the story is gonna be based on my past experience. And if I have a negative past experience with leaders or even with you, I’m gonna fill in in negatively based on so I can prepare myself to what’s going on. It’s not because I’m a negative person, it’s because I have negativity bias.
Rolando Rosas 25:52
How do you get around that? How do you is there a rewiring that happens getting around negativity bias? Is there some exercise that I need to do, or do I need reps? Do I need muscle memory? The
René Rodriguez 26:02
only way to combat it is self awaRenéss, because it’s designed into your DNA to protect and so I’m negative. You know, imagine if I didn’t have negativity bias. I heard a rustling in the forest in the middle of the night, I’d go check it out instead of going that’s probably dangerous. Let me move out of the way. Now that’s a bias towards negativity, and why? Because it’s smarter that will last longer. If I like, Oh, I’m gonna jump out of this airplane, I’ll probably die. No, I won’t die. Well, no, that’s why you so negative. You might survive. There’s a chance. No, no, I don’t want to take that chance like somebody’s a suspicious person during a dark alley. Their brains are designed to move away from it, and so you don’t want to eliminate it, but you have to be aware of it. CNN uses the words breaking news upwards of 400 times a day. Everything’s breaking
Rolando Rosas 26:47
news, everything, everything. It used to be like breaking news was like something we went into Iraq that was breaking news, right? You needed to know that was app everything. Now every every three minutes is a breaking news, yeah, and
René Rodriguez 27:00
that’s what happens when they abuse of negativity bias. And so the abuse of it is now, of course, just like an abuse of drug, you need more and more bigger things. We desensitize easily. And so as a leader, knowing that that’s the world you got to communicate into. How do you build connection? The fastest way to build connection is tell your story. Because if you tell your story and use as a gap in our communication. My assumption is going to become from your story, not from my past experience. And if I know that your story is that you’re fighting one of your kids has cancer at home and you don’t show up to a meeting, I’m not going to say, oh, CEO didn’t show up. He’s all getting a yacht. I’m going to go, No, hold on a second. He’s with this kid. But if I don’t know any of that stuff, I’m going to go based on all CEOs. If I had a negative history with CEOs, I’m going to go based on that, and you’re guilty. You’re guilty by association. And so the biggest challenge that they face is, how do they bridge that gap so they can get that benefit of the doubt in this sort of world that we’ve become so virtual,
Rolando Rosas 27:54
that’s the reality today, right? We’re more virtual. We’re more on Zoom. You do virtual lectures and you teach people, so it has its value, because more people are at home and in these far places. What advice would you give for folks that are virtual first, right? Their work is based around virtual work and communicating in this fashion. You don’t have the opportunity to connect with people as much because that’s just the nature of your work. How do you create that meaningful connection from the moment the camera comes on? How can somebody create that connection when we’re virtual? I spent
René Rodriguez 28:30
a lot of time studying this because I had to go virtual. I mean, a studio that I created cost us over $100,000 to build so that I could do things that were different, you know, even just things to keep this whole process engaged, and so I had to do things that really use this, this beautiful thing that we have. And the reason I did that was I knew that capturing attention was hard, but and it was possible. Why people say, Well, you can’t connect on Zoom. I said, Well, why do you binge watch your favorite TV shows with your family? Why are you upset after a three hour movie in the movie theater? That was fantastic. How did your periphery go away? It was because you were engaged. So there is a way. We just don’t know how to do it. And so I went and looked at all of the things that were there. I talked to movie producers, actors, directors, videographers, people that really their job was to really capture attention. And I said, What is it that we’re doing in one of my best friends, Ryan grams, came up with this idea called call c, a, l, l, camera, audio, lighting and location, those are the things that mattered. And most people think the camera is most important. But for me, if I were just to shift my microphone to a foot, yeah, now, all of a sudden, it just doesn’t sound the same. And if I don’t have audio, I can have this great camera, $2,000 camera, illustrate. But if my microphone isn’t in the right place now as it is now, it doesn’t matter. Audio pierces the screen. And so then if I go, Okay, let me just change the lighting a little bit. And if you were to see this video, you’d see that I just removed one of my lighting, key light, and now all of a sudden, it’s not the same, but you know, you add that lighting back, and all of a sudden I can see facial expressions in especially around the eyes, a lot. People, if you wear glasses, you know, unintentionally, you have a reflection of the screen in your glass, so I can’t see your eyes. And if I can’t see your eyes, that means that I can’t see what you’re actually meaning. That’s why poker players wear sunglasses, because more is communicated through the eyes than in any other place, like any other place. And so if you show up with glasses, or if you wear glasses, even if it covers any of the surrounding facial pieces around your eyes, take them off for the first seven to 15 seconds, because that’s how long it takes to create a first impression. Even if you’re blind as a bat, show your smile, let them see your eyes. And then after about 10 seconds, say, Hey, do you mind if I put my glasses? I want to see you. Now, they’re going to be like absolutely but they already have your first impression. They saw your smile, and then, as you’re wearing your glasses, maybe take them off when it’s an important point and lean in a little bit to the camera. And if you notice that my head is at the top of the screen, it’s not down below, so there’s no dead space above my head, notice that my camera is exactly eye level. My lighting is lighting up everything. My backdrop. I can even I can change the backdrop to make it look different, you know. And so these are things that keep people engaged. And so for me, like, let’s go back to Minneapolis here, or Minneapolis backdrop there it is. And so now those are little nuances that secrete little hits of dopamine to keep things alive. So there’s a lot that you can do, but it does take effort. It’s not something that just a web cam and a crappy microphone is going to fix. So
Rolando Rosas 31:22
leveling up your and that’s beautiful. I love what you just said, because that’s exactly what we do with clients. We provide some of the gear for professionals, you know, improve their audio so they have a professional headset, and the next level of that is actually, you know, looking the part and having that environment around you so that you do hear better, you do engage better while you’re online. I absolutely love All, all, all of that getting in the zone. I want to go back to that, because getting in the zone can be difficult. What do you know about people that work in the virtual or home, that we all have one of these with us everywhere we go, more or less, even if you’re not on social media, you’re getting notifications. You’re getting bombarded with different things. What’s happening in the brain as we’re multitasking? Or so we think we’re multitasking. What’s happening in the brain when we’re trying to switch back and forth like this, or trying to juggle multiple things at the same time? Well, it’s
René Rodriguez 32:20
a great question. A lot of people think that we multi that we multitask, but we actually don’t, and I’ll test it. So let’s do a little test here. We’ll do a little multitasking task. I want you to count to 10, as fast as you can, ready? Go, 1-234-567-8910, yeah, but both of it out loud, ready? And I’ll go a, through, J, as fast as you can.
Rolando Rosas 32:36
A, B, C, D, E, j, okay.
René Rodriguez 32:40
So now those are single tasks. So now multitask. Which you’re going to go, one letter, one, number, a, one, b2, go,
Rolando Rosas 32:48
A, one, b2, c3, 4e, 5g, six, j7,
René Rodriguez 32:55
so you skip that, right? Yeah. F, there you go. No, it was slower, right? Yeah, harder. Took more brain power, quality went down, errors went up, and so, like, none of it, nobody wins there. And so that’s the reality is that we don’t multitask. Really, you’re rapidly refocusing in that sense, right? And so doing quality work. Now, there’s things that we can multitask when you’re playing a sport, because you’ve the muscle memory sort of takes over and doing those things, but doing your email and listening to somebody vent out a challenge or having at work not a good way of doing one, you’re not listening to everything. And two, you’re not communicating that you care. So there’s that. And so we have a tool that we call 40 for 30 that we teach our clients. And so we know that there’s 40 volts in the brain, and volts or potential energy. It’s not kinetic energy yet, so it’s 40 volts of potential. And so if I got 40 volts in my email, and you come in say, when you get a second, I go, Yeah, sure, go ahead and I got 20 in my email, maybe actually 30 in my email, 10 to you every once in a while, and so then we say, Okay, well, there’s a study done on doctors and bedside manners, where they studied doctors for two weeks and they had patients rate the doctor in terms of their bedside manner after they left. And what they found was that the doctors that had high ratings in terms of good bedside manners had one distinguishing factor, and that factor was that they spent 30 seconds of focused attention. And so when you think about that, 30 seconds, we’ve all been in that scenario where the doctor comes in, hasn’t read the file, doesn’t make eye contact to you, talk to you in a third person, patient experiencing this, and you just, you don’t even have any connection with the doctor, versus the doctor that comes in and says, Hey, John, how are you good? How are the kids? Wonderful, good. What’s going on today? And they’re really just there for them. They found they don’t need 30 minutes, they don’t need three hours. They just need 30 seconds of focused attention. And if I normally in my sessions, I’ll pause and stop talking for five seconds and it feels like an eternity. And I’ll tell people they said that was only five. Seconds, I’ll stop. And I go, imagine six times that 30 seconds of focus attention is a lot. And so we say, well, what if you gave somebody 40 volts for 30 seconds? 40 for 30? And so that’s where we come in and say, Hey, you’re doing your email. Say, Hey, John, you can I get 40 for 30? All that saying is, can I get your full attention for 30 seconds and go back to what you were doing? And usually people, when they know that, they just stop. They turn, listening. Is a full body sport, right? You turn and face them. But they can also say, You know what? Hey, I need my 40 volts for this email. Can you give me an hour and I’ll see you in an hour? They say, Sure, no problem. Or give me five minutes. Let me finish this email. Great. I’ll go grab a coffee. You want one? Great. I go grab a coffee. I’m getting you coffee. Your 40 volts on your email. I come back with a cup of coffee and I get your 40 volts like everybody wins. And so one understanding it that we’re not going to change much of human nature, but we can work with it. And so that 4430, is a great tool.
Rolando Rosas 35:52
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I love it. I heard something. It wasn’t what you just said, but your tone. Tell me, as we wrap up here, what’s the importance of tone when delivering something? Because the way you said that was just as important as what you just said. How does that work in the brain when you’re hearing the tone delivery of what’s being said? For sure? Well,
René Rodriguez 36:17
there’s a landmark study done by Dr. Albert Moravian, and it’s actually one of the most misinterpreted studies, too. So what he talked about with the three different channels that we communicate in words, tone and non verbals, and what he found was, when it came to understanding meaning, that 7% of the meaning came from words like I didn’t say he kicked the dog. So makes sense. You guys know what I mean. But if you change the tone, you could shift the meaning by 38% so I didn’t say he kicked the dog, I didn’t say he kicked the dog. I didn’t say he kicked the dog. He didn’t say he kicked the dog, he kicked the cat. So now, of a sudden, just by emphasizing different words, I’ve changed the meaning of what’s going on. And so what’s really powerful is they found that 55% of meaning came from non verbals. A lot of that was saying, like, a sales person, people are making judgments to you based on how you walk from the car to the office. And it’s a quick judgment whether they trust or if somebody says, Yeah, I’ll be there, I’ll be there to help you move. And they were real confident, yeah, it’s great. I’ll be there eight o’clock on the dot, and they don’t show up. Well, you’re not going to be like, well, it didn’t matter. They didn’t matter. They didn’t show up. They just sounded really convincing. No, what they did was more important, right? In the non verbal communications that are happening from body language sequencing, posture timing, and then you had tone. So when you had tone in body language, it’s 93% of the impact and meaning we set on things. There’s nothing to do with the words that we say. Somebody says, hey, great job. Great job. Hey. How are you doing? How are you doing? Same words have completely different meanings associated to them, and so to your point, how you say things? And here’s the thing, if I ask people, I’ve asked 1000s of people, how many people have taken English class? They all raise their hand. How many people have taken non verbal communication class or in voice inflection training. No one, unless you were in drama, then they did that. But it’s business. People need voice inflection leaders need voice inflection training.
Rolando Rosas 38:11
We all need it absolutely. You know, I heard somebody say kind of what you’re saying, but in a different way. Chris Voss with the black swan group, he says his words are that, FM, DJ, voice. Then if you could do that, people will slow down and listen a little hard. And what you’re talking about pauses. I think we’re in an overdrive, 100 going 100 miles an hour, and just, I’m gonna employ what you say, and just paying attention to the pauses changes everything that’s crazy that changes like
René Rodriguez 38:48
think of a pause as a highlighter. And if you don’t have any pauses, you’ve not highlighted anything. If you’re emphasizing everything, you’ve highlighted the whole page. But you put those pauses before and after something that was important. It highlights it,
Rolando Rosas 39:08
René, I wish we had like five hours so much more. When I asked you, we got to do part two, my man, you just
René Rodriguez 39:14
let me know when I met mi amigo, por favor.
Rolando Rosas 39:18
I’m in Okay. Awesome. Well, René, is there anything else you want to leave us with? I know you’ve wrote a book. I know you’re speaking, you’re doing all kinds of wonderful things. What do you want to leave us with? Yeah.
René Rodriguez 39:32
I mean, if people want to follow me on Instagram and all social channels, is learnwithRené and my website’s meetRené.com. And we’ve got all sorts of workshops and things that we do, and a lot of free stuff too. So podcast is free, the book is about 20 bucks, or something like that. And so lots of different ways. I do a video every single day, on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. I. It’s crazy. Our LinkedIn has been going crazy. We’re getting almost 2 million views a week right now, which has been,
Rolando Rosas 40:04
right, yeah, it’s growing up on LinkedIn. Love it. Love it. Start looking around, your message, your method, who you are, is so dialed in for the LinkedIn audience, right? Anybody could use it on any of those platforms, but those strategies, those tips, the science behind what you know, is so helpful if you’re trying to move the needle forward.
René Rodriguez 40:28
For sure, it’s fun to see that LinkedIn is adopting more of the social short form videos too, which is fun.
Rolando Rosas 40:32
Awesome, awesome. René, I want to thank you for coming in today. Muchas gracias, mi amigo. I really appreciate that pleasure. Thank you. And I know our audience is really gonna enjoy listening to this. And if you’ve enjoyed listening to René today, I will ask you a small favor, go ahead and subscribe and like, because that’ll help us bring more people like René to this podcast. And if you want to show us your love and support, we have links in description on business services that we offer to companies that are looking for partner that can help them solve the complex technology problems. Now we had the great fortune of talking to somebody that knows a thing or two about social media. Her name is Helen Polise. She’ll tell us why it’s getting harder to get followers on social media. She’s got over a million followers on TikTok, and she’s come across why it’s becoming harder to get people to follow. You’re curious about that. Go ahead and check that episode out with Helen Polise. Dave and I will see you next time. Thanks for watching today.
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