Bob Raleigh Ph.D., Founder of PathSight Predictive Science
& Predicting Behaviour
For More Episodes Visit: www.podcast.scottdclary.com
Bob Raleigh is the founder and managing partner of PathSight Predictive Science. Previously, he was CEO of Rockefeller Consulting and a longtime television executive at Carsey-Werner. He holds a PhD in psychology from Syracuse University.
In this podcast, we dive into his book, ‘The Search For Why’. In The Search for Why, Bob Raleigh provides a new model for how to understand human behavior, the fundamentals of why we do what we do. He draws on his experience in market research and public communication strategy and combines that with research in the social sciences, like psychology, cognitive and behavioral sciences, and anthropology.
The Search for Why covers topics like:
-Why so frequently people seem to act against their own best interests, both in politics and their personal lives
-How to better communicate with one another across political and cultural divides
-How to craft persuasive messages that meet people where they are, and listen to what they are saying back
-Ways you can apply this model to help build a better world, at a personal, social, and global level
-What influences our decisions, even when we don’t realize it
Show Links
https://twitter.com/raleigh_bob
Book Links (Aff)
The Search For Why — https://amzn.to/3vVvlYU
Show Sponsor (25% Off Code: SUCCESS)
Talking Points
00:00 — Bob Raleigh Ph.D., Founder of PathSight Predictive Science
01:45 — The culmination of 20 years of research and study
09:08 — Where did Bob’s journey start?
16:34 — The human interface, the most complex node
20:56 — Building out profiles to predict behaviors
24:24 — How do you use this information, ethically?
34:34 — Difference in prediction models, across countries
40:03 — Predictive models for job recruiting, culture and employment
Read The Transcript
Scott: all right. Thanks again for joining me today. I am sitting down with Bob rally. Bob Raleigh is the founder and managing partner of path site, predictive science. Previously he was CEO of Rockefeller consulting. And a long time television executive at Carsey Warner. He holds a PhD in psychology from Sierra Christie Syracuse university.
Excuse me. We’re going to talk about some of the topics that he studied over his career. Some of the topics that he breaks down in his new book, which is the search for why a revolutionary new model. For understanding others, improving communication and healing division could not think of a more relevant time in history when we have to be healing some division.
I’m going to let him describe what his book is about, but I’m just going to at a very high level. The premise is that he’s arguing that biological instincts are the most foundational determinants of our behavior and that we’re all born with a certain profile. He’s going to go into science. I’m assuming a little bit of psychology and how this manifests in individuals and how we can use it to our advantage.
So you know, very interesting topic, Bob, thank you for joining me. I guess let’s get into it because you’re the expert here. I want to sort of unpack your career, unpack how you’ve developed this, this this DCIS that has eventually led to this book and and what it actually means for, you know, people that are listening and how it applies to their daily life.
So thank you.
Bob: Do we only have an
Scott: hour, right. I guess I guess I teed it up for a little bit more of a, more of a drawn out session. We’ll keep it, we’ll keep it as high level as we can. But yeah, no, I know it’s a, it’s a lot. I get it
Bob: is there’s a lot. Yeah, this is The combination of probably a 20 year exploration.
It’s, it’s not unusual to speak to a psychologist and say, they’re interested in why people do what they do, but it took a long time to crystallize that, that moment of, I want to go do this. I want to figure this out. And you know, I started in To play with this a long time ago, but it’s interesting.
Google every year comes up with the world of search and they do try to do an a ha moment to come, come to what did the trillions of searches? We as a culture Meant, you know, so 2017, they were looking for set. We were looking for love in 2018 and it was, how do we do excuse me, how do we, how do we do,
how do we do important things 2019? It was, it was looking for heroes and this year, 2020, they decided it was the search for why coincide, coincidentally, the title of the book. And they said it really I think pretty succinctly, you know, you S why it has been searched this year more than any time in that, in the history of.
Tracking searches and they, they, some surmised that Y was not just a casual question, but there was, is like looking for the root for something. And it was all sorts of reasons. You know, we have a pandemic, systemic racism, we’ve got economic collapse and everybody was looking for why. And why is really the question that allows you?
If you, if you don’t have an answer to why, how can you reimagine something? How can you fix something? How can you repair something? So it made sense to me. When I started to write the book for, for two years ago and and finished this year that Y was really on every everybody’s everybody’s mind. So when I got my doctorate, I was, I was looking for why people had success in psychotherapy.
Were there different types of therapy that we could predictively match with other people. And that launched me on this, this, this trail. I next look, looked in into a job. I, I was hired by UNISIS the big bang, the prime primarily banking and, and Aviation sets and they did very early on, they were working on an AI workstation where we could take a, a Nobel Laureate in economics and try to download his Brilliance onto a workstation that could be a CEO’s assistant.
Well, we were way early to the tech to the technology, but it really dawned to me that data and understanding people was a powerful, powerful tandem. So then as you said I, I got into the communications research sales and the light for. A large entertainment groups, MCA and spelling entertainment, and most recently with Carsey Warner television.
And, you know, that was really wonderful place to learn about people and why they, why they like what they like. But you know, the work I was doing. Was not tied to a coaching philosophy or theory of why people do what they do. So after a number of years, I decided that I had to get back to the first love of psychology to really try to have a, have a clear, concise, and model of to anchor all these thoughts that I have about why people do what they do.
And so that was about 10 years ago when I was at Rockefeller consulting and and we were working on traditional consulting ideas, but again, kept back to the point of trying to anchor it into some psychological point of view. So this, this path site came about when we decided that the, the tools that we had in our, at our disposal were not adequate to the job of answering.
Why do people do what they do? So we set out to select a point of view build on that. Take all the tools that are available and to see if we could take the fields of data science and neuroscience and behavioral science and see if we could mine them for breakthroughs and add them to what we knew and take a kind of a message from the, the front of the applied lines of.
Of psychology in the light and see if we could advance the ball. And that’s what we’ve tried to do and what we do with Pell say predictive science, so long winded winded answer, but that’s, that’s how I got here.
Scott: The, the, the path like your career path makes sense. It’s not uncommon to find people that need to go back to, you know, really what got them excited about a certain topic in the first place.
But the, usually I would say the end goal of somebody’s career is not as monumental as answering the question. Y that’s a pretty pretty robust goal. But that being said, you’re, you’re doing it. So you’re emerging data you’re emerging. I’m assuming to comb through this data at any meaningful pace, you have some sort of, I don’t know if it’s artificial intelligence or some sort of tool that allows you to do this at scale.
How do you even start to conceptualize how to do, because you understand that you want to figure out that you use data plus other to build out a model. But you, but you have to actually build the tools to create that model. How do you do that without a technical, a true, truly technical background, because you’re looking to bring in data scientists or developers, and I don’t know how this actually manifests.
And I’m curious how you started
Bob: great question, because that’s at the heart adult, heart of it all. So again, life experiences are funny things. If you can take advantage of them. So I was working with a A group in Italy ISI is a cooperative of world-class scientists. They are working on the edge of knowledge, just they work on everything in the frame of, of complex networks.
And we were working with them on it, organizational development project, and. Just happenstance chief sites scientists said, well, what, what else are you working on? And that was just at the, at the start of, of just at the start of Pat site. And I was looking to not create just from, from scratch the model, but we were looking to anchor.
Our core beliefs in a model that we thought was expandable. Well, it turns out these guys taught me a really basic lesson about complexity. The complexity is complexity of connected network works, which the human interfaces, especially today, as we look at things like Facebook being. Having 2 billion of the 7.8 billion people in the world connected to it.
So that changes everything. But they said to me that the real ahas and breakthroughs come from the dynamic tension between two things, a really strong, theoretical point of view, to put your vision on things to say, I think based on this, this vision, we could end up here. But it has to be meat melded with a very strong data component, because that’s what keeps you honest.
That’s what tells you what, what we have
Scott: It validates it, it,
Bob: yeah. Is it validated? It’s a scorecard. You’re right. So so we, we learned that very early and so we started telling them what we were doing and they said, we’d love to take a peek at your data. So there was the, the, the, the life experience of of a of meeting somebody and they are continued to be one of the.
Most prolific scientists, data scientists around complex net networks. So they looked at our, at our model and said, we’re not sure really what you’re, what you’re dealing with, but it seems to be substantial. And we’d love to Comment on it, if you, if you like. So we, we worked with them early on and we’ve we developed our own data, some data groupie that could interface with them.
And eventually when, when they went back to their core scientific inquiry, we took it over and, and we have had a group of really sophisticated Cite data scientists help us through the, the process.
Scott: And after you align with these data scientists, then you then obviously this, this starting to manifest.
Yeah. So when it, when I guess my I’ll, I’ll ask you, when does this turn into. I guess path sites or, or is this like, when did this actually turn into something tangible that you can build a model out of? And what does that model start to look
Bob: like? Yeah. So six, six years ago, we, we, we found that there was this melding of, of, of disciplines and I became, and thrawled with the area of moral psychology.
I K I. And that’s a long story, but suffice it to say that if we believe that if the brain allows you to
or help helps us figure out how you, how you can create a moral point of view in terms of your decision-making values and things like that. And if in fact. You, you used all that brain power to create your, your moral point of view. Don’t you think there was a and a half for me that if that’s is consuming a lot of what your brain does, don’t you think it would have ubiquitous use beyond moral judgments?
And that was the premise of that was, that was the premise. So why, why take something and use it for esoteric true choices when it could be front and center in how you decide what you like, how you vote where to join. Who you love all those things are really moral decisions. So I really felt there was a great melding of those things with art, with the models that we’ve talked about.
And so we took some basic decision-making models and merged them with. An applied model of cognitive psychology to, to look at what we knew about how people make those decisions. And then we found that these moral decisions were, were tied to these deeply embedded. Instincts, there were showing signs of of of being significant all the way back to the, to the stone age.
So you may maybe have heard of a lot of the work of Jonathan Haidt and moral foundations. Those, those were the, the, the instincts that I felt. Wow. Finally, we have some scorecard to be able to. Take some of these points of view, quantify them and look for ways that they can influence decision-making and behavior change.
So we put all that together and started to look at what does the data, tell us about what we could reasonably expect.
Scott: I guess my, I have questions about what that result is, but my good before, before that, I think I would ask is this, this is, is this a dangerous model to build? Is this a model that could Cod like dangerous as if you, if you can predict how somebody makes decisions, could that be, could that be used to influence?
I don’t know. I’m trying to think of the implications of building out a model where you can predict certain things that certain people can do or, or decisions that they would make. Well,
Bob: let me start by saying. Human interface is the most complex node and the most complex network in we’ve ever experienced.
So you I’m flattered, but we we’ve, we don’t have that degree of, of, of of predictability yet. What we. Well, we have is something that goes beyond anything we’ve ever had, but it’s still, you know, it’s still leases a lot that we don’t know. So where we’ve we’ve done is, you know, for a hundred years, the conventional wisdom was that demographics really could be used to too.
Tell us why we did these things, you know, but after a hundred years we know a lot about different demographics. They tell us kind of who we are and what we do, but they are really lousy at telling us why, why do we do it? And there’s so many Segmentation models that are based on, on those precepts of, of demo demographics and, and they’ve all sooner or later wilted under scrutiny scrutiny.
And so we added these instinctual points of view. These are five instincts that instinctually. How do you care about children? What is their, your need for fairness? What’s your, who are you loyal to? Who, how do you, what are the rules of the game? What’s your authority idea? And then this is a instinct for purity.
So. W w would they, they’re not to be confused with an instinct, like when you go into the doctor and cross your legs and you get a patellar in, in staying where you’re kick the
Scott: yeah. Right.
Bob: It’s exactly. Yeah. Those it’s not like that. It’s not. You, you, you trigger the care instinct and bam, something automatic comes in, but what these do the patterns of those instincts you, you do have a, of a Early early in childhood, we’ve figured out that you have a pattern of which, which ones of these instincts you’re sensitive to.
And what happens is as you go through life and your life experiences, edit those, those instincts. We know that how you see the world, your worldview is con is constructed by those. Life experiences and your instincts and your demographics and all the other things that we we’ve known over the years go into creating an identity.
And we’ve D we’ve decoded that we think there are five of these instinctual patterns that we can identify, but two of them are really, really significant. And these two are what we see all the time referenced in, in our tribal world. You know, the the and they’re, they’re referenced in politics and philosophy and all sorts of things, but these two are really, really kind of be bifurcate the world in, in terms of these two major.
Instinctual profiles and then the, the three in the middle are the kind of the way we marry up, which part of, of the, of, of the two instincts are, are you most influenced by? So they’re kind of more back and forth. So really it’s these two, two big ones that are really are, are the. Immovable forces
Scott: and the rest of the other three would just to draw parallel to be almost like a Venn diagram of crossover of various components between the two major polarizing ones.
And then yeah,
Bob: exactly. Okay. And, and, and, and yeah, so what we’ve done is we’ve started over the last six years to explore the way these. Profiles can predict what people, how people will, will respond to different environments, different problems for stimuli and things like that. So the real wild card is to say, What do we, what do we think these instinctual patterns are?
Because we’ve done a lot of the work on the, on the backend of saying, Oh, if we know you have this one instinctual pattern likely you’re going to be really fair minded empathy is, is, is, is, is, is a given you. Probably fight the conformity of, of, of a cultural mandate, but you’re, you’re, you’re probably going to look for new and different problems to solve and, and trends to to make friends with.
So that would be one. And then we can get all sorts of detail about what that looks like. And so what we’ve, what we’ve done then is created this intelligent advisor so that when somebody says, Oh, I’m interested in my brand, for example. And I I’d like to figure out who likes to do doesn’t like, and what can I do about it?
And those, those are kind of the simple questions that we can answer now.
Scott: That’s very interesting. And to date, I’m just, cause I don’t understand this, the full, the full amount of research that’s going on in this today. This model that you’re presenting is, is on the forefront. Like this is what you know, would be referenced as sort of leading edge in terms of understanding these.
Bob: I think so. And there was a tremendous amount of research. Going into this, this type of conceptualization, you know, what do, what do we know about the moral decisions you’re making? What are we know about decisions you make? And what did we know about all those things are variables that the scientific world through data science, neuroscience, behavioral science, and everything related are, are, are Are investigating.
So we continue to harvest as much as we can to build it into our model. We call it the model of why. And, and it, I don’t know anything it’s better.
Scott: No, that’s, you know, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t be ashamed, like, like, like I’m just curious because I don’t, I don’t know everybody who’s doing research in this topic and I think it’s like a very interesting.
Very interesting topic. And I think it’s more relevant than ever, like you said, Google is a, is showing us that people are trying to find reasons as to why everything’s happening. So I think that anything that can help set up even like, you know, you mentioned it’s not, it’s not dangerous to the point where it can predict everything somebody can do, but any kind of light that could be shed on an action or, or, or or something that happens people will find safety in that and it’s useful, right?
Bob: There’s a word for launching a number of initiatives, right? So we’ve got partnered with some job search groups. And so now, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s primed for, you know, everybody runs the candidates through a litany of tests and, and, and. They make a decision and then that’s automated. And, well, we, we tend to think of the automation is a positive, but w we know that you’ve got to, you’ve got to have some human judgment in these things.
So what we do is we start with analyzing any population. To which you want to bring somebody and put them into that population. Right? So we’ve got our, our, our instinctual patterns. You know, those one I talked about there’s, there’s others that I could share with you, but so we think you have to start with the starting point of what’s the environment that you’re asking somebody to come and join.
And see where we go. Okay. We, we’ve got a pretty neat way. We can survey everybody up in the department and define what the instinctual patterns are for the whole department. How do they make decisions? What do they think about and treat people fairly well? How does management want to enter, interact with these people?
So your instincts go into all of that. And so, and at the end of the day, we’re able to say, you know, we’re w we’d love this department. We’re doing great work. They they’re they’re, they, they, they like everybody in the department. And so they can say, we want somebody just like this department to be, be hired.
Now we can. End up fine finding those people and making a judgment, not just on their skillset and their job referral recommendations, but rather now we can say, and they have just the right type of of a instinctual pattern to fit right in. That makes sense. I’ll be fine. Yeah. We also all could have the situation where they say, you know, We do a great work in our department, but we do have a, we have one challenge that I don’t think we’re, we’re managing correctly and we can hire somebody within a instinctual pattern that can bring that skillset into the, the department.
And so we can do it as, as a, as a, as somebody should fit in or somebody who should bring a different skillset that we can cultivate into the group. So it, it works very well as a, as a as a social barrier variant. To say who’s the cause. You know, people, people are saying that a bad hire costs a company like $240,000 a year.
You know, we know that. So this is a perfect way for you to, to measure something that’s quantifiable and make a decision on top. Of just the words permitted, you know, that
Scott: makes, that makes a lot of sense. I B I want to ask a few more questions about like some of the results, but can you, can you just define those two main, those two main groups?
Cause you said there’s two main polarizing, right?
Bob: So, so one was the individual. So they’re, they’re the ones that, that use. Upset not obsessed that use the individual as the currency. They really worry about fairness and justice for the individual. Every individual is considered fair game. They’re all hardwired to think that empathy and fairness are.
Are a right for these people. So when you do, you’re thinking about the govern government and you’re thinking about allocations of resources and things like that. It’s a big deal to make that commitment that everybody should be treated equally. And what does that mean? But that’s the kind of ground rule that this person says has very.
Much in terms of valuing diversity and, and but because of their mindset, they really think about new things and trying different things in problem solving where you can use new ways to sellable problems. The downside is, is sometimes you can be. So in enamored with the new thing that you ignore, the tried and true, and, and the, the capacity of building boundaries about around those folks is kind of a challenge.
So there’s a good and bad for that point of view. Of course. Yeah. You know, that’s the kind of point of view in, in, in, in, in governance and in culture that keeps you moving forward because you’re open to these new ways to do things. The other side is the polar opposite opposite in that these are folks that are believe there’s a natural order in things.
And that natural hierarchical order is there’s women, winners and losers. There’s there’s winners and losers leaders and followers, all those kinds of things. And, and there’s they’re looking for the, the broad sweeping authority to keep people together. You know, we will, we all hang, hang out and we’re all committed.
And this guy’s the leader and the leader says, yes, and we’re we’re, we have a loud, loud voice for the leader and it asks us to step in line and, and, and re respect that. And no one person is more important than the group. So you don’t want to put things in, in, in in jeopardy, by infusing too too much for, for, for one person’s benefit.
So you can see there’s two unique points of view and they have entirely different worldviews for governance and culture and things like that. And that’s why our cultures. Are in disarray because people have with so much social media and and that our tribes, you know, tribe one or two are, we are so easily recognizable that.
Social media is, has put us into the, these, these competing camps. And we ended up getting addicted to the concept of yes, because if, if, if it’s an echo, the echo chamber in your, in your group and all you hear is you’re right. You’re right. You’re right. All of a sudden, you think you have all the answers and, and so now.
If these two points of view are set on each other, then all of a sudden it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a terrible thing to see because people criticize people for their genuine, genuine instinctual point of view. When you know, you didn’t have a lot of choice in this it’s you don’t choose to be. Social binder. You don’t choose to be an individualist.
It’s the, it’s your instincts, your life experiences. And you come out of that lessons have bam you’re you’re, you’ve got this point of view. And then if I, if I criticized you for your instinctual point of view, we’ll never get anywhere.
Scott: So you mentioned an interesting point and. That was one thing I wanted to touch on.
And I’m actually kind of glad you went there about, you know, big data, social media, extreme polarization, echo chambers. So we’re only seeing people that agree with us on social media, which is a big deal. And I think that, you know, I’m actually Canadian, so I didn’t expect it to the same extent I’m in Toronto right now, but I think we see all the news anyways.
So I think that we’ve never seen polarization, at least in my lifetime. Like I’ve seen over the course of the past year and then some so. My question to you is now that we understand the root cause, how do we like what’s, what’s the fix? Like, how do we, you know, it seems like data and social big data and social media have almost made this problem much worse than it could have been, but I don’t see how we go back on it and fix it.
Do you have an idea as to, as how to use this information for, for, for good.
Bob: I’ve got some, some points of view. I will tell you that we’ve done a analysis between the United States and Canada. And we we’ve done a lot of work in Canada in that Canada has less polarization because there’s more of a, of a.
Those groups in the middle have more power power in Canada than they do on the, in the States. And I can send you some stuff really interesting difference between Canada and the U S but you know, I, the solution is not to throw out technology because who can do that, but. I think you’ve got to, we’ve got to get back to having Oh, human re re relationship with people beyond social media and aye.
Aye, aye, aye. Do a lot of things on radio and podcasts and, and, and, and it’s so interesting for me because everybody has their instinctual. Point of view and, and, and most people are really, really willing to share it with you. They’re willing to say, this is what I believe, but we have to start by asking, you know, we don’t want to take the, like today with social media, you know, we’re for just four armed.
We’re four warned of who I’m speaking to, because if you’ve gone on social media, you know that this is a, a social binder or a conservative or a tea party, or somebody like that very early on in those conversations, you’re going to know that. And everybody walks around four armed to, to be. Do to combat out of the gate, telling somebody that their point of view is not appropriate.
And that’s, that is we can do something about that. We can demand that people have a little civility and say, instead of saying, that’s a stupid idea. How could you come to agree with that and say, tell me about that. And what, what you find when you take people’s points of view and listen to them, you diffuse that sense of impotence, that sense of no power.
That sense of you’ve you’ve sentenced me to irrelevance and that’s the first step we have to, we have to. And I know it’s not a great, sexy first technological steps, but that’s what we have to do is reinvest ourselves in a human condition.
Scott: It’s, it’s an interesting problem. But I think that, I think you nailed it, you know, if.
If instead of, instead of just seeking out like-minded and blocking or removing ourselves from everybody. And I think it’s almost been further, further propagated by the fact that we’re all isolated at home. So you can’t even have those in person. And a lot of, a lot of communication is lost on us when we’re over video or just text, right?
Yeah. But if you, if you, if you seek out the other side and you seek out alternative points of view, I think that that would make your, your social media experience, less of an echo chamber and more of a learning experience that would probably solve many of these polarization issues. But it has to be asked to be like intrinsically motivated.
Like you can’t, you can’t force somebody to do that. So do you know
Bob: when you look at what happened two weeks ago? Yeah. I sense, and this may just be a a Unique moment in time, but I sent sense everybody kind of stepping back from the brink and saying we almost went too far and I’m seeing and it may be at an anecdotal and it may be temporary, but I’m seeing people starting to say.
Yeah, I think I got to find a different way to do this. And then if you can find your way to work on a project that’s local, the national stuff is, is almost untenable, but if you can work on a local project, you know, I’ve seen people all the time get into a project and they say, I wouldn’t vote for that guy for dog catcher, but I can work with them.
I got it. I want to get this school done. I wanted to get this charity. I want to get to do this. And that’s another way to get people into challenging their, their, their points of view. Yeah.
Scott: Material. Very smart, very smart. I want what I, what I like to do. So when I break down these interviews, I kind of start off with what you’re focusing on now.
Then I’d like to go into some more personal details about your career and your successes, because I do like to sort of bring you back into it. But before I keep, before I sort of, I don’t want to pivot away from this because it’s very interesting, but we touched on a lot of points. Is there anything else that I didn’t bring up that you, that you thought was important to sort of bring up in, in line with what we just spoke about?
Bob: Well, I think one of the, one of the things is You know, w w we think that we develop whole person insights. So these are things that we, we, we can break off and do things like recruit recruiting and job hiring, but really we’re working on holistic solutions for, for. Remaking the culture of the company.
Any human capital challenge is one that we think we’re uniquely qualified to, to, to apply now. So we think it’s marketing and it’s it’s product development. And it fits and benefit management. We’re doing some really breakthrough stuff on, on healthcare and people who are not likely to have access to health, healthcare.
How do we get them reintegrated into the. Into the marketplace. So those are, I just want to do is see the expanse of what we’re we’re we’re working on. So
Scott: thank you for that. No, no, it it’s. I think it’s incredible work. It’s very interesting. And obviously interesting. It’s probably an understatement.
It’s more like, like, like it’s like. You know, society defining if, if this keeps moving in this direction. So in, in this particular book because this was obviously, you know, what drove most of this or it was the, the result of a lot of this research. What do you go through in the book? So if somebody does want to check it out and read more, what would they get in this book?
Bob: The first part isn’t evolution of our, how we built the model and the building blocks of the model. So it’s, it’s pretty detailed, but it, it gives you a real ground up approach for what it is. And we have three, three buckets in the group here in the book, a a. Working on the building blocks of people and what, what goes into your identity and how to, how to understand it and use it.
The next is that the, the ecosystem of social and work and school and all those systemic in big engagement. How do you, how do you fit into work? How do you take your, your building blocks of your identity and apply that to, to a career? And what are the, what are the things that are. Going to be important to you or not important to, so that systemic ecosystem is, is, is, felt dealt, dealt with in that way.
And then the third is the population, you know, what are the impacts for, for governance? What are the impacts for problems solving? What are the impacts for how we. One-on-one work and eyes our government and make better decisions in, in that regard. So those are the three buckets of the, of the book.
Yeah.
Scott: Interesting. Okay. Good. That’s very good. Okay. So I’m going to ask just some questions about your career. The question, the first question I usually ask is norm, I’m going to, I’m going to reframe it a little bit, but normally it is. What would somebody do to pursue a career similar to yours? Now you have an interesting career.
I’m going to ask that what I’m going to ask. I’m going to ask, first of all, if you look inward, what, what traits have you discovered in yourself that you recognize in why you chose a career that you chose? And then what would be one? It’s going to be two part questions. So that would be the first part. So looking inward and understanding like what motivators led you to live a life of research and, and sort of go back and.
And do what you did when you pivoted from working in corporate to going back into psychology. But then secondly, the second part of that question would be what would be a one piece of advice that you would give somebody looking to align their career with their motivators? Is that, are those fair questions, because I’m just really curious as to, okay.
So I’d like you to go into that because that’s very interesting.
Bob: Well, for me, it was you know, I I knew that I, I was going to pursue psychology early on, you know, I had just some family experiences with early, early on my, in my career. My, my. My grandmother, interestingly enough, her husband died in 40 years old.
She went back to Syracuse university and got a degree in social work. And she, she created, there was this movement in in her, her childhood, where they created settlement houses, where they tried to bring people. That were disadvantage into to have access to all that, that society would, would provide them.
And she was, she wasn’t the queen of Syracuse, New York working in these disadvantaged communities. And she just said, You know, what about the people? What about the people I would come home with with the new psychology degree of the day? You know, now we’re going to talk about behaviorism and cognitive and each time she said, well, what about the people?
What about the people? And so I knew
at that moment I was going to be in that business and at a second, second point was when I chose to expand this, this interest and start into the corporate world. Aye, aye. Aye. Aye. Nobody in my family had done that. I was Kenny big and it was, it gave me a much broader sense. Of who I was and how I saw the world.
So that stoked my worldview and made, gave me some potency to say, this is, this is something you, you can play in this world. So I was pretty successful at that. And then I decided to, we returned with, with psychology, because I really felt. That was the op the opportunity to, to, to make some statement of an impact.
I’d seen the corporate world. I found it lacking in some of the reasons I found it lacking, I felt was in my control to opine about that. And so that was how I, how I envisioned the how this is. This worldview has served me. So
Scott: very good. Very, very good. And then the second, the second piece of that was, if somebody was going to ask you, you know, I’m looking at career options, what would some advice for me be if I want to align my profile to, I guess, have to figure out my profile is first, but how would I align that?
Yeah. So
Bob: I would say I would. Spend a fair amount of time trying to, to, to understand what’s, you know, we all have, we all have had to have a worldview that’s uniquely ours. But we can add glimpses into that by looking at it, how, how we process these instincts and incorporate them into your worldview worldview.
And when you’re, when you feel comfortable about delineating, what’s really driving you, that’s gonna really free up the the The choices it’ll, you you’ll be able to make much more informed choices and you’ll be able to I think be at peace with that because you know, there’s a lot of ways people can get to certain, to certain runs on the ladder.
But there’s a very few ways that you can feel like you’re fulfilling yourself based on your Intel intellectual and instinctual points of view. So I think that that mode moment of we now have tools that allow us to, to shed light on, on those factors. And I think it should take advantage of it. And then and then at that point then go, no that no single decision is not reversible.
So if you make a mistake, it’s just a mistake.
Scott: Good. No good advice. Good advice. What’s a resource. It could be a person, a book. That’s helped you along your way that you’d recommend somebody go investigate.
Bob: That’s it that’s it. I would, I would, I would recommend Jonathan Haidt’s the righteous mind, you know, they do, he did a great job of making that concept accessible to all, you know, every day people and, and, and that would be a great book for people.
Scott: Okay. So what would be a lesson that you would tell your younger self?
Bob: I think, I think to trust, trust your instincts too. Cause ultimately there, that’s what you have to live with. You know, and don’t take a job for the money, take the job for, you know, all those classic job advice things.
But, but if you can get in touch with, with the needs and the wants that you have in your possession, man, you, you, you go hard and trust them.
Scott: Good. And Last last question for you, you know, you have, you’ve had a tenure career and you’ve done pivots and you’ve come out successful. Now you’re sort of leading the edge on, on, on research in this particular area, but my question would be, what does what does success look like for you?
Bob: My I’m one of those ones that it’s a deep satisfaction that you’ve done something worthwhile. That’s for me is is what success work looks like.
Scott: Okay. Very good. My most important question, where do people connect with you? Where do people find the book? Do you have links that you can, you can give, I’m going to link everything in the show notes as well, but where do you want people to go?
Bob: Accessible@pathsite.com, P a T H S I G H T. We’re on Instagram and Twitter and all those types of things. So we’re, we’re there. And the book is a, you know, Amazon target all the usual Martinson, normal so pretty widely
distributed.
Scott: But not link. What I’ll do is I’ll link the link the Amazon below too.
So people can find it on Amazon in the show notes. If they want to go check it out.
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