What the Return-to-Office Debate Gets Wrong

23:48And I just thought that was such a primitive mental model. Like, okay, yeah, but how many hours a day do we need to be in the same room together? How many days a week do we need to be in the same room together? Have you thought about different ways of solving for mentoring that, you know, deal with the fact that you are a multinational company and some of your most important roles are not physically in the same country as the people that you expect to be doing the mentoring? What do you do when you work with someone whose mental models are not fleshed out? Because I just wanted to smack that down.

24:21Brené Brown:Yeah, I think what's really hard is in my experience, no matter who that leader is, and I could take a wild guess about who this leader is and be so right. You know exactly who it was. Yeah. I think the problem is it's the parenting equivalent. And I don't like to use parenting stuff with work because it infantilizes work, but here, you know, it's the parenting. Are you going to say infantilizes parents? It's the parenting equivalent of because I said so. Yes, exactly. And it actually creates a lack of respect and distrust. It really creates distrust. And I think what we've seen working, because we were working so closely with leaders during the pandemic and right after as they were making these decisions, that if you believe it enough to mandate it, then you should have the discipline to get under the mental model and walk people through it.

25:25Yes. And explain why.

25:26Brené Brown:Right. And if you can't be bothered by that, and you're going to rely on just because I said so, say goodbye to your top talent. And not because even they have to go in because they don't want to work for someone who's treating them, infantilizing them with because I said so. That's a great meta argument. I wonder what would have happened if I made that point. Say that again. What do you mean? Just to even say back to the CEO, that sounds a lot like when a parent says, because I said so. Can you walk me through what is your evidence and what's your proof that this is so important? So here's where I think I would differ in the way that I would challenge someone like that.

26:07Brené Brown:I don't think I'd ask for evidence. No one's going to be able to out evidence you. I know. That's why I'm going there. We're on my turf. But also that's the highest quality information available, right? But I think I've never had experience using that to get to someone's mental model because they immediately get defensive. So I think what I would say is, what are your core beliefs about what happens when people are at home? And what what are your core beliefs about what happens when people are at work? Yes. What are you, what keeps you up at night when people are working from home? Oh, that's so helpful.

26:45Okay. And then, you know, one of the core beliefs is, you know, I think this is obviously easy to debunk, but, you know, there's still a, you know, well, people are, you know, they're slacking off at home. And once somebody says that to me, I can say, you know, that's interesting because what Nick Bloom has shown in his experiments is that, when people are given a chance to work from anywhere a day or two a week, they save about an hour on average of commuting time. And guess how much of that time they spend working? More than half of it. Yeah, I've read that. So you just got an extra half hour of work plus out of your employee.

27:22And guess what? The other 24 or so minutes they get to use on family time, health, hobbies, friends. That's a win-win.

27:31Brené Brown:Deliberate recovery. Yeah, which I'm like, wow. You have literally found a way to do something that biologists and physicists told me was impossible. You created more hours in the day. And I can't have that conversation without them being defensive until they've told me here's what my belief is. Yes. So I think the way that you get to that is the question about what's on your heart and mind. What are you afraid of? What do you make up is happening? I think if you can get on the table, the fears, the mental model, the how people make sense of the world, how people think people contribute value, and you can say to them, that makes sense.

28:11Brené Brown:Are you open to challenging it with what we know to be true from research? Yes. Or complicating it even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think if you miss the step of, I've never successfully had anyone, including myself, like we just did this with our company. We got into some mental models and one of them was super painful. It took us like three hours. We had to stop. People had to walk out. People went like under the line to get back up. But one of the mental models that we uncovered was that we make excuses for our behavior during unique situations. and when we gave three examples of unique situations, there was nothing unique about that.

28:54Right, there's a pattern.

28:55Brené Brown:There's a pattern. Yeah. We had handled things exactly like that in different contexts for 10 years. Yes. But we use uniqueness as - It's a smokescreen. It's a covering. A smokescreen. Yeah. To come out of our integrity and what we know is best in terms of leaving sometimes. No, that's really helpful. And it makes me think about But what this also unlocks is a chance to then even redirect the conversation away from what might be a bit of a red herring. So I'm thinking about George Kelly's classic work on slot rattling. Are you familiar with this? No, I don't know it. So George Kelly studied the mental models.

29:35He thought of them as goggles that you wear to make sense of the world. And I always remember this case that he wrote about of there was a guy who got discharged from the military and his life fell apart. And Kelly was analyzing why. And it turned out he had spent his whole career in the military analyzing things through that lens. His mental model was military good, non-military bad. And so once he was even honorably discharged, he had put himself in the bad category. So what most people do when one of their constructs is violated, when one of their mental models is challenged, is Kelly described it as slot rattling, where he's like, oh, okay, well, now I have to convince myself that non-military is good.

30:20And maybe military is bad. Demonize the military.

30:22Brené Brown:Right. Yeah. And you just kind of end up playing this, you're on a seesaw. And what Kelly said is, no, you need more mental models. You need more lenses. You need other ways to see the world beyond military, non-military, in order to complicate your worldview. Wait, wait, I gotta stop you there. Yeah. This is so interesting. So the mental model made something good and something bad. The answer is to not just switch them. Yes, exactly. But to get a whole new pair of goggles. Exactly. You need more mental models. And I'm thinking about this in the context of the hybrid work debate because we're doing this slot rattling right now.

31:08It's often a tug of war between leaders saying, I want you in all the time and I'm going to force it, and employees saying, no, you can't, and I don't want to work here if you do that. And then, well, I'm going to measure, but can you really measure? And are you really going to fire me if you value me? And it's the wrong conversation. The conversation should be, how do we achieve organizational goals in ways that are respectful of individuals' lives? If we have that conversation, I mean, one thing that jumps out in the data very clearly is the flexibility people want most is not where they work.

31:41It's when and how much.

31:43Brené Brown:Yeah, that's it. They want to control their time, not their place. And so if a leader were to realize that, it would be very easy to say to somebody, hey, are you telling me that if I let you leave the office at 3 o 'clock so you can be home with your kids? Carpool, yeah. You will come to the office every day? Maybe that works. That requires another mental model. I mean, this is so interesting because it's getting caught in the binary, even if you switch sides. Classic binary bias. Binary bias. Yeah. So this is why I love this tool because this is how I spend so much of my time that I get asked to come in and see a problem.

32:30Brené Brown:and my work is really so, you know, I have to get on my scuba gear and do this deep dive to be like, you know, are we, can we go below the patterns of behavior, below the systems and structures to figure out how do you make sense of the world? How do you think people contribute value? And if you think they contribute value by with mentoring, coaching, feedback, there are many ways to build that into remote work. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, what's the old joke about consultants that, do you know this one? No, I don't know. A consultant is somebody who borrows your watch, tells you the time, and then charges you for the privilege.

33:11I think that gets something really fundamentally wrong, which is when, I'm not good at consulting, but as an advisor or a researcher, when I come into an organization, I am holding up a mirror. Yes. And helping them see their mental models. And once I've done that, they are much better equipped to solve their problems than I am.

33:31Brené Brown:Yes. And that's why, you know, someone asked me the day, they're like, when did you become an expert on manufacturing and supply chain? And I'm like, that's the problem you see. That underneath it is mental models. And there's a finite group of those, you know, that we have to challenge and then we use data. And then, but getting underneath there, even challenging my own mental models is really hard. So this is interesting. So violent agreement, Yeah. I mean, a ton of it. Have your why. Understand the middle models from which you work. Challenge your middle models with evidence and data. And I think that lands us at we want people to be together a reasonable amount of time and not all the time.

34:14Brené Brown:For the right reasons. And when you ask the Alassian thing, I do think the one thing I would say about companies that, and this is not an endorsement or criticism of how Alassian does it because I am not familiar with it. But what I would say is for purely remote organizations that rely on all hands, the one thing I would say that I see consistently being helpful is scheduling in more white space. Yes. And more open time and not scheduled planned time for people who don't always get to get together. Yes. Yeah. They need time to actually incubate ideas. It's not programmed. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

34:54Okay, good. Go to questions? Yeah, let's go to questions.

34:59So there were two that I thought were really interesting. One has, I thought it had nothing to do with our conversation from the first part of the episode, but it does relate to mental models because I think a lot of our mental models are wrong on this. The question, this comes from Bree, was can the two of you talk about birth order?

35:23So where do you want to start on that one?

35:25Brené Brown:I just feel like there are some things where you and I are not going to see eye to eye, which is birth order, Enneagram. We'll probably see the same on horoscopes, but astrology, because I'm not for that, unless it's a good one for the day. But I think birth order can be very significant and very helpful. I don't think it's predictive, but I think it can be a data point. How did you know I was going to land in a different place on that? Because the research is so not compelling. Yeah, it's a mess. Yeah, but the lived experience is super compelling. I think it's hard to study. I think it's hard to study.

36:04And I think there's so many complex variables that interact with birth order. Right. Well, let's put something on the table then. I think there are a lot of theories that people hold about birth order that just do not stand up to evidence. But there are a couple that are supported in some very careful, large-scale studies. One is that there is convincing evidence that later borns are more likely to take risks than firstborns. What do you think of that one?

36:34Brené Brown:I think that's true. And I think, I mean, what would you say about the studies that show disproportionate number of firstborns in certain roles, in certain... Leadership roles, for example, high achievement. I mean, I think it's the converse of that, right? And the standard explanation of that is as a firstborn, you are drawn toward conventional ways of pleasing your elders and, you know, kind of being the model oldest sibling. And so you get good grades and you run for student government. And that niche is not available anymore to laterborns. And so they need to find a different way to stand out.

37:08And they often do that by rebelling, by differentiating, taking risks, trying things that are not proven. And then also, I think there might be a parenting component of this too, which is parents are much more controlling with their first child than they are with their fourth.

37:21Brené Brown:I mean, my younger sisters were juggling knives at five. And I'm the oldest. But I will say that, I don't know. This is where I get really frustrated because there's such—you can say something that's very emotionally resonant. For example, I came across a meme on Instagram that said, were you really a pleasure to have in class or were you just the firstborn daughter with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder? I saw that. Yeah. And I was like, here. But then I think what ends up happening is I think this is fun. This is true. You know, firstborn daughters. I could read a room before I could read a book.

38:04Brené Brown:You know, like, you know, just there were things that are both resonating, helpful and painful about some of that. And then all of a sudden the grifters get a hold of it. And now there's a trauma protocol based on, you know, this. And then now there's a, you know, and now if you take this supplement. So it's like, then you're like, this is why we can't have nice things. This is why we can only have research. People bastardize studies. Yeah, and they turn it into like, if you sleep this way, this is your diagnosis. You're like, dude, fuck off. Like you don't have any idea what you're talking about.

38:43Brené Brown:What is your background? So then you just go to this world that I don't live in as a deep person of faith, that if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist. Like now I believe like if you could accurately measure it, is it really that important? That's a great question. Okay, so let's go back then to the birth order finding on, you know, kind of conventional achievement versus risk-taking. I think part of what's interesting about that is it's a really small effect in most studies. It doesn't show up in all studies. And it depends on how many siblings you have and also on age spacing. So one, I think, common way of trying to make sense of this is, well, if laterborns, you know, are separated by five or more years from their older sibling, they kind of get a fresh start in terms of they don't have to compete with that older sibling.

39:32And so they can go more in the conventional achievement route. If they're only a year or two apart, it's anybody's guess how that might play out. And then you look at this, but you're lumping all later borns together. What about being the last born versus the middle child? Middle child never gets covered in these studies.

39:51Brené Brown:The peacekeeper. On Instagram, that would be the peacekeeper. It would be. There's a possible truth to that, but families are so complicated. Why do you want to reduce everything to the order in which you arrived? I don't know, because we're desperate to make meaning. We are. We're desperate to make meaning and to make things make sense. And, you know, it's like, and then when we see something that deeply resonates, it gives us a sense of belonging and place. And like, you know, I'll see all the Gen X, you know, shut up, we drank out of a water hose. We left on our bikes at 6 a.m. and came back at 10 p.m.

40:28Brené Brown:Well, that's actually true. We did. I got dysentery playing Oregon Trail. Yeah. So it's like, so it's also a way for us to meaningfully connect with humanity and each other and tribal in a way. And so I have this like really unspoken connection to other firstborn daughters. And, you know, so I think it's there's something very human about it. It's just that anything that emotionally resonates and gives us something is very vulnerable to being misused. Yeah, and exploited. And exploited. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. Okay, let's go to the other question. I thought this was an interesting meta question that actually a bunch of different people have submitted.

41:16The basic question, as I tried to synthesize across them, was how do you think about the tradeoff between authenticity and just releasing a podcast as you run it and editing to deliver your best material? And I don't know that we have fully figured out how we're going to do that moving forward, right?

41:40Brené Brown:I'm a no edit person. And I am a not editing disrespects the listeners time person. Let's cut out the fat, which might be a third of the episode. And I'm more of a believer that we're trying to challenge each other in caring, respectful ways. We're trying to think of new ideas. We're trying to challenge ourselves. And I want a podcast that reflects the fact that that's not a fast-moving process, that there are empty spaces that people are uncomfortable with. and the rush to fill them is one of the greatest barriers to deep thought, deep thinking, deep conversation and meaningful. So I don't want to edit something.

42:28Brené Brown:It would be like, you know, asking someone to take my wrinkles out. Like, you know, it's like, this is, this is it. You know, I've earned the, I've earned all of these, the smiles, the cry, but you know, and so for me, I don't think of it as being disrespectful to the listener. I think about it as being honest. I love that framing of it. How do you think about then the dilemma of, I've gotten messages over the years from people saying, yours is the only podcast I listen to because it's every minute is well used and I feel like I can fit it into my day. I don't want to lose those people. The biggest fans, the people who read all of our stuff are probably going to listen regardless.

43:13Brené Brown:I don't know. I mean, I guess finding a happy medium. I think one of the things that we're doing is we're trying new structures. So we're doing like 30 minutes of this and we're giving people the playbook at the top. I'd be open to listener feedback. I would have a very hard time. And I know this is like, this is my number one Enneagram, which I believe in, that I make everything a moral issue as a number one. You're a huge moralizer. It's true. What the frick? But Jesus. It's one of your best and also most challenging qualities. Okay, whatever.

43:49Brené Brown:For fuck's sake, y 'all. But I would almost feel unethical to take a conversation where there were pauses and it was hard and we were trying to figure it out. And we were looking like we're struggling to be respectful and make it sound like to do to do to do to do because that's not the way the world works. and everyone's need to do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, is dangerous. And so I guess where it comes in for me is maybe the, I've been thinking about this. Maybe it's more structure, letting listeners know what's going to happen, being explicit why we leave some pauses in and finding a happy medium.

44:27Brené Brown:Like one thing that is like, one thing that's for sure, I hope that people don't confuse organic conversation with a lack of preparedness because I'm always prepared. You're always prepared. Like, no, we don't prepare together on purpose. At all. This is much more interesting not doing it. Because it's more interesting. The only thing we've done so far is just a line on the topic. That's it. And so I think that's important because I think that's how conversation is real. Yeah. Like, I don't say, hey, Steve, babe, at six o 'clock, I want to have a conversation about these things. Let's prep it together.

44:58Brené Brown:I'm going to say this. And actually, I don't always need Steve for my conversations. I just have them with him. And then I let him know whether he's in the shit house or not. But yeah, I think we're just trying to get it right. I think there's value in maybe a distinction that just became clear to me, which is there are conversations where the process is important to show. And there are conversations where we're trying to share useful content. And I think the former requires more let the episode run. And the latter, if we went down a 17-minute rabbit hole, maybe people only need to hear 10 minutes of that.

45:37Brené Brown:I think it's a huge watch out for us. Big time. Yeah, because I could go down a 70-minute rabbit hole. I mean, I wanted to look at which studies you pulled. I know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait. But let's talk about that one more. Yeah, yeah, I know. We'll just keep practicing. And I love the feedback. I get a lot of good feedback, constructive and positive on LinkedIn, which is where my comments are open. and I like to get in there and respond to people. So yeah, I'm open to it. But I do think it's meaningful to show that if you're actually actively, and I have to do this with leaders a lot, when we teach active listening, the hardest thing that we have to break is you preparing your response while someone else is talking.

46:22Brené Brown:I don't want to miss anything you're saying when you say it. Therefore, if I'm going to respond in a meaningfully respectful way, I need a minute to think about what I'm going to say that. That's why I brought my notebook. Yeah, that's why I brought. Yeah, I mean, like... I need to capture that so it's not taking up space in my brain so that I can listen to you. Yeah. And maybe there is something about edits to make it easier for a listener. I'm not convinced that people... In fact, I've seen a lot of feedback for both of us that people, one person used this term exactly. Thank God you're not insight machines.

46:55Brené Brown:That's not what we need. We don't know how to talk to each other. I thought that was the compliment. I want to be an insight machine. Yeah, I do not. I want to be like a, huh. But happy medium? Yes. Let's try. And we'll experiment and correct based on? Data. Of course. And if you're pulling from LinkedIn, I'm going to draw from Spotify and Instagram. Oh, perfect. That way we'll have a range. Yeah, and we'll use the one I like best. The one we like best. See you next week. Yep. The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brene Brown Education and Research Group and Granted Productions. You can subscribe to The Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.

47:38We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.