Alison Goldsworthy: It can physically hurt to change your mind

On this episode of Better Business Outcomes, Stephen Waddington from Wadds Inc. welcomes author and a practitioner and researcher in the sphere of polarisation,  Alison Goldsworthy.

They discuss:

Why Alison started investigating polarisation after a she spoke out about a sexual assault that colleagues failed to recognise or acknowledge

• Technology is a factor in amplifying polarisation but it isn’t the trigger. It results from societal, political and cultural issues
• Polarisation can make a constructive contribution to discussion, debate and innovation
• How Alison wrote Poles Apart with Laura Osborne and Alexandra Chesterfield during lockdown
• Using polarisation as a communication tool can be incredibly powerful for good and bad
• Finally, we hear the best suggestion of the series so far, for what drives better business outcomes

Presented by Sarah Waddington and Stephen Waddington

For more information visit https://www.wadds.co.uk/
With thanks to our production partners at What Goes On Media

Transcript

Stephen Waddington:

Welcome to Better Business Outcomes, the podcast where we discuss how communication can transform and grow organisations with a series of global leaders who set the standard for what great looks like. 

I'm Stephen Waddington from Wadds Inc, and in this podcast you'll hear from leaders and senior communicators about their leadership journey and how they create social impact. 

You’ll also understand the areas you should be focusing on to build personal and organisational resilience. Find out how public relations can unlock value for your business, and enjoy a great listen along the way. 

Today I’m joined by Alison Goldsworthy a practitioner and researcher in the sphere of polarisation. Her book ‘Poles Apart: Why people turn against each other and how to bring them together’ co-written with Laura Osbourne and Alexandra Chesterfield explores the fragmentation of society and what we can do about it. 

Ali, welcome. 

It's growing conversation in the UK about polarisation. I guess I first became aware of it following Brexit. Tell me where your journey started.

Alison Goldsworthy:

Yeah, so I suppose my journey started actually as somebody who probably made some polarisation happen, actually, to be honest with you. I used to work in movement building and helping often people who were less powerful stand against those who were more powerful by getting big groups and numbers of people to do things and take action online on everything from, you know, financial services to organ donation. And I found what was really effective at doing that was often by, you know, highlighting extremes of one group against another, to mobilise things in a way that will be very familiar to people who ever been involved in the tabloid press, or even sometimes so broadsheet press or who've worked in comms. Like how, how do you do that? And that was part of what I'd done. And then I started to see that actually it blinded people to nuance and it meant that people found it really hard to see problems within their own sides, even the point of absurdity.

So, you know, I had a situation that caused me to leave politics. I used to be deputy chair of the Lib Dems. I spoke out about a ‘me too’ type thing that happened in the land before me too. And you know, the inability of people from my own party or previous party to recognize what I was telling them was truthful because they so didn't want to believe someone from their tribe could do something bad, was just incredible. And there's now some research out there which shows that, you know, it's done in the US that shows that Democrats find it harder to believe allegations of sexual assault against other democrats and Republicans against Republicans, particularly if they are very active within those groups, and those identities matter to them. And I suddenly started to think, hang on, at what point does this become a problem for democracy and for society?

And at what point might people like I have been causing issues that I did very little to try and, you know, amend or offset. 

And that was really my journey into starting to look at polarisation. You know, I am, I'm Welsh. So the Scottish Scottish nationalist thing really hit very, you know, hard. Like I started to understand much more about what was going on there. And I went to Stanford and was here during the Trump elections. So between all of those things, I found that my own journey to needing to understand polarisation and when it was helpful and when it could be a problem. Like there was a gap there for someone with my background to come in and fill it. And that is what I've been doing for most of the last decade.

Stephen Waddington:

So talk about the moment and now. It strikes me that that toxicity because of polarisation on the web, particularly social media, is worse than it's ever been. Have you any evidence for that? Is this a factor of technology?

Alison Goldsworthy:

So technology is definitely a factor. I'm just going to pick up on one bit of your question though, which is, you don't have to look too far back in history to know that this is not the most polarized that we have ever been in our, within society or within the world, you know, or, and even within the UK.

Stephen Waddington:

Okay, so why, why, why does back to that? Because I associate it as an issue with technology and you're telling me it's not so

Alison Goldsworthy:

No, no, no, it's not, it's not associated with technology. I mean, the environ, how you behave is affected by, you know, how you're wired and the environment you are in. And there is no doubt that technology and social media has had an effect on that. But you can, let's go, let's go a long way back in history and then further into more recent history as well. 

So say you go back to Gutenberg and the development of the printing press and you could see huge growth in polarisation. And you know, and it's important to note that polarisation is about how tightly you identify with a group and not how much you disagree on an issue. They can be quite profoundly different things or how much you, you don't identify with another group. So if you look to, you know, for example in, in Germany and what was going on there and the growth of, as the printing press happened and there was technological change there, how people became more attached to their national identity and how language, you know, evolved to include that.

And there were many, many wars fought in Europe around that time. Given most of us can't remember in living memory some of that period in history. Let's go back to the UK and look at, you know, the 1980s. I'm from, as I mentioned, South Wales. There was a lot of polarisation then most famously around some of the closure of the mines and with a lot of violence around it. If you look to Northern Ireland where clearly there were 3000 people who died in the troubles there, you know, and that was a hugely polarized society. 

So this is not the first time we've done it. What is heartening from that is you get some ebbs and flows naturally in polarisation. Things go. There is no doubt though that social media on the whole encourages people to become more polarized rather than less polarized.

It creates it makes you think it amplifies the extremes and mutes the moderates in the middle. So it means that people will often perceive others to hold more extreme views or dislike them more than is actually what, what happens. Because if you think about, you know, anyone who's ever tried to boost engagement, for example, on social media, you know, it's, it's often like, ‘oh my God, I can't believe what this other side is saying. Can you believe that’? Which is why it's not necessarily an echo chamber or a filter bubble. Cause you are seeing what other people, what's disagreeing with you. But it's extremely motivating and you think, oh my God, everybody who holds that opinion or is alike to that group will think and will behave in that way. And that's, that's not the case.

Stephen Waddington:

It seems to be applied though as a strategy more and more in communication in the political sphere, but also in the brands sphere, right at this moment in time. Is that correct?

Alison Goldsworthy:

I think it's fair to say that polarisation can beget further polarisation. There's no doubt about that. And that's part of the one is once things start to fall apart like that, you don't get rewarded for going into the middle. So instead your election campaigns, for example, will do more by allowing you to play to your base supporters because that's where you'll generate money and funds, often small donors as well as big donors. And you know, and how you will get people, for example, demonstrating very publicly is part of their identity and who they're bringing in and what's going on. And that can be, you know, that is undoubtedly a trend that we have seen with what's happening. It's, as I say, it's not the first time in history you get that trend. They'll come a point in theory where actually there'll be some voters in the middle who are uncertain.

Danny Finklestein at the Times talks a lot about this, you know, where actually is quite an extreme view of, for example, the, let's say what Liz Trusts was preparing to try and offer. Are there suddenly like conservative voters who think, ‘gosh, I'm not really sure I identify as a conservative so much any longer’. How could you appeal to them? And it's probably not by playing just your base vote, you know, if you're the Labour party or the Lib Dems or, or the Nats, you know, you want to try and reach out and do things from there. So yes, it has happened naturally you should start to create a middle which comes through when things get really tricky is when that middle just disappears completely. And things are very binary and very binary choices like referendums can reinforce that.

Stephen Waddington:

Do you think would compulsory voting change this because then politicians would be forced to appeal to more of a middle, moderate ground rather than to extremes?

Alison Goldsworthy:

So it's a great thought. So there's a few questions beneath that, which is, you know, if you look at places which have got compulsory voting, so Australia is the one of them. Australia's still pretty polarized.

Stephen Waddington:

Yeah. That's not, you might think I answered my own question!

Alison Goldsworthy:

Might see not, but, but the, the pure question that you're trying to ask, like the tests that you would want to do is between ‘would Australia be less polarized if it didn't have compulsory voting’, right? Like that's the, that's the thing. But so I suppose the problem is typically not that people aren't turning out to vote. And even then when you do have compulsory voting, you don't always have to express a preference. You can spoil your ballot paper and there will be a thing about ‘what if you are then forcing people to pick an identity, a polarizing identity that they have to wear in some other format’. Like I'd have some questions about it. And I'm certain ally to that is that I am personally not a huge fan of compulsory voting. I'm a massive fan of voting and getting people out to vote. I'm not sure compulsory voting is, is the answer to it. So, you know, listeners should be aware that I'm certain I have my own biases in how I've just answered you.

Stephen Waddington:

OK, it just struck me. 

Is a degree of polarisation ever good though in talking through debate, debating? Yeah, I mean we've almost lost the art of debate, right? In modern society.

Alison Goldsworthy:

I dunno if we have lost the art of debate, we might have lost the art of debate or being able to hear and value some of the right debates and how people have those conversations. 

Stephen Waddington:

Right! We've lost the art of listening. 

Alison Goldsworthy:

But, but there's some people who do it, right? And you have to think about how do we reward those people and elevate them, you know? So I find like Tortoise's slow news model really interesting. Like, as I said, we had a long conversation with Danny Finklestein. I'm happy to send you guys some of the links to parts of it where he's talks about actually there's a business model for The Times, you know, in playing to the middle. And that's, you know, and that's the associate editor of the Times and the guy who brought in the paywall saying like, there absolutely is a business case for doing that. How many types of newspapers, like the times you could get in that thing? I, I, I am, I'm less certain of, to be honest with you. So I, I do think some polarisation is a normal, natural and healthy thing.

If we all ended up agreeing all the time, life would be tremendously boring and much less innovative. So the aim here is not to eliminate things, it's to make sure that, you know people accept generally the rules of the game by which we live, provided those rules are broadly democratic. You know, places where clearly that's, that's not the case. And also that spillover effects aren't significant into other forms of life. So I was just reading this morning about like healthcare effects and how likely people are to take medication, for example, and to trust doctors if they think they're from a political other to them. You know? And you know, and this is, some of this research is before COVID hitting - you're about 6% less likely to get your child vaccinated if the president that you voted for, you didn't vote for the president who was elected in the us.

You know, and that applied for both Democrats are Republicans and you know, like that I don't think whether children are protected and when they should be living should be dependent on whether their parents agreed with who was voted in or not. And that applied to both Democrat and Republicans. 

My answer is some polarisation is a normal, natural, healthy, good thing in a democracy. Excessive amounts becomes a problem and we need to try and pull back and you should have rules of the game that try and help act as buffers to try and steer a a course and stop things colliding too far. When those rules of the game get, you know, chipped away, then you can end up in quite significant difficulty quite quickly.

Stephen Waddington:

That's a really interesting point. 

I'm really curious by the fact three of you wrote this book. It seems to be, you know, complete body of work. You can't tell where the blurred the, the lines are between the handovers. 

I mean I've written a number of books, I've worked with editors, it's always quite challenging. How did the three of you do create this body of work?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Oh, that's very sweet. So we have an excellent editor. So Nigel Wilcox take a bow. <Laugh> is is one of them.

So the three of us met at Which? where we all used to work. So Alex is a conservative and used to run all our behavioral insight team. Laura used to run all the corp comms and then became the camm paign director. And I was like, troublemaker-in-chief and rabble rouser. And so I think that very much helped that we had a preexisting relationship. People often ask us about this, we were three women in their late thirties still just about all in our late thirties with children or pregnant in the pandemic. That was a certain, like one of the things to solve polarisation is where you highlight things that you have in common and you share struggles. There was definitely a very shared struggle as we tried to get our heads around doing this. But I think, you know, if you want from a comms point of view, one of us would draft one bit, one of us would review it, and then a third person would go from there. So everybody would iterate their changes on he book to try and help make it blend. You know, I I'm very flattered that you think that you can't pick out the bits that different people wrote. Cause I definitely can, but thank you.

Stephen Waddington:

So this was a lockdown project then, right?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Yeah, it wasn't intended as a lockdown project. We signed the deal. It was pretty chunky deal. I mean, like we are those one in 300,000 people who were three unknown authors who

Stephen Waddington:

You got an advance,

Alison Goldsworthy:

Wow. Got a chunky advance from a great publishing house Penguin Random House, and then ended up having to hold a reverse auction for our agents. And now I share an agent with Michael Caine, which is an improbable sentence that I never thought I would say like a while ago. And, and still makes all of us chuckle quite a bit. So yeah, we had to amend bits for the book. It became much more desk based than we'd hoped because we'd hoped to travel to India and do things on the caste system and things. And what the world does not need is three white women writing about India when they haven't spent enough time there to justify it, you know, like that is not helpful. We are not the messages for that mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it wasn't intended as a lockdown project, but then it became one.

And I think we're pretty proud of the results. It's, it's doing, doing really well. The book, you know, and what I'm most excited about is the amount of people who use it. So we did a course with Cambridge, again, I can send you the, the links that an ed-ex, which over a thousand people have now been through on how to try and reduce polarisation in the workplace and big thing in Brazil and starting initiatives there. And then it, it, it morphed, you know, into a company that I am now the president of, where we help organisations understand conflict and polarisation and what's going on. So it's a lockdown project that's extended quite significantly and in a way that makes our hearts sing, you know,

Stephen Waddington:

Oh, it's fantastic. 

The book is a platform. It's brilliant. It ends on a really positive note and I want to talk a little bit about that. We're speaking a week or so after the mi-dterms which were predicted to create even further polarisation in the US - that didn't quite happen. In fact, the results quite expected. Does it make you optimistic?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Oh wow. So that's a multilayered question. So I think what makes me optimistic is that a large part of the American identity actually is about democracy and what they're doing. And so I think the fact that that appears to being activated and people largely voted against and it weren't always Republicans, but generally Republicans who were election deniers. Like I think the fact that those people on the whole lost is probably a good thing for democracy. And what went on, it does make me feel more optimistic. You always watch out for the rear guard action on these kind of things though, which is, you know, let's look to France. So Macron took a similar strategy to some parts of the Democrat party or Democratic party, which was, you know, actually let's get the most extreme version of an opponent we can who is terrible, which will be easiest for us to beat.

And from Macron that involved, you know, like it was helpful to him that LePen was who was his runoff person in France. But the consequence of that was that 5 million more people in France ended up voting for a far right racist party. And what is going to be the tale of people who have voted for Republicans and actually were like, ‘do you know what, maybe that doesn't matter quite as much. Maybe that's not such an issue’. You know, like how are they, are they going to become more angry as a base? What do you do about it? Like all of those things you have to watch for that and not just celebrate with what's going on. Because anybody who's ever thought that they were robbed of o victory legitimately or otherwise, if you see your opponent crowing about it, you don't suddenly think, ‘well I am so pleased that I lost’, you think I'm coming back for more and I'm gonna have him next time. And I think there's something about like the nature and the tone of the debate which separates the behavior of supporters from activists, from leaders, you know, like that, that people should be careful of celebrating too much.

Stephen Waddington:

Wow, that's an perspective but...

Alison Goldsworthy:

I'm here to bring you some joy. I mean like, I think it's mainly good news, right? And I think what went on in Brazil is mainly good news. 

Stephen Waddington:

What about Trump? What about Trump and McConnell though. Trump and Mitch McConnell?

There's a strong argument to be said that this could be the end of Trump's career, political career, right?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Yeah. He's not a man for quitting though, is he?

Stephen Waddington:

No, he is not. No.

Alison Goldsworthy:

<Laugh>. And even then, what does he do next, right? Who does he go and play? Because he's got a large group of supporters to which he has his own communication channels to get through them, through like Truth Social and all of this sort of stuff. Now that's built up, like how's he gonna do that? And you look at things like, you know, let's take a look at let's say Disney and brought out the Little Mermaid. Some people may be familiar with the fact that a Little Mermaid was black or for the remake of the film is going to be be a person of color. And, you know, great, fantastic, you know, lots of wonderful ticks of young girls saying, ‘wow, I can see someone like me holding these roles like that can matter and be really powerful’. There was also a huge coordinated far right attempt against that.

And those far right networks are now made and in place and, and I think people just need to be like keeping an eye on those and dictate and watch how people can get sucked into them because it's so hard to update your view once you are sucked in. You know, is anybody who might ever have dealt with anyone in their family who was very skeptical about covid or vaccine stuff, like, it's really hard to get people to change their views, particularly because it's become something really salient and part of their identity. So I just think we need to be a little bit careful before celebrating too much and watch on how you can try and loosen some of those identities. Like that's going to continue to be a challenge, not just in the US. There's actually higher levels of polarisation in other parts of Europe.

So, you know, I always find it interesting the British people ask me about the US so I appreciate I'm based out here, but like not about Hungary or Poland or Germany or Spain or even Scotland or lo and behold in the UK, Northern Ireland, right? Like it's, there's, there's, there's something there. And I know the US holds a certain like West-Wing level of attraction to comm s people because it does, and there's no too money out here and all that kind of thing. But there are certainly problems closer to home where we could learn a lot more and pick up things.

Stephen Waddington:

Let's talk about the role of communicators though in, in doing this. So communicators play into this sphere where they can, you know, they can contribute to become part of the problem of, of polarisation. 

What's the responsibility of an individual? How do you call yourself to check around these issues?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Well, I think, you know, like say some polarisation can be a good and helpful thing and you know, like Marmite famously divides people into tribe to people who love it or hate it. And I don't think that has significant social spill-over effects that they need to really worry about. 

Stephen Waddington:

What's the line then? The line is where you cause societal harm, is it?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Significant societal harm. You know, and you could say the same thing to I view it in a bit the way though it's slightly less easy to measure. Like if you were working for a company that ended up polluting a river, you know, when it was producing something, you would expect them to clean up the mess that they put in that river. And comms people should think of things in broadly the same way. Like, if you're causing damage one thing, do I need to cause that damage? You know, like, but secondly, go and clean it up afterwards. And sometimes that damage can be really hard to, to understand and to investigate. So a really good example is Publicist did a campaign with Heineken in 2017 – I think it's ‘World's apart’ campaign is what it was called.

Very famous, won a couple of can lions, but they had to pull it. And in this ad they basically got people, they asked people for example a woman of color and another guy and most importantly for the rest of the story, a male to female trans ex soldier with someone who was to be honest, very unpersuaded about trans rights and pretty transphobic, you know, and they asked these people to work on a task together. Being Heineken, it was to construct a bar from some DIY material, then they gave them a beer and then they played them some questions that people have been talking about beforehand. And you know, this guy had been pretty transphobic and to a, a trans individual and looked pretty sheepish as they played the video. And then they said, ‘oh well let's sit down and have a beer and chat it out’.

Now the point I'm talking about this advert is, you know, it applied in a few different situations about, you know, I think some environmental issues and climate denialism and all this kind of thing - is that is one of the few interventions that when you showed it to people, they're like, ‘oh my god, these are people actually trying to sort out their differences and what's going on’. And it had very statistically significant effects on like people wanting to bridge divides and finding it rewarding. 

So you think hats off to Heineken, great! You've produced an advert that actually has really positive social impacts in the world. But the sort of campaign industry actually launched quite a significant campaign against that. Or the, sorry, the comms industry launched a significant campaign against that ad, saying that they thought it was unreasonable, particularly that this trans woman or woman had been subjected to quite a hateful, very tricky, very unfair situation maybe without fair warning, you know, and that's not a point without its merit.

Like how, how reasonable is it to ask her to bear the brunt of very difficult conversations should society do that more broadly? And so the ad was pulled and has been subject to a lot of criticism despite the fact that for everybody as a whole it showed a benefit. 

And so I think things are not always easy for people in comms to understand what the effects will be and who it is fair for them to ask to bear the burden of trying to bridge divides. So there's another study, I'll stop talking in a second in, people often say, ‘oh you know, surely college people could help in like truth and reconciliation commissions’, you know, like ‘they'd be good at that. That worked in South Africa, didn't it’? Well if you have a look at South Africa now, like 15 or 20 years down the line, it's still hugely ridden with inequality and actually not with a terribly tenure, not with more than a tenuous grasp on democracy.

And there was another study done in Sierra Leone where, you know, people may be aware there was a civil war and genocide. And what they found was that the victims who went through those truth and reconciliation commissions came out afterwards feeling worse. And the perpetrators of crimes or of hate came out feeling better because they had felt forgiven, you know? And I think that that means that, you know, I would love truth and reconciliations to be a universal solution here. I'd really think that would be great, but they're not, you know, and I think that there's something that comms professionals probably have to bear on how they could help in those situations that maybe they haven't put enough thought into. And I'd be really interested to see what they could do in those sit in those circumstances, particularly some of the more creative things.

Stephen Waddington:

Yeah. Let, okay, let's talk then about some strategies that could be applied. And you, we talked about climate denial, we talked about,

Alison Goldsworthy:

Yeah.

Stephen Waddington:

polarisation in, in nations and regions in the UK. What strategies can be used to bring communities together across the divide?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Yes, so I think the first thing is, you know, ‘prevention can be better than a cure’. So if you are, like I mentioned earlier, if you are if you are doing things which can be divisive, can be very legitimate. You know, like let's say I as a woman we're very, I'm very pleased that the Suffragettes used quite divisive techniques to get, enable me to have the right to vote. I think that's fine and it tends to be people who have less power who have to resort to those techniques. But if you are doing that, then think about how you would bridge things afterwards as well. Put as much thought into that process too. Pay particular regard to your messengers that you are using and how they are perceived. If you are someone that does segmentation and is looking at different, you know, like we'll often do things and be like, ‘no, this is the only target group that matters to me.

I don't care about the other bits of the groups that, you know, like ignore, ignore, ignore’. If you're doing some polarizing work, check how those groups that you think you don't care about but might be, but how are they perceiving things? What's going on there? Is there something that you need to think about and clean up? There can be some stuff about rewarding leaders who are depolarizing. I don't think we're very good at that actually. And rewarding leaders who say, ‘I don't know’, it should be okay to say you don't know the answer to something. If it's a completely unusual question or to say ‘I'm not certain about that. I'm gonna go and find out’. Because as most people in comms will have known, like once you take a view, it's much harder to update it than it is. And particularly if you've taken that view publicly, then you're like, ‘oh my God, how do we row back from this position’ than to just say, well actually I dunno yet, but I'll go and find out, you know, that should be an okay thing for people to do.

And when you do, do have to say sorry, admit why you've got things wrong and what you've learned from what's going through in the future on a more individual level. People are often really like wanting to write this concept called the Illusion of Explanatory Depth, where people think that they know more about a topic than they do. And you know, how do you get people to admit that maybe they don't know something? And if you ask people ‘how’, rather than ‘why’ and like, how did you come to that position? Or how, how does this operate? There'll be much right to say, ‘oh, I missed a step’. So a typical example I'll use is and say to someone is, do you know how a zip works? Or do you know how a fridge works? People say, yeah, of course I know how a fridge works. You put something in it keeps it cold, like the door is sealed, da da da da.

And they say, no, really explain to me how does a fridge work? And if you're married to somebody like my husband who's great at everything, then he will know the answer to these questions. But most people don't know that. And once they start explaining step by step, they'll be like, ‘oh, I didn't know that’. And when people are in that, I don't know space, it's much easier to influence them and to pick things up. And I think that's something that communications people sometimes miss when they're looking at things, you know? And of course there's issues about what you measure, how you look at things, not just using vanity metrics, all of that kind of things. But other people I'm sure will have talked to you and covered that. So I hope that's some different ideas for people to think about.

Stephen Waddington:

Final question we ask everyone this who comes on the podcast. What's the one thing you believe leads to better business outcomes?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Oh gosh, am I allowed to swear?

Stephen Waddington:

You can swear. Yeah.

Alison Goldsworthy:

<Laugh>, I mean just don't be an asshole <laugh>,

Stephen Waddington:

Right?

Alison Goldsworthy:

Like, you know, and, and if you are, say sorry about it. Right? So I think that's one of, and and I, you know, like that's one of the big things to think about and my, my message I suppose particularly to communications people is think about who you reward and who you are attracted to. You know, and is it the bridge builders or is it the dividers? And what do you need and how diverse is your network between looking at that? And I think that would be, you know, I want to give you something different that other people remember and that would be the one that I'd say, 

I've got a question for you as well though, which is not around being ourselves or anything, which is we often, we on a podcast as well, which is where much of this came from, which we ask people about a time that they changed their mind on an issue and why. And I wondered if had an example that you could think of a time you changed your mind on an issue.

Stephen Waddington:

Yeah, absolutely. I used to be a raving capitalist and then saw the damage of the financial crash in 2008 and, and completely changed my attitude to, to actually completely change my political views. When I saw the, just the damage that it did and, and the ‘how’ was was education for sure. I completely changed my worldview. I, it was like a moment of awakening. It really was. Yeah.

Alison Goldsworthy:

And so that's really unusual. So I pick up just quickly if people, a couple of things from that, which is one, talking about changing your mind or changing your identity is often a really stressful thing for people and what environment. 

And you know, even though you are clearly a super accomplished professional and communicator and very senior in the industry, your body language was quite stressed as you were talking about that. Yeah. <laugh> and about changing your mind, right? Like, and that, and that's you, right? So when I was talking about leaders, like how can you make that and be like, ‘it's okay, like it's cool’, you know, like what can you do about that? There's a thing there with what's going on and how unusual it's for people to change their worldview in the way that you have. Like that's, that's really not common that people do that.

And particularly they then talk about it. So where it's, it triggers a part of the pain part of your brain when you change your view. So you are almost inclined to forget about it. 

So the example I'll often use, you know, it works for some people better than others, but like people, women say like, ‘I think I forgot how painful childbirth was cause otherwise I never would've done it twice or a second time’. You know? Or people who've got young children would be like, ‘why did we do this again’? And it's because you forget because otherwise we wouldn't survive as a, as a species. And to a certain extent, some of the same things apply. Like it can physically hurt to change your mind, you know, and to change your identity, which is why it's so hard for people to remember that they've done so and why comms people need to think about what environments they can do to create that and to reward it. It's a tough one.

Stephen Waddington:

What a brilliant place to end. Ali, thank you very much.

Alison Goldsworthy:

My pleasure.

Stephen Waddington:

Well, that’s the perfect wrap to today’s Better Business Outcomes podcast. My thanks to Alison Goldsworthy for joining me.

Please don’t forget to subscribe wherever you usually find your podcasts and if you enjoy what you hear please also leave us a review. 

I’ll see you next time.