Ep.7: Analyze This
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About this episode. Psychology is increasingly a topic of interest to practitioners in organizational ethics, compliance, and culture (as it should be!). But do you know who we don’t hear from enough on the topic? Actual psychologists. Call it a “better way,” or just common sense, Zach and Hui decided to address that, by starting a conversation with noted clinical and organizational psychologist, May Chen.
The conversation with Dr. Chen begins with a discussion of her curiosity-fueled professional journey. They cover her early career merging psychology and consumer marketing; her experience as an academic and researcher; and her work as a consultant, advising global companies on new additions to their executive ranks. Along the way, Dr. Chen offers insights about organizational culture; the importance of leading with empathy; the role of assessments; the difference between “ethics” and obedience; and why “diversity,” in all its forms, is critical to building a winning organization and team.
Who? Zach Coseglia + Hui Chen, CDE Advisors; Dr. May Chen
Full Transcript:
ZACH: Welcome back to the Better Way Podcast, brought to you by CDE Advisors. Culture. Data. Ethics. This is a curiosity podcast for those who ask. There has to be a better way, right? There just has to be. I'm Zach Coseglia, and I'm joined as always by my friend and business partner, Hui Chen. Hi, Hui.
HUI: Hi, Zach. How are you?
ZACH: I'm good. It's good to be back on the better way, as always.
HUI: Absolutely. And hello, everyone. We're excited that we again have a very special guest with us today.
ZACH: A very special guest. I mean, sometimes we talk about how our guests are not only colleagues, but friends. Today we've got family.
HUI: This is true. I was gonna, you know, this . . . this would explain when you hear her why we sound very much alike. So, we have with us, my sister, Dr. May Chen, with us today. She is an organizational psychologist, a health psychologist, a clinical psychologist. She has the many facets of psychology that she's bringing on our podcast today. So, welcome, May.
MAY: Thank you. Hello, Zach. Hi, Hui. Hi, to everyone. It's good to be here.
ZACH: Thanks for joining us. Welcome to The Better Way?
MAY: Thank you for inviting me.
ZACH: So . . . of course, of course. So, we usually start by getting to know our guests a little bit better before we dive into the substance of it all. And I always ask our guests the same initial question, which is who are you, who is May Chen?
MAY: It's always a complex question for me to think about. So, I would say I am a research clinical psychologist with many interests and with great curiosity. So, within the domain of psychology, I have engaged in and tried many different specialties because of my curiosity.
ZACH: Maybe we should start with some definitions, Hui, [be]cause that's usually what we do whenever we have a guest who's on for the first time.
HUI: Yes.
ZACH: So, I heard in your bio and in Hui's bio of you a lot of different types of psychology.
HUI: Yes.
ZACH: So maybe we start by just defining some of those terms; and why don't we start with the difference between clinical psychology and maybe organizational psychology.
MAY: OK. Well, essentially, psychology is the study of human behavior, and the goals are to describe, to assess, and to predict and possibly change behavior. And there are some core domains in psychology which, if you were a psychology major, those would be the required courses like personality psychology, developmental psychology. And right now, there are over 70 different specialties in psychology; so some of the ones that you mentioned, “clinical psychology” and a lot of people confuse that with “counseling psychology” or with “social work.” So, they're all different domains, but “organizational psychology” is the application of psychology in the business setting. So, in terms of business, there are human factors and anything pertaining to human interactions and human behavior could fall into the domain of “organizational psychology.” And “clinical psychology” is simple; it's the practice of psychology in terms of diagnosis and treatment of psychological disorders. And those actually could overlap because right now there are a lot of mental health issues that start to emerge in the work setting. So, a lot of HR professionals want to be or would be asked to be trained to understand the essentials of psychopathology even.
ZACH: Maybe we take a step back and talk about how your experience translates into some of those different areas of psychology. So, May, I would love it if you could walk us through your professional experience and talk to us about how you actually brought some of these areas of psychology to life through your work.
MAY: So, my first working experience was after college; and I worked at a marketing research company—and I was a psychology major. So, with the college degree in psychology it's a basic training, so you're not specialized in anything. So, I worked in a marketing research consulting company, which I thought was very interesting because our clients, wanted us to do focus groups, to try to understand a new product: how to name it, how to market it. I thought that was a very good overlap, I guess, between psychology and business, because you have to understand consumer behavior, you have to understand how labeling and marketing strategies would affect potential target consumers. So, after that I went back to grad school and focused on organizational psychology, which is the application of psychology in business settings. After that, I had wanted to get into the field of consulting and human resources, but you know it was, back then, it was the transition from personnel to human resources. So, human resources was a popular field; but people really didn't know what to do with it in the organization just yet. A lot of people just basically changed personnel department into human resource department without any changes in essence. So, I was looking for jobs and I didn't really know what I wanted to do; so I decided to see anything that I could qualify for that could interest me, and that's the curiosity piece.
So, I applied and got accepted to the management associate program at Citibank. And so, it was—it was an interesting experience because I was trained only in psychology, not in banking, not in business administration. But my boss at the time took a chance and I was the only non-MBA candidate for that year; and they had to put me through just like any other management associate. A one-year program for banking. So that was gruesome for me. But after the one year, she just put me in the project management position to work on a lot of human resource projects; it was a very exciting time, when consumer banking just started and Citibank was just beginning to build their model branches, which today you will see as the blue and white logo everywhere. But back then, you know, Citibank only dealt with companies and not with individual consumers. So that was the transition time. We had to really understand how to introduce our products to consumers, how to teach consumers to use ATM machines and really explain the products in a way that individual consumers could understand. So that was very exciting time.
ZACH: Can you give us an example then of how you took psychological principles and applied them to the work, I guess, of marketing, and of reaching, and shaping consumer behavior.
MAY: OK. One example came to mind. As I said, it was because consumers were unfamiliar with Citibank and our products. So, a lot of times frontline, we call frontline people—the account officers, the investment consultants—have to really work face to face with consumers. So, I was watching an account officer try to explain a product to a consumer; and the consumer listened to session very intently. And then at the end, the account officer said: “Do you understand what I'm saying? Did you just understand everything that I told you?” And I could see the consumer was a little embarrassed. And not wanting to ask [a] question; wanting to appear as if, you know, he just understood everything. So afterwards, I was talking to the account officer, and I said, “a lot of times, you know, in the service industry, you really want to put your consumer at ease. So instead of saying, ‘do you understand what I just said,’ maybe another way of looking at it, or another way of asking a question, is to turn it around and say, ‘did I just explain that clearly to you? Was there anything that I was vague about? I didn't explain very well?’” And we tried that, and immediately we got, very, very different reactions in terms of the consumers becoming interested, engaged and enthusiastic, even, in wanting to learn more and asking more questions. And in psychology, that's very basic; that's empathy; and that's taking another person's perspective. But when you are used to doing something for a long time and then ask to change your audience, you know, you forget that something that used to work for you might give somebody else a totally different impression.
HUI: What I heard is, the way they were asking the question before, which is “did you understand,” it implies if you didn't understand, something's wrong with you. But by saying that, did I explain any everything . . . clearly, you're putting the potential sort of pitfall on yourself, right? So you make that person feel much more comfortable, right?
MAY: Right. Like you're shouldering the . . . right, right?
HUI: Interesting.
ZACH: I love this, and I love the use of the word empathy. It's a word we've talked about a lot on The Better Way? in the past. I think it's such a lesson for the compliance officers and HR professionals who are out there, hopefully listening to this podcast, such a lesson for them to really take to heart. I know so many of them already do, but I think about a very specific example from a conversation I was having with someone—a compliance officer—not long ago. And they were talking to a senior leader who wasn't familiar with a policy or procedure that they had; and that that compliance officer, you know, their, their response to that was that's fully unacceptable. How does how does the senior leader not know about this policy or procedure? And my reaction to it was quite different. My reaction was: how are you, as the Chief Compliance officer, not making sure that they know the rules and the requirements? It's like, instead of . . . instead of a sort of looking to our business partners—our colleagues—and wondering why maybe they're deficient, it's very much like that that . . . the center of empathy is about looking within and understanding how maybe we are contributing to the problem or how we could maybe contribute more effectively [to a solution].
MAY: Absolutely, absolutely.
ZACH: OK, so you worked at Citibank for a while. But I am very curious to hear more about your work at West Point. So, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
MAY: Sure, sure. It was after I got my PhD, and it was at the beginning of the Iraq war. And so, I was looking for jobs; and my specialty back then was stress and severe stress. And when we talk about severe stress, sometimes people call it psychological trauma. And part of my study was how religion or spirituality tend to help people cope with severe stressors. At the time, during the war, the Department of Defense was looking for people to train cadets and train officers in combat stress; and because, at West Point, a great majority of cadets have religious backgrounds, they thought this would be a good opportunity, a good profile to help them train that at West Point. So, they encouraged me to apply, which I did; and I ended up [being], I think at the time, I was the only Asian American faculty member who was not teaching language at West Point. So, I joined the Department of Behavior Science and leadership as part of faculty. And that was a very eye-opening experience because before then I had no contact with the military branch; and I didn't know what to expect. But you know, it was a great experience. I was very impressed by the trainings and the curriculum and also learned a lot about leadership during my time at West Point.
HUI: I remember you being so impressed by your experience at West Point that you actually considered joining the military. In fact, you actually got a Commission letter, which you did not end up joining, but you were you were that impressed.
MAY: I was. I was.
HUI: You also told me about how popular these West Point graduates are once they have finished their, you know, service in the military, they often go into the business world as leaders. So can you share some examples of the type of training that these cadets received in leadership that you have seen applicable to the business world.
MAY: Indeed, you know, West Point graduates, once they complete their commitment to the military, are greatly sought after by Fortune 500 companies to join their leadership rank. At first, I thought military was just following orders. You know, you don't have to think a lot. Just people tell you what to do. You say, yes, sir; no, Sir. But you know once I joined, I realized that they actually use a very respectful and democratic process, where they do invite everybody's opinion when time permitting. So, the decision-making process really allows everyone to have an input. So that was very different from what I thought. And then I didn't think the cadets . . . I mean, it was one of the most difficult universities to get into . . . but I didn't see their screening process to be that gruesome. So, then I realized that they sort of self-select. They come in as 18-year-olds; and you know, one of the first things that I needed to help them do was to write their will. And they need to be reminded that they have chosen a profession that they could lose their life. very likely, once they graduate. So as 18-year-olds, they need to put their values in place. They need to know what they're getting into. So normal universities don't do that. So, it is very different. They become mature faster, I think, because they are forced to confront some of these issues, and we give them a lot of real-life cases and examples and ethical dilemmas. Then you have to make difficult choices, and they have to practice making them, you know, inside and outside of the classroom. And on top of that, the curriculum design was such that even if they don't sleep for 24 hours a day, there's no way they can accomplish all the tasks that that we want them to do. And this is, again, forcing them to prioritize.
I mean, they come in, they're usually valedictorians in their high school. But, now you have to prioritize. You have to choose which courses to pass, which courses to get a D [or] to get a C, in order for you to reach your goal. So, if you try to accomplish everything, you're going to burn out. So that's part of the screening process. You have to learn quickly. And so, I remember one time, I was teaching a class and there was a cadet [who] came in, you know, holding his nose. And I said, “what's wrong with you?” And he said, “I had boxing class in the previous session and my nose got broken.” And I was like, “What? Why are you here? Why don't you go to the doctor?” And they said “No, this is not severe enough for me to not go to my class and go to a doctor—because in combat you can't just say, excuse me, I have a broken nose. I have to go to see a doctor. So, I have to wait until the end of day for this to happen.” And I don't . . . I felt really, really bad. So, you know, at the end of the day, I didn't see him, and then the next day, there was no class; so, I actually went to his dorm and I saw him, you know, in in his bed, turning toward the wall. And I sort of tapped him on the shoulder. I said, “How are you? What's going on?” And he said, “Yeah, I did go to see a doctor, but the doctor is on vacation, and he won't be back for a month. So, they just told me to wait.” So he has a broken nose; he didn't get it fixed for a month and by the time the Doctor returned, they have to break his nose in order to strain it to fix it. So, these kind of training[s], you don't get for regular university.
So, once you go through that, you have your values. You know your ethical standards. We present to them scenarios where the enemy has some of your members. And you have a prison of war. So, you could, you know, threaten to kill the prisoner of war in order to save your buddies. But that's against the Geneva Convention. So, would you do that? And what are the consequences? You have to be able to think it through; and in the end, it is your own value. I mean, there is a law and there is what we teach you in class, but in the end, you have to make a decision that you can live with for the rest of your life.
ZACH: There's so, so many things I could ask here, but I'm thinking about this in the context of some of our work. And in telling that story, I hear my individual values as a consideration. I hear the law [and] regulations as a as a potential driver of my behavior. And then we also are operating within an organization, which has its own values and standards, which may or may not be different from the law and may or may not be different from my own.
MAY: Right.
ZACH: So, if we take those considerations and there's lots of other considerations too, that may come into one's decision making. But if we take those three considerations and apply it in the more traditional business organizational context, what should we expect for people? Is it to follow the law? Is it to follow the internal organization's values? Or is it to follow your own sense of what's right and wrong and good and moral?
MAY: Those are excellent questions. Immediately, I think there might be culture differences. And you know, right now, we're actually in the process of trying to create a professional ethical questionnaire. We get so [many] requests from business saying, “Can you, you know, among applicants, can you help us screen out the ethical ones who won't break the law or break the regulation?” Because we get so many requests, we're just trying to find a simpler way to use a self-report questionnaire to see if we can differentiate people. And just initial . . . just right now at the initial testing, we seem to see a difference among cultures. I really hate to group cultures into, you know, individualism versus collectivism. I think that's too broad. But we do see, initially, I would just want to say that in Asian participants, there tend to be more of an emphasis to the organizational culture. So therefore, it seems that organizational culture weighs on them heavier than the law. But in the non-Asian, more Western participants, seem to be more individual based in terms of their evaluation. So that's what first came to my mind when you ask the question; but I'm not sure if I actually have answered or addressed the question.
ZACH: No, I think you have, but it also . . . it also piques my curiosity around a related concept, which, you know, Hui I'd love for you to jump in on this, too, is: the way that you frame that question as coming to you was, “we've had a lot of interest in folks trying to help us find people who won't break the law; help us find the ethical people.” And that to me feels like a misunderstanding of what ethics is.
MAY: Right.
ZACH: Because ethics to me is not necessarily always going to be following the law.
That's, I think the beauty of looking at these things in isolation. But then also how they potentially run in conflict or have tension with each other; as you said, in the very extreme example, with your West Point students, there's a law . . . but then there's also “what is the ethical choice here, separate and apart from, but within the context of the law?”
HUI: Yeah, I clearly have very strong feelings about this because we do unfortunately see that law does not always equal ethics. And to me, that's always been the difference between just, you know, what I call “compliance” versus “ethics.” Because to me, if you're looking for people who won't break the rules; you're looking for obedient people. Would do what you tell them to do. You tell them to do A, they would do A. Tell them don't do B. They won't do B. That would be obedient people, and that's compliance in its purest term. And if you're looking for ethical people, then you're introducing, really, a notion of “what are the values?” We're back to that value question. What is your value in terms of this decision making? What is important? And sometimes . . . sometimes we say, “what is right or wrong.” We've repeatedly said on our podcast: “it's never that simple.” You know, we play this game, May, that we call you know, “What's wrong with doing the right thing?” We give people scenarios and ask them what's the right thing, and oftentimes people are . . . people almost always come back when we present them with those scenarios, they'll be like, well, it depends, right? It depends on a lot of things; and some of those variables are people's values. In the end, what is right and wrong in a person's decision making is what is more important.
MAY: Yeah . . .
HUI: So, so sorry, go ahead.
MAY: No. So, it's interesting because instead of asking the question you know, can we find the ethical people, we need to ask the question: “can we find the people with like-minded values?”
HUI: Interesting. Like-minded values.
MAY: Right. So, because this is our company value, so we need to find people who share, you know, our same set of values, right?
HUI: Yep.
ZACH: Absolutely, absolutely.
HUI: Yeah, yeah.
ZACH: I mean it's a big part actually of what we do when we're working with clients in, in assessing culture. If you have defined—we just did an episode a couple weeks ago where we talked about organizational values and we talked about how they're not all created equal. Some are better than others. But if you have defined values. And you're interested in understanding your culture better. I mean, a great place to start is to determine whether or not the people who work for you actually share those values. Because if they don't share them, they're just words on the page.
HUI: Exactly.
MAY: Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly.
ZACH: But Hui, I come back to what . . . I come back to what you said because I think it's so relevant in the times that we're living in. Just to say it, and history I think has proven this, but it is often disobedient people who are championing the ethical approach to certain societal issues. It's disobedient people. And so, I think, again, that colors how we think about this within an organization. Now, the idea of sort of championing the disobedient within an organization is a tough one. But you don't need to be disobedient if you're all part of a system, if you're all part of an organization, if you're all part of a culture that shares a common set of values and believes in them and acts consistently with them. And then frankly, when one part of the organization starts to act inconsistently with them, we want people to sort of call it out. And maybe that's disobedient, but I think it's the only way that we can be true to those values. And we're seeing that a lot lately in our world.
HUI: Yeah. I think I would say it's just not disobedient. I almost want to just say these are people who have the courage to share a different perspective, a different way of looking at things. Right? So, so I think, May, we've talked about diversity and I I've always been very much sort of uncomfortable with the way diversity—DEI, generally—has been assigned to, you know, issues such as gender and race and sexual orientation. I think that's too limiting.
MAY: When I think about diversity, I've always had an issue with how it's been advocated because it's not human nature, in my opinion. We like to be with people who are similar to us because we're comfortable. It's efficient. You know, you can . . . you can finish off each other sentences. I don't have to explain a whole lot to you. So you know, I always ask people, “If you've had a bad day and you want to go home and tell somebody about it and share your experience, would you be looking for somebody who's exactly like you? Who knows what your thoughts are? Who understands your feelings? Or would you be looking for someone who's completely different from you, and who can give you a completely different new perspective?” And most people would say, of course I'm going to find someone who's similar and who knows exactly what I'm think[ing] about. So that's, you know, from an individual perspective. That's what we're comfortable with. But if I were to ask you a question, “If you have to go out to combat tomorrow, you get to pick a team of your own of five people, let's say; would you pick four people or five people who are exactly the same as you; or would you pick four or five people who would have each has different skill sets, a different experience, and different talents so that you can complement each other?” So, most people would say, of course you will pick people who are different from us. So, you think about why that is, because for organizations, as a team of individuals, in order for organization to survive and to become competitive, you need different talents. It’s not like you like them. It's not like they make you comfortable. It's because you need them. So, I always tell HR, DEI starts with you hiring people not because they fulfill your DEI quota, but because they fulfill an essential skill set needed by your organization. You want the best people, and it can't . . . you can't tell me the best people are all men, all 70 years old—are all the same. So, you know, go by competency, and DEI, diversity, would occur as a result is . . . is my thinking.
HUI: So, I want to make sure we get to something that we have touched on already, which is how to how to select people, right? So, you've talked about the people asking you to find either obedient or ethical people. We've talked about diversity. Talk to us a little bit about the work that you've done—you did—in another facet of your career, which is your work at Korn Ferry. And what . . . why did Korn Ferry, a head-hunting company, need a psychologist?
MAY: Right. I actually have you to thank for that experience because I had never heard of Korn Ferry, which turns out to be the top five head hunting companies in the US. I was in my teaching job and suddenly I got an e-mail. And I, and I remember your sitting across from me, I said, “So weird. I have this company called Korn Ferry . . . and you said ‘no, that's a famous head-hunting company!’” So that prevented me from putting that e-mail into my spam folder. As a result, I ended up leaving my academic job to work for Korn Ferry. And it was very interesting because they want a director of assessment for the Asia Pacific region of the company; and I didn't know what it was about, and they said we've been looking for someone for this position for over five years. So, as a result, you can pick wherever you want to . . . location you want to work from. Because we've looked for APAC, right? So, you can work in China, you can work in Hong Kong, you can work in Taiwan. Because we've looked everywhere. We need somebody who is a psychologist, which means a PhD degree in psychology, and we also need someone who is licensed to practice psychology clinically. And we also need somebody with organizational background. So, we couldn't find anyone who fits that profile for five years. So that picked my interest. And I ended up working for the section of Korn Ferry that only searches for C-Suite candidates—so those are the high-level leadership positions like CEO, CFO, CTO, CHRO. And usually, the headhunters, the partners, are very good at finding candidates; and by the time they come to me, usually would have no more than three candidates. And these three candidates are usually comparable in terms of their credentials, their experience, their IQ, their competencies. So, it is my job to differentiate among the candidates in terms of suitability for the positions that they're looking for and the company culture that they're going to be fitting into. So, it and it was, yeah . . . it was turned out to be a very, very interesting experience.
HUI: So it's about finding that like-minded individual.
MAY: And suitable. You know, I remember one time in China, they, the CEO, came to us wanting to replace their CFO. So, the CEO wanted us to find a CFO that's very socially aware and has very high social emotional intelligence . . . who can rephrase a pessimistic situation into an optimistic one. And I did tell the CEO at the time there would be risks involved in this kind of selection because usually CEO and CFO, they will balance each other; and you will need a strong CFO to hold the line—if the company's not doing well, if the numbers don't add up, the CFO needs to be able to speak up. But the CEO really was not convinced. So, I mean, we can find anyone for them. The partners did. I did voice my concerns several times, and . . . but the CEO just would not budge. So, we ended up finding the company a very—a very—Socially and emotionally intelligent CFO, who's very good at rephrasing things and repackaging things. And within three years, the company got into trouble for massaging their financial data.
HUI: So very interesting.
ZACH: Wow, it is very interesting. One of the things that we always worry about in the DEI space is that something like “fit” winds up being used as a code word for weeding out people who are different, weeding out people who somehow deviate from the norm, whether that's race, gender or anything else. And so, when I hear that story, it kind of sounds like they wanted to use psychology to find someone who they thought was the right fit. But what you were trying to do as a psychologist was explain to them the benefits of having a complimentary set of skills that actually fit in a different way.
MAY: Correct, right. I mean, “fit” in a slightly different way; in terms of, you know, one of the ways we assess people would be, some of the ways, would be using psychological assessment and self-report assessment, including assessing their personality traits, their motivation, their values. And a lot of times, by the time they reached at that level, people can pretend throughout interviews. But why do we want to understand their core—their authentic personality, to the best of our ability—is because at that level you're likely to encounter challenges and uncertainties in crisis. And when people get into those situations, they revert back to their core self. So, it's important to understand who you really are, because it's hard to change your core self. And when I say fit is that: so it . . . does your personality fit this kind of function and does the company need, as the example I just told, a different kind of personality or a set of competencies to balance things out for the organization? So yes, when I when I say fit, I mean the best fit for the organization's function as a whole.
ZACH: Yeah, I want to come back . . . as we get close to wrapping up, I want to come back to where we started, which is in defining some terms. So, you defined psychology for us; you defined clinical psychology for us; you defined organizational psychology for us. And I'd love it if you could talk for just a bit about how organizational psychology fits in within the broader umbrella of behavioral science, which is something we often hear talked about—or increasingly—hear talked about in our space, in culture / ethics / compliance. Where does organizational psychology fit in with other fields that we've heard about, like organizational anthropology or sociology or cultural psychology, etc.
MAY: Well, when whenever we talk about psychology, I always say the unit of study, the unit of our interest, is [the] individual. So, “sociology” is a group of people, but when we say social psychology, we're interested in how individuals behave differently in a group of people. So, organizational psychology, and behavior science you mentioned before, is simply using the scientific method to study or try to answer behavioral questions. And so again, psychology is individual. So we are interested in how individuals behave in an organization; and in order to understand the behavior we inevitably would try to understand their thoughts, feelings, cognitions, and all these things—and values, and so forth. So the question[s] we try to delve into include things like motivation, leadership, group processes, how group decision-making can be made better.
ZACH: Sure. Well, what I think is really interesting about the assessment piece of it is: we've talked a lot about culture already today; we've talked about ethics today; but, to me, the assessment piece is data and that's the thing that I'm constantly trying to impart on our clients—that Hui and I are always talking about—which is, it's great to be mindful of the human and to put the human at the center of what we do. And it's great to be ethically minded, of course, and most of our clients are because they have ethics somewhere in their title. But the only way that you can really connect with your people in a meaningful way is to stop making assumptions about how they think, what influences their decision making, etc. And to actually know. To actually have data that tells you what their perceptions are, what their decision-making strategy is, what their decision-making architecture looks like, right?
MAY: Absolutely. I mean, I can't agree more. Data is the best way to prevent bias and prejudice because . . . I always show, you know, in my class, two picture pictures of an identical person smiling. And I'll ask them which one of these is more sincere? And people have no difficulty picking out one—the one on the left. And I asked them why? “I don't know. The one on the left is more sincere.” And this is what we call Duchenne marker. It's by a researcher named Duchenne; and when you smile with two of the specific muscles contracting on your face, basically you want to smile to the point you have wrinkles around your eyes. So those muscles are called Duchenne marker; and our brains, evolutionary wise, are trained to detect sincerity in less than a second. But you don't know that you don't know why. You just have a feeling that this person is more sincere. So, if I take that to a job interview scenario, among the candidates, you'll come out feeling “oh, one of them is really not sincere, I don't like the person.” But I always ask them try to explain and document why that is. I need data. You need something to back up your feelings. So, you say the person is not sincere. Why? I don't know. You know when you say you don't know, then you shouldn't . . . you shouldn't use that as part of your decision-making evidence, because it's just a feeling. I'm not saying feelings come from nowhere, but you need to try to identify what contributed to your feeling and therefore you can decide whether those are credible or not.
ZACH: Absolutely. I think, Hui, I have this sort of twisted approach to getting . . . we want to get our clients to say, “I don't know,” 'cause it really . . . it drives home the point of “you don't know so let's invest in some data to help us actually know.”
MAY: That's true. Because when people . . . when you press them, they will come up with irrelevant things to justify their feelings. So, it's better for them . . . I agree with you. The first step would be, you know, for them to be able to admit, “I'm not sure, I don't know.” Because people who are too confident about how they feel, often times, could be using irrelevant information to justify their feelings.
ZACH: Absolutely. All right. Well, we can go on and on. And I mean, you're not going anywhere. So, we’ll definitely have you back. We'd love to do that. But Hui, I think it's time to do the better Way Questionnaire. And I've looked at the data and I've asked the odd questions almost every time, so you can go first.
HUI: The first question is a choose one of two questions for you to answer May. So, if you could wake up tomorrow having gained anyone quality or ability, what would it be? You can answer that question, or you can answer: is there a quality about yourself that you're currently working to improve? If so, what?
MAY: I think the answer to both questions could be the same. So, I would choose the first one.
HUI: Go for it.
MAY: So if, OK, if I could wake up tomorrow, having gained inequality, I would say patience. That's something that I have increasingly feel the value of, yet noticing that I don't have that quality.
ZACH: Interesting. It's a really good one. This also makes me think way that we should get all of the responses to The Better Way? Questionnaire and send them to May and have her do a psychological analysis of all of our guests . . . because it must . . . just . . . when I hear an answer like that, I'm just like, it says something about you, May, and it says something about me that mine is the ability to manipulate time. And yours is patience.
MAY: Ah.
ZACH: It just it says something very deeply about us that you're, like, I'm gonna pick something that I can actually . . . that maybe I actually have some control over. And I am waiting to become like the lead character in a superhero movie. So . . .
HUI: Yeah. And mine was, you know, to be able to sing opera so . . .
ZACH: Right.
MAY: There you go.
ZACH: There you go. All right. Question #2.
MAY: OK.
ZACH: Again, you can choose from one of two. So, either who is your favorite mentor or who do you wish you could be mentored by?
MAY: I would again choose the first one, and I don't know about favorite, but I definitely have someone who I really appreciate. So maybe, as a result would be my favorite mentor who is actually—I mentioned before—my first boss at Citibank who really took a chance on me. And really, you know, was patient enough to take me through and taught me all about, not all about banking, but gave me a really good orientation in banking, especially for someone who really had no training whatsoever in the area. And so, I really appreciated that mentor.
ZACH: That's great.
HUI: Next question is what is the best job, paid or unpaid, that you've ever had?
MAY: I think it was . . . I mean, I would say it's the best job probably because it was only for a limited time because you know, as I get older, I don't know if I have the physical stamina to do the job well. I would say probably the most exciting job, you know, I would even do without pay was being an emergency medical technician in New York City.
ZACH: Wow, yeah.
MAY: Very exciting.
HUI: And that that is one of one of the things that we don't know you guys don't yet know about May. So, she is trained as an, as an EMT. She's also a certified locksmith. She does not drink alcohol . . . but she has bartender license.
MAY: Oh, I worked as a bartender. That's how I know I couldn't drink.
ZACH: Fascinating. Well, Hui, I feel like I just want you to go on about all the things that we don't know about May, but I'm guessing she'd probably like us to just stop there.
MAY: Yeah.
ZACH: All right. Next question, what is your favorite thing to do?
MAY: Nothing. I think I'm really good at doing nothing. I mean, before I used to be . . . to worry I would be bored if I don't have anything to do. But recently, you know, I had the opportunity to try for a two-week period with nothing on my calendar, nothing planned, and I found that I quite enjoyed that a lot. So my favorite thing to do is absolutely nothing.
ZACH: We have a lot in common there. Maybe, maybe not so much on the powers we wish we had, but we definitely have a lot in common there.
MAY: I heard about your cruise lifestyle. I do want . . . I do envy that.
ZACH: Yeah. Traveling, well, I, you know, spent the first 20 something years of my career, you know, working 20-hour days. And so, I decided maybe I should like live a life. Here we are.
MAY: Yes. Oh. Yeah, I don't envy that.
HUI: Doing it, you're doing it. You're inspiring me.
MAY: Good for you.
HUI: Alright, next questions. What is your favorite place?
MAY: My home. I would say I feel most comfortable in my home. So, I actually work from home a lot and I know that I'm OK staying in, not stepping out of my home at all for days on end. I'm OK with that.
ZACH: Yeah. Question number six, what makes you proud?
MAY: I would say, well, this maybe sounds too grand if I say, “transforming people,” but that's essentially the goal of many of my job[s] as an educator and as a psychologist. From my experience, a lot of times working with organizations, especially with engineers, who have, little, contact with psychology prior to my training . . . sometimes I see their eyes light up realizing what they've been through, what they can do, the skill set they could acquire, working with team members. It's not just about technical skills, it's about being human, it’s about learning about the other person's perspective; and sometimes [they] tell me, “oh, these skill sets, you know, not they don't work only in the organizations, I tried them at home, and they work well with my spouse too.” So sometimes they happen in organizations, sometimes they happen in my clinical sessions. Not every time, of course, but, you know, occasionally when these things happen, I feel a sense of pride.
ZACH: I like that.
HUI: That is nice. From the profound to the mundane, what e-mail sign off do you use most frequently?
ZACH: You know, it's funny. I play around with different ones. You know, initially I like just to say, you know, “best.” And then you know, as a as a psychologist, sometimes, you know, you have potential patients writing to you and they say, you know, “I'm, I'm depressed, I traumatized. And I find if I write back “best,” it seems like so insincere. So sometimes . . . so I changed from that sometimes to all the best or best wishes, or I personally like if if it's applicable I like “yours sincerely.” I find that to be to be sincere, for you know, for whatever reason. So whenever appropriate, I like to use yours sincerely, but you know, or yours truly. Those are my favorite ones.
ZACH: That's great. You know, it's . . . we obviously have asked this question to a lot of people and most people. And that was a very thoughtful, reasoned reason for your choice. Most people. It's just sort of whatever. Like it's it's, it's a throwaway and that's . . . Hui said from the deep to the, you know, mundane, but you actually had a fairly deep explanation for why you picked that.
HUI: Indeed.
ZACH: I like that. All right. Question #8. My favorite question. In fact, I want to do a whole podcast episode on this question and that is “what trend in your field is most overrated.”
MAY: You know, it's interesting. I get, messages and people sending stuff online saying, “oh, take this psychological test,” you know, “take that psychological test.” I just think that's so useless, you know? Do you really need to take a test to tell you, “Oh, I am an extrovert.” Oh, you didn't know that before? You know? “Oh, I'm an optimist.” You didn't know that before? So, I think these self-report online things are way overrated. And recently I was asked by a major airlines HR director saying, you know, we want to choose the right people, so we want to use this personality test. You know, do you think this is good? You know, using one psychological test to screen and to hire people is reckless, at best. So, when we do assessments, they have their validity and reliability, but that's just one of the things we use a lot of times. We [also] use a lot of behavioral data. We observe them, we bring them into the work center. I watch them work. I throw events at them to see how they react. So, you know, it's a double-edged sword. You know, assessment is one of my specialties. But the way it's used currently by every . . . by a lot of people. I think it's way overrated and it's misused.
HUI: Very interesting. Last question, what word would you use to describe your day so far?
MAY: Tired. Since I would like to do nothing and stay at home all day. I actually was forced to go out to do exercise and stretch and core muscle exercise, so I'm like sore all over the place right now so I'm tired.
ZACH: Well, on that note . . . May, thank you so much for joining the better way you've given us so much to think about; and a lot of ideas for follow up discussions; and we just really appreciate your time.
MAY: Yes. It's a pleasure. Thank you again for having me.
HUI: Thank you.
ZACH: And thank you all for tuning in to The Better Way? Podcast. For more information about this or anything else that’s happening with CDE Advisors, visit our website at www.CDEAdvisors.com, where you can also check out the Better Way blog. And please like and subscribe to this series on Apply or Spotify. And, finally, if you have thoughts about what we talked about today, the work we do here at CDE, or just have ideas for Better Ways we should explore, please don’t hesitate to reach out—we’d love to hear from you. Thanks again for listening.