CHRISTI KAPP: --part.
OK.
All right.
Thank you very much.
I'm happy to speak
to you here today,
and hopefully our
teamwork will work
on making the audio
function at the right time.
So let me tell you a
little bit about why
I am here today to talk to you.
Throughout my
career-- again, I had
mentioned I had been
in this industry
for 40-something years,
which is a long time.
And when I started, we were
all able to be very creative.
We could work
across disciplines.
We could do pretty much
whatever we needed to do,
because nothing existed.
There were no components.
We built them all.
As the industry has
matured, what's happened
is we have all become
forced into boxes.
Everybody is now a specialist.
And people like me
that started out
the other way, who actually
prefer the other way,
feel extraordinarily stifled.
So I actually started
studying, why the heck am I
in so much pain working?
Why is it so frustrating now?
So I wanted to share with you
what I have learned about that.
And this is a topic
about neural diversity.
And so thinking is
like cosmic knitting.
So this is a talk
about creating teams
by considering how different
people think-- not what they
think about, not their opinions,
but how the mental processes
in their brains actually work.
So Rudolf Steiner, who
founded Waldorf University,
believed that.
In this phrase, he
actually coined it.
And one of the things that
they did at that university
was everybody had to
learn a handicraft,
whether it was knitting,
crocheting, woodworking,
or something like that, just
to make the physical complement
the brain.
Now, cosmic, I picked up on.
There is actually a physicist
named Sir Roger Penrose,
who believes that we--
if you look inside of our
minds, it's actually quantum.
And inside of us
and the way we are
is the explanation to
the entire universe.
So I thought that was
really interesting.
All right.
So I'm going to talk about
something called a thought
style.
This is probably something
you've never heard about.
But you've probably heard about
the term stressed behavior.
So this thing here happened
to me last weekend.
This was my mailman, who
had been stung by a wasp.
He passed out.
I looked up as I was
gardening to see him
convulsing in that mail truck.
At that point, I ran
over, freaking out.
I'm like, oh my god
he's actually dead.
I started screaming.
I went into my
typical thought style,
which is to assess
the situation,
to find allies,
assess their skills,
figure out how to
solve this thing.
Needless to say, four
people showed up.
There's a lot more serendipity
to this story, which
I don't have time for here.
But in that instant,
four thought styles
came together, formed
the perfect team,
and saved this guy's life.
In the real world, it doesn't
always work like that.
[APPLAUSE]
All right.
So when you're on a
bad team, you know it.
So it kind of feels
like that, right?
It's like fingernails
on a chalkboard.
That's actually space
noise, because this
is a cosmic thought.
All right?
And it's an alligator
because it looks mean.
So you pretty much know when
you're on a terrible team.
It's not getting anywhere.
You're not getting the job done.
You're fighting with people.
It feels awful.
Here's a good team.
So this is a little
bit different.
Again--
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm burning 30 seconds
of my lightning talk.
It's really smart, right?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
OK.
So that was written
by the people
that created one of those
first early moon landings.
So again, cosmic.
So have you ever seen a
little teeny hummingbird?
I bet you didn't.
So this picture is showing
the diversity of nature.
The thing on the
right is actually
called the hummingbird moth.
It was evolved to do exactly
the same stuff as a hummingbird.
They both pollinate flowers.
Look how different they are.
One's an insect,
and one's a bird.
We're all great.
Now this is interesting, because
we've actually seen Project
Aristotle earlier today.
So this is good, because I can
almost skip over this slide.
But again, like this
morning, psychological safety
becomes one of the most
important things on a team.
So what I want to talk about
is that how you interpret that
and how you give that really
makes a big difference when
you have people of
different thought styles.
So it means very
different things.
So usually we think that
thought styles are invisible.
But it actually turns out
that there is a brain imaging
technique that shows us how the
circuits in our brains work.
So mostly with
brain studies, they
talk about the
parts of the brains
that store knowledge, the
part that makes cognitive
thought, the part that makes
habits and all that business.
This is white matter.
This is the stuff in between.
So what this is actually
showing is the direction
of water molecules
in your brain.
So if you look at
it, at the top,
you have circuits that go to
the part that store knowledge.
You have circuits that go to
the part that control your body.
You have circuits that go to
the part that draw conclusions.
Now, what happens
is each one of us
has a different proportion that
we use these mental circuits.
Some of us are--
if there's anybody
in the room who
absolutely can't
figure out what they
want to be when they grow up?
I bet there's a few.
You're a scanner.
So you like to learn
a lot about a lot of--
or learn a little
about a lot of things.
Then there are people
that are monomaths.
They like to hoard knowledge.
They like to acquire
it in one discipline.
They like to know as absolutely
much about it as they can.
And then you have
this other creature
called a polymath, that knows
a lot about a lot of things,
not as much as a monomath.
But they also do something else.
They connect it all together.
So earlier, we talked
about that professor
that sits in his
office that doesn't
want to talk to the students.
I'm going to say that maybe
we need to think about how
differently to work
with that human
because that is a person
who is a monomath,
and they are going
to be able to answer
your most detailed
question about a topic.
And their brain, how it works,
is extraordinarily valuable.
We're going to look at
in a minute, that it's
kind of hard to talk
to them sometimes.
It's kind of hard
to understand them.
So they do need that TA to be
that interface between them
and their brain, and
students who are learning.
People who are specialists in
a single programming language
are also this monomath.
I did push it.
I pushed something.
OK.
Polymaths-- the most
famous polymaths
are people like
Leonardo da Vinci.
There was no end to
that kind of thinking.
So what polymaths
do is they operate
at a slightly different level.
If you look at the picture,
it's kind of hard to see,
they like to learn.
They like to learn about
a lot of different topics.
They do another thing.
If you consider that your
brain has the capability
to program itself and then
trigger that knowledge, just
like you were calling
a method in a program
and getting response, polymaths
have a very strong ability
to be able to do this.
And so what they're able
to do is very quickly
connect thoughts and
draw conclusions.
Scanners-- again, scanners
really like to learn,
but they don't like to
learn a lot about one thing.
They want to learn a lot
about a lot of things.
And then they get
bored and they move on.
So if anybody finds that they're
one of these and needs help,
there's actually a couple
of different avenues
I can send you to of coaching.
So when you're forming a
team, what do you want to do?
You want to have some of each.
You need some people that
have that deep knowledge
and can take you all the way
down to the detailed solution.
You want some people
who can look far ahead
and figure out the path to go.
And you want other people
to connect all that stuff
together.
And one thing I didn't
talk much about today
is the savant, which is another
very important type of a human.
There are-- again,
like a monomath,
they have a very deep
knowledge in one subject area.
But the way they trigger the
getting that knowledge out
is different than a monomath.
So a monomath has different
kind of cognitive connection
abilities to restore
the information.
A savant will typically respond
by a trigger, by a habit.
So you'll see savants in the
literature called habit-like.
Still amazing.
Still someone you can
use as your anchor
at the tail end of a
team, like a relay race.
You want someone who
will bring it home.
So those kind of
people will do that.
So how do you create
that psychological safety
for all these different
kind of people?
There is one way to look at it.
If you are looking
at a polymath--
so a polymath looking at a
monomath will see the monomath.
They can go turn around and
look at a different monomath
and see that person,
too, because they've
studied a couple of different
disciplines and they get it.
What can happen with
a monomath is they'll
look back in that mirror.
They have no context
for all those things
that that polymath has learned.
And so what they
see is themselves.
So one of the things you want
to do if you're-- actually,
let me go back one second.
One of the things you want
to do if you're a monomath
is just be aware
that the polymath has
some different context
that you might not have.
Now, a polymath is going to
be one of those people that
jumps around.
So this is a guy
named Tommy Twopants.
And he's demonstrating what
happens in a polymath's brain
all day long.
They might be thinking
about what they're cooking,
some math, music, and they
might be doing their job
at the same time.
And it's just the
way the brain works.
It is not ADHD.
It's going on at the
same time all the time.
Monomaths-- it's very hard for
monomaths to talk to each other
sometimes because
they're such specialists.
So when you're a monomath
talking to another monomath,
it can be hard.
So like that programmer that
writes the code that only
they can read, help
them pull it out.
Help them learn to communicate.
So in the last kind
of topic is that you
can kind of match these thought
styles to different team roles.
If you have a very highly
complex environment,
you have an architect,
business analysis,
anything that requires
looking across disciplines,
best way is to
leverage a polymath.
You can also put a
monomath in that role,
but you're going to need to have
enough different perspectives
on that team to collaborate
long enough to get
the right direction.
If you have a very highly
specialized discipline,
and you need an expert to do
really good coding or really
good work in a particular
area, you want a monomath.
You can also use a
polymath or a scanner,
but they're going to do it
for about a year or two,
and they're going
to get sick of it,
and they're going to move on.
But they're going
to learn it quickly,
so don't assume that they have
to have that skill already.
So then the next one, if you
have someone that wants--
or if you need some research
done, pick a scanner.
They're going to
go have-- that's
going to be so fun for
them to just read and learn
and read and learn and
tell you, and then move on.
So in conclusion-- that
is small, isn't it?
So this is not something
that's certifiable.
You can't go take a test
and tell which one of these
you are.
There is a professor named
Dr. Angela Meyers Cotellessa.
She wrote a thesis on polymaths.
Self-reporting proves
to be highly accurate,
especially when figuring
out if you're a polymath.
This is intuition, honestly.
So it does tell you
these thought styles map
to how your brain works,
so how you solve problems,
how you approach things.
There are experts in
polymathy that are emerging
around the world right now.
I'm in contact with
them on LinkedIn.
Social media is amazing.
You can make connections
with whoever you want.
So they're doing talks at
creativity conferences.
So when you go there,
kind of look out
for those polymathic
talks, because they're
really interesting.
And then the final thought
is that they are really
an important
dimension of a team,
but is absolutely not the
only dimension of the team.
There are other things.
Personality traits still matter.
DISC, if you've
ever heard of that.
Five behaviors.
And then don't forget about
your cognitive biases.
There are so many
different biases
that just have to do
with solving problems.
Keep an eye on all
of those things
when you're forming
your team, and be open
and adjust when you need to.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
