If you’ve ever had to complete a group project for work or school, you know that some groups are much more successful than others. One group will coordinate perfectly to complete the project, while another struggles to understand the instructions of the task at hand. This happens even at the most prestigious universities and exclusive companies – but why?
In this episode of Level to Power we examine the intricacies of social group dynamics and human suggestibility by using the behaviors of social animals in the wild as a model. Understanding the difference between the bee hive, a flock of sheep, and the wolf pack is the key to selecting the right group of people to work with on a project, and how to become the leader of the group itself.
Apex Level To Power is a podcast that examines the inner workings of human interactions and teaches you how to succeed within your own interpersonal relationships. Change your level, change your life, change the world.
Episode Highlights:
- A billionaire that wasted millions: real life story from our host
- The meaning of gregarious and how it applies to human behavior
- Why humanity is so suggestible
- The difference between cognitive and emotional empathy
- Levels of cognitive empathy
- Using models from the animal kingdom to explain human social dynamics: Hive, herd, pack
- What level of cognitive empathy is right for which job
Resources:
Visit Level To Power for episode archives and transcripts
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Quotes/Tweets:
“When you’re one of the herd, it’s hard to avoid being social”
“The larger the tribe, the better its success”
“Humanity bred themselves for suggestibility”
“In order for a pack to operate they must have a high level of cognitive empathy”
TRANSCRIPT
| Mark Gleason: | APEX LevelToPower Episode 6: Change Your Level, Change Your Life, Change the World.
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| Escape the herd, rise above the pack. This is the APEX LevelToPower Podcast, the only place on the web that teaches you to identify and control the invisible strings that dominate all human interaction. We turn nestlings into hawks, a challenge to be sure, but one that we answer, and answer with vigor. I am your faithful host, Mark Gleason. I welcome you to the program. I invite you to visit our little corner of the web at leveltopower.com for more information and to support the broadcast. The one ability we cannot give ourselves is credibility. You have to give that to us. Please like, subscribe, or write a review.
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| In this podcast, we’ll be discussing why social and gregarious animals, like humans, are suggestible. We’re looking at the relationship that exist between individuality and suggestibility. We’ll also look at how the APEX levels fold into that concept, and how the animal groupings in the animal kingdom can serve as a useful model when examining human behavior.
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| Before we get into the details, allow me to share a real world story from my past which will help to illustrate the value of the concepts that we’re going to learn today. A dialogue took place between myself and a billionaire owner of a company during the course of some work. I thought I had seen everything, but there were two firsts for me in this exchange. One, this was the first time that I’ve ever had a billionaire sketch a crude picture of an ass to illustrate his displeasure. Two, this was the first time I was almost, almost I lost for words.
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| Imagine your faithful host sitting in a conference room with the billionaire across the table and he yells, “Yes, that is an ass.” His nostrils flare as he plunges his finger on to his crudely drawn sketch again and again. That dot right there is the pimple on the ass and that is how much I care about what you are telling me right now.””
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| Now, it was around this time that my king grasp into human behavior signaled that this meeting was in danger of going off the rails. Not normally I lost for words, I took a deep breath and a moment to assess. I was only two minutes into a presentation that out of the possible universe of presentations should have been smooth sailing. As a senior management consultant, I am often called upon to evaluate our audit projects that are suspected of running a mock. In this case, the errant program was millions of dollars in the red with little progress to show forth. The BIQ, billionaire in question, had funded this new startup with a sole assignment to create a product, to innovate his current business.
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| At my very first meeting with the executive team of the startup, it was obvious that despite lofty qualifications and practiced reassurances, the staff was completely overwhelmed with their assignment to deliver a product that could innovate their entire industry. Don’t get me wrong. These were good people for implementation. If one had an implementation project, these would be completely appropriate people to engage, but asking implementation experts to innovate is like asking your plumber how your house can still get water without the use of all of those pipes. While your local plumber may indeed be the Steve Jobs of plumbing, it is not what we call in the trade a high percentage bet.
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| Rarely in my career have I had such a straightforward finding as the one I was presenting to the BIQ. He was simply using the wrong team to carry out this task. Yet, it was not going well. Apparently, being a billionaire doesn’t lessen the sting of throwing a few million dollars in a sinkhole, a sober lesson to us all. The BIQ continued, “What are you saying? Are you saying I am just really bad at hiring the right people for the job?” “These people have impeccable credentials,” he grumbled, “More degrees than I can count.”
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| I responded in round, careful tones assuring him that if he bought horses, he would hire an expert horse trainer, and that hiring executives is no different. Sure as a horse trainer could judge a thoroughbred by his teeth, an expert on executives would have vetoed his management team in the very first meeting and saved him millions of dollars. The BIQ is not convinced. He responded with something which is particularly relevant to our discussions here in the APEX framework. He said, “If you can show me how to read an executive like that, if you could bottle that and teach me to identify and create successful people, that would be very valuable to me.” Welcome to APEX LevelToPower.
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| If a billionaire with huge amounts of resources and years of success running a business still struggles with the basics of reading executives, reading people, understanding motivation, there’s value to be had here. Knowing these skills can set you apart and make you successful. This gentleman, for instance, is in high need of someone who has the skillset. Let’s move forward and learn how the APEX LeveltoPower framework can help the billionaire in question and yourself to gain greater insight into human power dynamics.
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| I just want to begin. Let’s define our terms. What is meant by the word “gregarious?” Gregarious is the scientific word used to describe a species that prefers to be among its own kind. After all, when you’re one of the herd, it’s tough to avoid being social. The etymology of gregarious reflects the social nature of the flock. In fact, the word “gru out of the Latin noun “grex” meaning herd or flock.
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| It first began appearing in English texts in the 17th Century. Gregarious used to be applied mainly to animals but by the 18th Century, it was being used for the social human being as well. The root word “grex” gave English a whole flock of other words as well, including egregious, aggregate, congregate, and segregate. The survival advantage enjoyed by socially gregarious animals that collaborate well together and stay in groups is well documented. One need to only observe a pack of wolves stalk and kill a larger prey or watch a hive of bees outcompete higher level vertebrates.
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| As early men huddled in social groups or mutual aid in security, the first human tribes were established. Now, the society is genetically predisposed towards cooperation prospered at the expense of unable to unite. Imagine two tribes living in proximity to each other and one has a genetic predisposition to short tempers and lack of trust; while the other has the opposite, a genial nature with propensity to be able to extend and receive trust.
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| While one group is going to be able to collaborate and the other group will not. In general, the larger the tribe, the greater the success. Family-based clans soon gave way to regional tribes which in turn, gave way to religious kingdoms. Like wolves, and sheep, and cattle, Homo sapiens bred for many thousands of years for the socially gregarious traits that facilitate tribal collaboration.
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| Social animals that have been strongly bred for traits of social hierarchy tend to be easier to domesticate. This is the reason that dogs and the horses can be domesticated in ways that a deer and jaguars cannot. Homo sapiens domesticated socially gregarious animals such as sheep, cattle, dogs, horses that were amenable to adopting humans as the new alpha of their group. In other words, all of these animals already had a collaborative socially gregarious structure and humans simply took over as the top alpha of the group.
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| In the same way, humans domesticated themselves by rewarding individuals able to socially collaborate and shunning individuals deemed to be antisocial. In short, humanity bred itself for suggestibility, but this is an important point to stop and contemplate. Homo sapiens are sensibly the most intelligent creatures on the planet besides dolphins, are also amongst the animals most highly specialized for suggestibility. The highest intelligence and among the highest for suggestibility to its own kind.
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| What are the consequences of such a thing? Is it really as our literature and common knowledge would have it, is dinner party hypnotism and subliminal advertising really the most important consequences of these genetic legacy of breeding for social gregariousness or is there something more primal and profound here at work in every social interaction you ever have with families, friends, coworkers, and society?
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| There’s a long list of traits required for social collaboration but at this point, for our purposes, we shall consider two. In order to socially collaborate, an animal must, one, be suggestible to incoming communication from its peers; and, two, have some level of cognitive empathy.
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| Cognitive empathy is distinct from emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is the ability to feel what another creature is feeling. If you see sadness in another creature or one of your own kind, you immediately feel the emotion and sadness yourself. If they seem joyful, you feel joyful. This is emotional empathy.
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| Cognitive empathy is the ability to recreate another perspective, or point of view, or mental state, and to put yourself in someone else’s shoes in the more familiar vernacular. If you have the ability to put yourself in someone’s shoes, to project what they will do based upon the audio-visual clues that you’re receiving, that is a skill called cognitive empathy.
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| Along with cognitive empathy, one also needs suggestibility to one’s peers. Suggestibility to one’s peers implies that there’s a method of a communication between the individuals, and both sender and receiver agree on the general nature of the message. Bees communicate by dancing, cows by sound, the jostling of their bodies; while pack animals can use gestures or eye movements to communicate intent.
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| Cognitive empathy is the ability of the receiver to interpret the intent of the communication and act with the understanding as to the future actions that are expected. It is a stretch to assign the cognitive label to lower order animals but wolves, jackals, chimpanzees undoubtedly possess a large measure of cognitive empathy.
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| Now, why is this important to dwell on? It’s important because a large portion of human power and dynamics rest upon one’s cognitive empathy ability. Your success, your salary, your spouse, your stress level are all based upon your ability to correctly judge the mindset of others. Unlike our natural intelligence, cognitive empathy can be learned and improved to great heights.
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| If you have ever met an owner of a company who seems of average intelligence but has teams of brilliant people working for him or her, it is likely that he or she has developed their cognitive empathy to a very high level. The APEX framework is intended to lay out the implications of this genetic legacy, and consider the consequences, and give the listener a practical framework to allow the individual to harness the power of the tribe. To this end, we will be examining these two significant consequences of human self-domestication, herd suggestibility, and cognitive empathy as they relate to you as an individual seeking advancement in human society.
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| As we examine human society, it is not surprising that we gain some insights by looking at our animal cousins. Once we accept that an animal survives best in a social context, it follows then a chain of logic that must necessarily apply to every social creature. As author William Trotter once said, “Suggestibility is the cement of the herd, the very soul of the primitive social group. Man is a social animal, no doubt, but he is social because he is suggestible.” William Trotter wrote those words more than a hundred years ago when he was trying to explain human behaviors that he was seeing in Europe postwar. Having insight into the intricacies of her behavior helps you have profound insights into how human societies function.
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| For this next portion, we’re going to be talking about models from animal kingdom that can be used to explain the complicated social dynamics that exist in human society. There are many different words for animal groupings. It’s no cliché that societies have the most words to describe the things of greatest importance to them like that old soul that the Eskimos have 40 different words for snow, how wet it is, how solid it is, can you walk on it? What stick to you will blind you.
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| It to really make sense that every human society will come up with the words to best describe their own experience. That’s completely reasonable and understandable. It’s telling them that in human language, there are hundreds of words to explain different modes of social collaboration. In English alone, we have herd, pack, flock, gaggle, hoard, swarm, hive to name a few. A merger of crows is a group of crows. A group of dolphins is known as a pod of dolphins which is why it may be more suitable to do a podcast on dolphins.
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| Each word contains a lot of information. Each social grouping conveys its own subtle distinctions as to the level of suggestibility between the members of the group, as well as the default aggressive or default defensive posture of the group.
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| Let’s examine a few of those words and unpack the meaning that’s contained within each one. We’re going to look at three of the animal groupings, hive, herd, and pack, and talk about the information that’s actually contained within each of those words. Before we do, let’s do a quick review on the APEX levels as they’ll quickly become relevant. At level zero, remember, it has no cognitive empathy.
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| A level zero is someone who is in fight or fight reflex. They’re a cult member. They’re on drugs. They’re existing only at a perceptual level. They have no concept of individuality. They’re just moving through the world. A level one is someone who is aware of their own subjective reality but is the only reality possible. They’re unable to truly imagine what somebody else’s perspective may be.
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| A level two understands their own reality, their subjective view of it, but they also understand that other people have subjective views or reality, and they’re able to look at their view and somebody else’s view. This, of course, gives them an advantage when it comes to interactions. Level three is able to see their paradigm, other people’s paradigms, and synthesize them together into one cohesive picture and tapestry.
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| Return to our animal model, let’s say that a hive is level zero. A hive has no cognitive empathy and no individuality. The word “hive” implies total suggestibility and no individuality. Members undertake their tasks with no regard for individual beings. A city of humans which is called a hive of activity is supposed to invoke images of hive members scouring about trying to complete their group-based tasks mostly on autopilot. Contrast this with a gaggle of geese which denotes a noisy, disorganized rubble with much lower levels of suggestibility that exist in a hive.
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| In the APEX framework, humans operating at level zero are similar to creatures in a hive. Their cognitive empathy is none. They have no idea of what they think. They don’t even care what other people think. The stress ability is very high. Whatever impulses they get from the group, they will follow. Their source of truth is the hive and their source of approval is the hive. Their stance is good. What that means is that their options are limited to what is for the good of the hive.
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| The hives’ suggestibility is total. You can definitely influence the behavior of the hive with the right kind of growth levers. To get a hive member to perform an action by default should be easier as long as it’s within their prescribed skillset and should be much easier to get a hive member to do something than a member of a gaggle, the disorganized rubble. If we’re going to classify a person as level zero as a member of the hive, we would expect that any attempt to influence their behavior would need to come as a message via the collective.
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| The same insights can be found in the words “herd” and “flock.” Both of these groupings imply that individual members are highly suggestible to group communication and with higher individuality than the hive. Cows naturally group together in herds. Therefore, a cowboy’s task is to get the rare maverick or the rare individual who has mistakenly or unintentionally wandered off from the group.
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| In the APEX Framework humans operating at level one are similar to a creature in a herd. The cognitive empathy of a cow is low. A cow does not need to understand what other cows are thinking. Its suggestibility though is quite high. It does need to understand the simple pulses of communication, “We’re turning right. We’re turning left. We’re stopping here. Panic, we’re going to run now. Wait, we’re going back to walking. The cow needs to be highly suggestible to the herd but because it’s highly suggestible, because it’s a source of truth, and a source of approval, it’s herd over self. Its individuality is low, and its cognitive empathy, its ability to read what other people or other creatures are thinking and intending is also low.
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| If you think about rabbits for a second, rabbits don’t require a lot of communication. Rabbits eat grass. Then, if I see another rabbit running, I’m going to run also. That works well for rabbits. That’s why rabbits do not have a large amount of cognitive empathy. They don’t need it. They don’t need to recreate the mental state of another creature. They eat grass. There’s no reason to sneak up on a blade of grass.
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| Level two which is the pack, the APEX level two pack members who are aware of their own paradigm and others, these people operate much like a pack. In order for a pack to operate, they must have a very high level of cognitive empathy. Wolves need to work together in order to bring down a prey. Think about how complicated that is for a second. That animals working together, moving silently, assigning roles, understanding what their pack mates will do, understanding what their prey is going to do next, or understand the difference between a moose, and a bear, and a rabbit, and a human, and how different strategies need to be used, and different communication needs to be used in order to achieve those goals.
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| The cognitive empathy of the pack tends to be very high. It must. If you’re a predator, you must have very high cognitive empathy. Your ability to understand the intentions and mindsets of others must be very high. Therefore, your individuality is very high as well. Your source of truth and source of approval is first self, then pack. Meaning, you certainly take messages from the pack, but you have to weigh it against your individual experience, and decide what seems to be the right course of action. Your suggestibility is low. Your cognitive empathy is high and your suggestibility is low.
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| Now what does this mean? What does this mean for the hive, herd, and pack? What it means is that while the hive, there’s no doubt that individuals of a hive are acting on behalf of the hive. At level one which is the herd which is taking its source of truth and source of approval from the herd primarily, actions of individuals are going to be taken to benefit the herd. You’re going to say, “There all are going to be good cows.
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| In the pack where suggestibility is low and cognitive empathy is high, the individual now has the ability to depart from suggestion of the group. Therefore, can take actions even counter to a group and better for the individual. Therefore, at the pack level, the actions taken can range from good, to neutral, and to evil. The good and evil are defined by whatever the herd defines them as. It’s for the good of the herd, or for the evil of the herd, or for the neutral or no effect on the herd.
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| People and creatures who are at level two. Level zero, level one, level two, hive herd and pack. These are useful lenses with which to look at human interactions, and to review, and remember the difference between these levels is primarily cognitive empathy. We can agree, for instance, at level zero, people barely to themselves, much less what anybody else is thinking. Almost zero cognitive empathy.
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| At level one, the herd members has a sense of individuality. Level one and being part of the herd doesn’t require that you instantiate much of what other individuals think. You do need to respond to communication. You have vibrations of communication that come from your herd mates, “We’re moving right. We’re moving left. We’re going this way. We’re stopping,” but all that’s required is that you receive from the group your marching orders, and your instructions, and you obey them, and pass on the message. That’s the life of the herd.
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| It is the pack that requires high levels of cognitive empathy, level two. What we call in the APEX framework “cognipathy” of those individuals who can read and recreate in their minds the mental state of another individual, understand what they want, what is it they’re after, what the intentions are all from audio-visual clues.
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| Let’s take an inventory of what we’ve learned here today. We learned why social and gregarious animals are suggestible. We also learned that the nature of the social grouping alters the level of individuality, suggestibility, and cognitive empathy of that group’s members. We also saw that the animal grouping served as useful model when explaining human behavior to our APEX level zero, one, two, and three.
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| Let’s go back to my story of the BIQ, the billionaire in question. Using the framework that we just learned, can we better understand why his project was not successful? Remember, his goal was to hire a management team of executives that could innovate his whole industry. Which level of people does he need for that task? Does this task require someone who sees the world as it is or as it could be?
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| A level one, remember, can only see their own paradigm. Therefore, they’re very good at following an implementation plan, but challenged when it comes to thinking outside the box, and creating something completely new. Level two, on the other hand, can see their own paradigm, the paradigm of their peers, the paradigm of their workers, the paradigm of competitors, the paradigm of future customers, and help to piece together a plan to innovate. At level three, which we haven’t spent much time on yet, is an expert at synthesizing all paradigms into one master picture that succeeds in both the short run and the long run.
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| To drive the point home, let’s say you want to hire an armored truck driver to deposit your cash at the bank. Now, which level do you want to hire, the person who only sees his own reality and is very bad at guessing your mental state or a creative and innovative person who sees many possibilities? If it’s my money, I’m hiring a level one to drive the armored car and deposit my cash. People who are level one on the issue are oblivious that there are even levels of perception. Therefore, it is your chance that they will hire the proper person. It was not magic that allowed me to instantly know that a bunch of level ones were the wrong group for innovation project. It was simply my ability to harness the power of perspective.
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| If you enjoyed today’s podcast please, like, subscribe, and post your review. You change your level, you change your life, and you can change the world. Welcome to APEX LevelToPower.
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