Dr. Ethan Kross
speaker
968 appearances
6 recordings
6 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard May 2025
Dr. Ethan Kross’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It's not. And that's okay. There are people who I love, who I'm super close to. I don't talk to them about my chatter. It doesn't help me. It actually pushes me in the wrong direction. But my board is an amazing asset that I possess and I lean on it frequently to deal with my chatter.
So I like to divide the way of helping others into two buckets. One thing you can do, if they come to you for help, as often happens to us, people want to talk to us, people want our support, then you follow that guide that we just talked about. You listen and learn, and then you advise. And part of the advice is giving them the tools. The way we help others is teaching others about these tools.
I do this to my kids all the time. I'm constantly complaining that we're born into the world with the ability to experience chatter and big emotions. We're not born into the world with the user's guide that teaches us these tools. So if my kids come to me, I listen, and then I offer them tools.
But then there's another situation where you see people you care about, your colleagues, your loved ones, and they don't ask you for help. And then the question is, well, what do you do? Do you let them just figure it out on their own, suffer in silence? Do you volunteer the support without them asking? There's been research on this, and it's tricky.
The research shows that if you volunteer the support without the person asking, it has the potential to blow up in your face. As a parent, I'm sure you've experienced this, as I know I have. So sometimes if I've seen my kids, I know they're struggling with something, This is something I can help them with. And I volunteer the advice. It's basically a mild version of how they respond.
When you offer support and it's not asked for, what that does is it communicates to the person that they're not capable of handling their own circumstances. And that can elicit defensiveness. So here's the really cool thing. We have learned how you can still help people when they don't ask for help. And what it involves doing is is providing support invisibly.
This is a secret weapon that everyone that you are listening, if you're listening, you now have a secret weapon.
Invisible support is providing people with support, but without shining a spotlight on the fact that you're doing, you kind of asked me about this earlier when you asked me about how do you tactfully help another person when they're struggling? This is how you do it. Okay. And there are many forms this can take. I'll give you a couple of examples. Let's say someone on my team,
or my lab is working under a really tense deadline. And they don't have time to take care of themselves and do simple things. I can just order in food for them. If my wife is struggling with lots of stress at work, lots of chatter, it's her turn to get the groceries. I just do the groceries, pick up the dry cleaning. I don't do it, come home and ask for a pat on my back.
I just do things to make the other person's life just a little bit easier, a little bit more manageable. That's one way of supporting someone invisibly. Let's say someone else is struggling with a skill. Let's say it's public speaking. So someone on my team is struggling with communicating their science skills. in a way that people can understand with impact.
Before I take them aside and say, hey, I've noticed that you could do a little bit better here. Here are three things I want you to try. I'll first have a team meeting and we'll all share out best practice. What are the two or three things that we've all benefited from for speaking more effectively?
What I'm doing there is I am getting the person information they can benefit from, but I'm not shining a spotlight on the fact that I'm targeting it to them. So even sharing sources that you've benefited from, podcasts, episodes, books, share that with someone else. You don't have to target it to them and say, hey, this is going to help you.
But if you found the material meaningful, just share it in that context. And what it does is it gives them the opportunity to benefit as well. But without them thinking, this was specifically targeted to them.
This episode was awesome. I learned so much. Or this book was great. Yeah, those are simple things you can do. And I do that all the time. Let me close the loop on invisible support because I told you about two ways you can do it. There's a third and it's my favorite.
It's affectionate, but not creepy touch. Are you familiar with this one?
Well, definitely not uncles, but it's what moms and dads do.
Yeah. Like what do you do with your kids when they're born into this world? First thing we do.
That's right. And we have receptors on our skin that encode for an affectionate embrace. And when it's registered, there's this automatic release of stress-fighting chemicals that flood our system. And so if my daughters are experiencing something challenging or my wife, I'll You know, just kind of give them a hug, caress their back. Again, not creepy.
But even at work, you know, like a fist bump, right, is a simple way. We are a social- Pat on the back. Pat on the back, right? Tactile species. That's a way of supporting someone invisibly as well.
You do want to make sure to convey the not creepy part of it, though.
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