Episode 26: How to Amplify Voices Effectively - Nathan Meikle, KU School of Business

Prof. Meikle explains how drawing attention to others in meetings is a powerful tool, and is also a sure way to gain power and respect yourself.

Transcript

Chris Riback: I'm Chris Riback. This is Call In with Dr. Alexandria White. We discuss business leadership in our time of social change when to call in, when to call out, and how to build sustainable business value today.

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Dr. Alexandria White: Our show is brought to you by Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which is committed to a more diverse and inclusive future. Let's call in.

Dr. Alexandria White: Hello, Nate, it's great to see you again. The last time I saw you was at the Campbell Trophy Summit at Stanford University. So let's get right into it. Doing your research on amplification was a technique used during the Obama administration. What is amplification and how should leaders think about it?

Nate Meikle: Yeah. Great to see you again and real quick, I want to mention, my wife and I were literally on the way to the airport at that moment. So I'm happy, we got to run into each other right before we left. This idea of amplification is something that I spent a lot of years thinking about now. You mentioned the female Obama staffers and they felt like they didn't have the status and influence that they deserved. And so they started amplifying one another, you say something and I feel like it wasn't acknowledged. And I say, "Hey, remember when Alexandria said that really nice thing about XYZ, we should consider it". And so, we wanted to empirically test this.

And so we defined amplification as “drawing attention to somebody who has tried to contribute positively to the team or the organization or the meeting. And then also making sure that you give that person credit.” So, you could imagine somebody amplifying an idea, but then stealing the credit for that idea. So important in this notion of amplification is that we make sure we draw attention to the fact or draw attention to the person and acknowledge that specific person for raising the point that we're amplifying.

Chris Riback: And Nate, how did you become aware of it? Maybe go through, if you would, some of your training. I know you studied law at Stanford, which as a Cal Berkeley grad says to me, I guess you just couldn't get into Cal, but that's fine.

Nate Meikle: Yeah, exactly, not good enough for Cal, right?

Chris Riback: I mean, a lot of really smart people have gone to Stanford also, Nate. But tell me about your background and how did you become aware of amplification as a tactic? Was it something that was innate to you or was it some part of research that you were doing and you saw the importance of it?

Nate Meikle: In law school, I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life in school. I loved law school so much, I figured if I could just replicate this experience forever, that's the kind of career I want. And so then I have to decide, well, how am I going to do this? It's like, well, if I get a PhD, that's five more years guaranteed to school, so I can do that. And I was talking to a guy and I was saying, "You know, I'm kind of bummed, I'm not going to be an attorney, not make as much money". He was a practicing attorney. He said, "Yeah, but you just banked five years of happiness by getting your PhD". So anyway, I decided to do my PhD in organizational behavior, which is essentially social psychology. I'm just thinking, what do I like most?

And I really like learning about people and why they think the things they think and do the things they do. So I end up doing my PhD in organizational behavior and I'd started working on a project. One of the first projects I was working on is we were looking at the effects of the first follower. So there was this video that went viral about 10 years ago. And it was this man who starts dancing at a park. And then, he's just kind of dancing by himself. And then somebody else just comes up and starts dancing with him. And then before long, there's like 50 or 100 people dancing. And we said, it was important that the first person started dancing, but we were really interested in this dynamic of the first follower and that you're not really a leader until somebody is willing to follow you.

And so, we started looking at this first follower idea. So I started collecting some data on that. And then some colleagues who I knew at the University of Utah, Liz Tenney and Tamar Kreps, they called me up one day and were like, "Hey, we're looking at this project on amplification. And it's kind of similar to this project that you're working on at this first follower, would you be interested in joining us?" And said, "Oh yeah, absolutely. It sounds real interesting". So they started talking to me about this. They brought up the female Obama staffer case. And from there, it was just trying to figure out how we could test this and the experiments we could run and companies that we could potentially use this technique as a training. It all started from this interest in social psychology, how people make decisions and then this kind of first follower project that I'd started working on.

Dr. Alexandria White: Amazing story. Speaking of what companies need, so Diane and I with reboot Excel, we work with a lot of companies, clients who want to build inclusive teams. So how do you think inclusive management practices tied to your research on amplification?

Nate Meikle: Yeah. One of the things that even just doing the research on this project helped me do a better job of, was acknowledging people's contributions. I have an athletics background. And so often in sports the mantra on many of these teams I was on was like, it's amazing how much you can accomplish, if you don't care who gets the credit. And while that does a nice job of creating this “we mentality” for the team, that's not always the right approach in all circumstances, because if we do that enough, we might be just totally neglecting the input of others or we might be... Somebody has a great idea and maybe we take that commandeer, that idea is ours. And so there were so many funny things that happened as we were working on this project.

And one of them, that was so funny about this idea of amplification is Chris says something and then Alexandria says something. And then I amplify Chris. I say, "Hey, Chris, did have a great idea and we should consider it".

Dr. Alexandria White: Right.

Nate Meikle: And we would do this with each other in our team meetings, but it was so subtle that it's just like, it happens almost like at a subconscious level where Chris feels good. It feels good for Chris to be amplified.

Dr. Alexandria White: Right.

Nate Meikle: And Alexandria, you like me when I amplify, that's kind of what the research shows. But it's this very subtle thing that we would do it jokingly to each other and then have to remind each other that we had just amplified because it was so subtle. And that was something that related to this idea of giving people credit for their ideas in meetings. I hadn't realized until I started working on this project, how much I would amplify, but not do that extra step of just giving Chris the credit.

And again, I don't know if it was because of my sports background or whatever, but just taking that extra step and building on past ideas. But just trying to remember, "Hey, Chris had that great idea. Let's give Chris credit for that", was just something, it was just one of those subtle things that I learned, that I think I still mess up on. And this was kind of funny too, or funny or sad when I think I was at the University of Notre Dame.

Dr. Alexandria White: Okay.

Nate Meikle: And anytime you get a publication, the PR machine of the University loves to promote the research.

Dr. Alexandria White: Yes, they do.

Nate Meikle: As you know. This publication on amplification came out and Notre Dame wrote up this PR piece that goes out to all the news outlets, talking about how I did this research on amplification. And I'm excited, I think the research is really cool and then my colleagues are like, "Hey, that's great. Did you notice that Notre Dame only talked about you and they didn't even mention your colleagues?" And I was just like, "Oh my gosh!" It was just a complete oversight on my part. I didn't write the article, but I should have on an article on amplification, at least made sure... I proofed it, I signed off on it and I didn't make sure that it talked about my other colleagues who had the idea in the first place. It was so easy for me to take the credit and move on. And so it can be a very subtle thing, but it can be very meaningful and helpful to the people that you do amplify. But it's something that I consciously work on and I think most of us can do a much better job with.

Dr. Alexandria White: Oh wow. There's so many things I want to unpack. So Chris is a male, I'm a female. Let's talk about those differences in the amplification and who you decide to amplify. So according to Lee and McCabe, 2021, these researchers academics, they found that men are 1.6 times more likely to speak in class than women. You and I are professors, Nate. What are you doing in your class to make sure that everyone speaks in your class? How do you make sure all your students are heard?

Nate Meikle: Yeah, a really good question. And I mean, as a professor, you're always trying to monitor the two or three people that speak too much and you try to give other people's opportunities. I do a lot of cold calling and I think part of this stems from my background in law school, where it's not just like a participation, some classes are like, whoever wants to speak, speak. In law school, the professors in many of the classes, they keep track of who they have called on and who they don't. And so that's something I try to implement to make sure that everybody gets a chance to speak. And I'll say something that we didn't expect to find. We wondered with amplification, if there were gender dynamics, like...

Dr. Alexandria White: Okay?

Nate Meikle: What if a man amplifies a woman? What if a man amplifies a man? What if a woman amplifies a woman? What if a woman amplifies a man? Might there be some sort of interactions, different effects, different effect sizes. And we designed an experiment where we attributed, I thought it was a clever way to examine this, that one of my colleagues, I think it was Liz that came up with. There was a study done that showed that venture capitalists talked about women differently than men. And so they ascribed kind of different status characteristics to the men versus the women. And so we pulled a number of these sayings out, where the man was intelligent and capable and the woman was nice.

So it was creating this status separation. And then we created a scenario that people would read and we assigned the men, these higher kind of status characteristics. And then we had participants rate who's higher in status? The man that's really smart and capable and talented or the woman who's nice and kind? And we found that participants on average rated the men higher in status. And then in the experiment we had every possible combination amplify the other, because we wanted to see these effects. What happens if a high status, male amplifies a lower status female? Now again, we had artificially manipulated the woman to be lower status and we had manipulated the man to be higher status. And there was lots of interesting questions. Does amplifying a high status man, does it help? And who does it help more? And what if a low status woman amplifies a low status woman or what if a low status woman amplifies a high status man?

And what was interesting to us is basically, it all helps. Amplification appears to be based on our data. It just appears to be something that people really like. The very first time we wanted to test amplification, we had a group of graduate students get together in a room and model amplification. So they were literally just reading a script, just acting out amplification. And the person that we had assigned to be the amplifier, I would bet, if we had pulled a hundred people ranked the status of these people, the person who we had assigned to be the amplifier, I bet would have been ranked lower status. This person was very shy, very quiet, did not like to talk, was not very assertive. So just objectively, I think most people would probably have rated this person lower in status.

When this person started amplifying, they immediately took on a leadership role, that was shocking to all of us. It was like, "Wow". And they're not even coming up with any new ideas.

Dr. Alexandria White: Where did they come from? Yeah.

Nate Meikle: But all they're saying, all they're doing is just saying, "Hey Chris, that's a good idea. Alexandria, that's a great idea. Oh, I really like that, we should consider it". And this turned us onto the idea that amplification, the goal when we started this project was to help the people who aren't being listened to. But we also learned really quickly that the amplifier themselves benefits a lot. And that was something that really became a focal point of the paper is... I can help the voicer, I can help the person who's not being listened to by amplifying them. But when I amplify, I also amplify myself or it helps myself and it improves my status and it's a really risk free way to have influence in a meeting, kind of shape the meeting, drive the meeting where you want to go potentially by choosing who you amplify and also give yourself a boost, because we have limited opportunities to speak in meetings.

And do I really want to use that time to shine the light on somebody else? Or do I want to use that time to maybe self amplify myself? And what we found is, one really effective strategy is shine the light on somebody else that can help them, but it can also help you. So I mean, that was a way longer answer to your question. But anyway, those were a lot of the interesting points that I kind of took away from the research.

Dr. Alexandria White: I totally agree with everything that you said Nate. And this is just wonderful to hear, so there you go.

Nate Meikle: Yeah, makes me feel good, you see. I mean, you look good doing it.

Chris Riback: Yeah, I was going to say, and it makes me think higher of Alex for her making that comment, so...

Nate Meikle: Exactly.

Chris Riback: Once again, this is empirical research. You can put this data into your next report, Nate. Given that research, given the conclusions, given the analysis and what you've learned, what guidance do you give business leaders? What tactics do you give them to translate your research findings into improving their business environment?

Nate Meikle: My first thought is, in academia, there's kind of this interesting dynamic where you mostly kind of do stuff for other academics. Most of the papers were writing for other academics. If I were to start going around and consulting and telling everybody, "here's our research and here's what you need to do", sometimes that can be viewed as like you're trying to cash in on your research, rather than just promoting the good of science. Now that said, I really like this research and I think it can help. And so when I do have a chance to talk to it or talk about it with other academics... And then companies, I jump at the chance because I think it's a valuable strategy and technique.

One of the things that I've done is, for example, we went into a company and we identified a number of people in the organization that the leaders felt like didn't have the status and influence that they deserved. And we trained them on amplification. It was like a 30 minute training. It included, here's the definition of amplification. Describe the technique. And then we showed video clips of amplification. And then, I think it was a six week or an eight week period, they were told to amplify one another. And then at the end of the eight weeks, everybody in the organization and I showed back up at time one, everybody kind of rated everybody in status and influence. We trained the lower influence people on amplification. And then at time two, everybody rated everybody again.

And those people who had been trained to amplify and had been amplifying, improve their status and influence. And it was a simple intervention that we did, where it was just basically showing them amplification and showing videos. The materials are public and I could send you a link to the videos that we used and there's a Qualtrics survey that people can take that just shows them how to amplify. It's a really simple concept, but like I said, can have some pretty meaningful impacts.

Dr. Alexandria White: Wonderful, Nate. Yes we can, we're actually going to add the article, Amplifying Your Colleagues' Voices Benefits Everyone. We're going to put that in the show notes. It's time for us to close. And we just wanted to say, it has been a wonderful conversation. Is there anything else you'd like the listeners to know about amplification or current projects that you're working on?

Nate Meikle: Yeah. Well thank you for having me on. I spend so much time on these projects and this was a six or seven year project. And so it's so fun for me to be able to talk about it with you and share. I would just encourage people to look for ways to amplify. It's so simple to do. It's not stressful, I mean, Alex, you say something and good... Say something, you contribute and it's just so easy for me to say, "Hey, I like that, that Alex said", it's so easy to do. It makes people feel good. And especially when people aren't being listened to and don't have the status and influence that they should have. It's a simple thing that we can do to try to help those people have more status and influence. So I would just say, look for opportunities to do it and then catch yourself when you mess up like I did with that paper and I didn't even acknowledge my colleagues. Make sure that you look for opportunities to acknowledge others.

Dr. Alexandria White: All right, thank you.

Chris Riback: Thank you, Nate.

Nate Meikle: Thank you.