Jul 30, 2026
Why do we size up a rude stranger in seconds and decide they
don't belong in our "tribe"?
Dr. Benjamin Granger has a term for it: the
evolutionary hangover — his phrase for the cognitive biases our
brains evolved for savanna survival and never quite retired. As
Chief Workplace Psychologist at Qualtrics, Granger spends his days distilling
billions of data points on how employees and customers really feel,
and in this episode he brings that same lens to his new USA Today
bestseller, A Leader Worth Following.
The conversation moves from the biological to the deeply practical.
Granger traces human speech back only 100,000–200,000 years — a
blink in evolutionary time — to explain why we still assume our
texts and emails land exactly as intended, and why they so often
don't. He and host Peter Winick dig into a favorite (and least
favorite) example: the customer satisfaction survey. Whether it's a
car dealership coaching you to "circle the five" or a flight
attendant joking about the inevitable post-flight survey, Granger
shows how well-established science like goal-setting theory gets
bent out of shape the moment it collides with real incentive
structures.
There's also a candid look at what it takes to write a book while
holding down a demanding day job — from years of scattered iPhone
notes to a publisher's cold outreach that landed within days of
deciding to write one. Granger and Winick talk through the tension
every corporate thought leader faces: how do you promote your ideas
without it feeling like self-promotion? Granger's answer — "I'm
selling the message, not myself" — anchors a broader discussion of
why academic rigor and real-world readability don't have to be at
odds.
The episode closes on a personal note: Granger's hope that more
leaders will get comfortable with hard conversations with
themselves, and a few concrete ways to start — from a two-minute
daily reflection borrowed from Marshall Goldsmith to a monthly
sit-down with your future self.
If you've ever wondered why your best-intentioned message got read
the wrong way, or why your company's survey scores don't tell the
real story, this one's for you.
Three Key Takeaways:
• Our brains are running outdated software.
Granger's "evolutionary hangover" concept explains why we instantly
judge people as "abrasive" or "rude" — a tribal survival instinct
that made sense on the savanna but creates friction in modern
offices and customer interactions.
• Good science can get gamed by bad incentives.
Goal-setting is one of the most well-established practices in
organizational psychology, but Granger shows how tying compensation
to survey scores (like a car dealership's NPS rating) corrupts the
very measurement it's supposed to improve.
• Selling ideas isn't the same as selling
yourself. Granger reframes self-promotion as
message-promotion — a mental shift that let him push through years
of book marketing discomfort because he believes the underlying
research deserves to reach people.
Ben isn't the only one turning years of hard-won research into a
book built to scale. Bill Sherman, Peter Winick, and Naren Aryal have just released The Thought Leadership Handbook: How the Experts
Elevate Their Big Ideas—and How You Can Too — a field guide drawn
from more than 700 conversations on this very podcast, mapping out
the frameworks and five "thought leadership avatars" that separate
an idea stuck in your head from one that actually reaches an
audience. If Ben's path from scattered iPhone notes to a USA Today
bestseller has you thinking about your own expertise, this is the
next book on your list. Get it at thoughtleadershiphandbook.com, or
find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Apple Books, or Amplify.