Malcolm Gladwell explains why he avoids face-to-face job interviews | SVT/TV 2/Skavlan

please welcome welcome dad and your book is about meeting strangers and now you've been watching these strangers for half an hour how what are you thinking well I if I'm true to the message of my book I would say that I don't nothing at all about them I would need to spend many months with them to get to the heart of their character and any conclusion that I draw about them on the basis of a few minutes on the television is likely to be false you talk about match people and mismatched people it's two different categories in a way would you could you give an example matched people are people whose facial expressions are conformed with our expectations so there are some people who when they are happy their face lights up and they smile and when they're distressed when they're angry their eyebrows furrow and their eyes grow narrow and their their lips hardened into a long line those people are called matched and they're very easy to make sense of so a match liar would be someone who went if I was lying if I was a match liar and I'm trying to lie with you right now that's that's match that conforms with our stereotype of what lying looks like but there are lots and lots of people who when they're telling the truth do this right and if you look at people in legal situations who are falsely accused of crimes they're very often people who are mismatched they appear to be lying and they're actually telling the truth so I talk in my book about the case of Amanda Knox remember she was oh yeah she was here on the show we should the show yeah yeah yes among as she was accused of killing her roommate Rubick yeah there's not a shred of physical evidence foxy Knoxy they called the daughter yeah she's classically mismatched the reason the Italian police falsely thought her guilty of this crime was that she didn't behave the way they thought an agreeing roommate ought to behave she didn't her behavior didn't match our expectations of what that's supposed to look like I mean I have no idea what that's supposed to look like but they had in their head in their see no strange Italian police head we had an idea they had an idea of what she was supposed to how she was supposed to behave and she didn't she didn't conform to that and so they said oh she must be guilty would you say we are matched well it would be very difficult for you to do your job if you were not matched so you have to be matched so yeah I have to look happy when I ever yes if you're gonna be on television every night with an audience of millions of people and everything that you say is inconsistent with the way you behave people won't keep watching though well it could be more interesting though it would be and it would be very very confusing particularly because you're moving in and out of so many languages yeah you know you can't if you're gonna be this show this is what are the most cognitively complex talk shows on earth people would start to you know they would start to get headaches by the end trying to keep track of em yeah I know it's based on a terrible idea so so how about yourself I mean you you are an introvert aren't you I am how why should we rely on you to tell us how to talk to strangers yeah are you saying the book would be better had been written by an extrovert like you well yes I mean I meet strangers all the time no but exactly what the book you guess you avoid strangers if you can but a book written by you on the subject of talking to strangers wouldn't be a book it would just be this is really fun for me it's quite interesting because I think of this task is being extraordinarily difficult so it's I'm you know there's a there's a reason to read me on the subject none whatsoever did you did you in researching the book and you spent six years working on did it change your perspectives it made me realize that I had been much too quick to judge people so for example I no longer believe in face-to-face job interviews and when I hired my last assistant I hired her over the phone I didn't want to meet her I thought it was too dangerous to meet her cuz what can you tell you meet somebody for half an hour and you decide whether you want to work for them with them every day for the next what can you tell from half an hour of a face-to-face encounter everything that I would have gathered from the face-to-face portion is irrelevant to the task of what it takes to be my assistant right I would have learned how she dressed whether she was attractive whether she was tall or short whether wouldn't do any of those things matter none of the matter right what is it what matters what matters is is she intelligent conscientious does she sure you know honest is you know kind can you tell any of those four things from meeting someone in 20 minutes face to face know but they don't worry what you're saying is that we are as we often believe that we can read people from like 30 seconds meeting yeah we are somewhat naive by nature isn't that also a good thing yes well so it is another of the books of the argument in the book is that we are trusting engines as human beings we we're designed by evolution to trust other people and that's why the world works that's why we're able to have meaningful communications and build community and start companies and if you distrusted everyone nothing could I wouldn't have come out here on stage this could be a hoax I would have you know I would have asked everyone to show me their idea am I really in the sky skitters I don't know if I'm you could have put a sign up outside you understand how impossible it is unless we trust every step of the way but that means that we will be deceived inevitably deceived on some portion of our encounters and I make the argument that we should well we shouldn't fight that we should we should just take that as the cost of being human this is what happened to him he was filmed with a hidden camera and it was a setup by the Sun wasn't it by the edges of the world yes and you spoke freely and thought that nobody listened of course I trust people because you trust people but that I would point out that's probably why you have been as successful as you are who they were they played a very cruel trick on you and that is that they took advantage of your best quality but I lost a lot of money as well how intuitive were you when you picked players like because you met a player and you saw a player for like yeah you see a lot of videos and you're sending Scouts so you know that it's a good football player but you don't really know if it's a good man or not you can try to control it we are other coaches but when you work with him then you will know if he's a good man or not and a couple of times in my career I I was wrong I trusted people players good players but they were not good people and I missed the job twice because of that do you feel that you are often misread I kind of like I can understand that people have maybe different expectations or when they meet me because like I said I'm like a different person when I play when I'm on the TV then when I'm outside so I think people might have the wrong impression like I'm not like that all the time that would be exhausting yeah I think they think I'm a little bit crazy it seems to me that you trust intuition less and less anyway yes if that is very true by as I grow older I become less and less impressed by my own powers of intuition by by the time I'm really old I will have all but given up I think look if you are a customs officer you have to accept the fact that your job is impossible and they will tell you that by the way customs officers if they're honest will tell you they never catch anything you know this when they have something it's just a job they are to frighten you they're just there is a it's a show it's a it's a it's theater and their their ability to tell from looking at you whether you have drugs in your suitcase zero mostly because if I was gonna smuggle drugs into and through an airport I would make sure not to look like the stereotypical drug smuggler I wouldn't wear chains and I wouldn't have baggy jeans on and I would cut my hair and you know I'd wear a suit and of course what are they gonna do with a very professional-looking middle-aged man wearing a very expensive suit and carrying a Louie Vuitton suitcase they're gonna say come on through mr. Gladwell and there it is you know ten pounds of cocaine yes what's the worst thing in history that has happened because of Miss Reading people yeah well I tell a story in talking to strangers about um about the way that Western leaders sized up out of Hitler before the Second World War and there is this really fascinating paradox that the leaders the foreign leaders who met out of Hitler before the war were the ones who were most likely to misunderstand him and those who didn't meet him were the ones most likely to understand him so Churchill always perceived correctly that Hitler was a monster who wanted to take over Europe never met Hitler in his entire life which I actually surprised me Stalin never met Hitler Roosevelt never met Hitler the person who met Hitler was Neville Chamberlain who went to see him repeatedly and then came back the Prime Minister of England at the time and came back home famously and said that he believed that Hitler had no designs on Europe that he wanted peace and and he was completely deceived so that great guy yeah that's what he said I feel that trust me on that and so this notion that somehow the act of meeting someone face-to-face gives you access to some privileged information about them is nonsense think about how much better served Chamberlain would have been if he had stayed home in the Prime Minister's house you know on Downing Street and just read mine com all you had to do with the man wrote a book about what he wanted to do sitting home and doing his homework Chamberlain was like all fly and see him tomb you know in Munich no stay home it's a long book it's like 600 pages yep you know it's not easy but that's that will tell you the truth this I mean what you're saying is I mean this is bad news for datings no no so it works in dating but dating is a special category because when you date someone you're trying to find out something very specific which is are you physically attracted to that person that's essentially what you're doing it right and that actually that's the one situation we're face-to-face encounters are absolutely crucial you really can't tell whether you're physically attracted to someone over can you write more by reading the book that they've written so but the problem is we treat you no job interviews and sizing up foreign leaders like their dates I mean Neville Chamberlain essentially had a date with that off Hitler in 1938 and they knew they had a glass of wine each and they chatted married told jokes and he was like I'm you know he sort of fell in love with him that's not what we want our leaders to do when are you misread oh I I assume I misread all the time I mean how could I not be what Walter what do you think it's the biggest misconception about you well I you know you mentioned that I am an introvert which I am the biggest misconception would be that I you know enjoy chatting with strangers thank you so much thank you very much I really hope you enjoyed the clip for more interesting conversations please hit subscribe you

Channel: Skavlan

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Keywords: Skavlan, interview, talk show, Fredrik skavlan, talkshow

Id: hIgm5ap3SPM

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 02 2019