Chris Jarvis – This is Your Brain on Volunteering

Erin Davis: Welcome to Real Time, Canada's best podcast for all things real estate. It's brought to you by the Canadian Real Estate Association. As part of REALTORS Care Week 2022, we are joined today by Chris Jarvis, co-founder of Realized Worth. At Realized Worth, Chris designs volunteering strategies to help businesses drive engagement, retention, inclusivity, and stronger relationships with their communities. There is so much in this discussion for you, eye-opening facts, ideas, and yes, even a pat on the back for helping people outside your group.

I'm your host, Erin Davis, on Episode 32 of Real Time, Chris Jarvis defining the differences between transactional and transformative volunteering. Learn how each of us can approach volunteering from a place of empathy, purpose, people, and partnerships, and how we can personally benefit as a result, because it's okay if there's something in it for you too, just like this podcast, we hope. Here's our Real Time talk with Chris Jarvis. Chris, welcome to Real Time. It's a pleasure to have you here. Tell us a bit about you-- I know you're in the US, and born in Canada-- and the team, and what you do at Realized Worth, will you?

Chris Jarvis: Sure. Hey, Erin. Thanks for having me on the show. It's really great to be here with you. I was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. Six months later, I moved my family to Halifax-- ventured out. Now, I'm located down here in Baltimore, and I've been here for a few years. The company that we started, Realized Worth-- started that back in 2008, with my partner, Angela Parker, we focus on employee giving and volunteering, and helping companies do it better.

Erin: Okay. You started this in '08. What was the impetus for it? Where did you see a need?

Chris: Great question. We got it all wrong. So, 2008-- great time to start a business, right? Economic downturn. We went to the entirely wrong group, we went to nonprofits and said, "I have 18 years of experience with nonprofits. Angela Parker has over a decade. We were wondering if we could help you improve the experience for your volunteers?" Then the person said-- I made a whole pitch and that kind of thing-- had diagram, slides-- and as I was talking, you know, wrapped it up, I thought I-- she was nodding her head, she was great, and then she said, "That's great, nobody can do this. I don't have a budget. Nobody could oversee it. We don't have a volunteer manager; I am the custodian and the executive director. You know what you could do? You could help me with the bank down the street, they come here twice a year with a couple of 100 people, put up banners, flyers, spend $15,000 on promoting this, do about of an hour of work that I really don't need. If you could help them help me better, that'd be great. It's part of their CSR program." I said, "Wow, that's a great idea." I walked out and thought, "What in the world is CSR?"

I went to a bookstore, read a whole bunch of books on customer service relationships-- it's totally wrong topic-- so finally found corporate social responsibility, and that was the track. We just pivoted to work with companies on their employee giving and volunteering. Actually, up until that point, I didn't even know that existed.

Erin: She helped you to find your way by saying what you've got is great, here's where to put it to use.

Chris: Yes, exactly. Yes.

Erin: You have so much fascinating insight here. I'd like to start with you having said that human beings are hardwired to help. How so, Chris?

Chris: Neuroscience has come a long way in the past couple of decades. There's a series on PBS, where David Eagleman, who's wickedly smart and one of the world's leading neuroscientists-- it's called The Brain. In this series, Episode 5 is, Why Do I Need You, and I saw that. David Eagleman in that episode really explores the brain and how it connects with other people, and how human beings are weirdly connected to each other. In fact, he starts by beginning this episode by pointing out that putting people in solitary confinement is torture because we need to be around other people, so what's going on there?

As he goes through the neuroscience and whatnot, it is fascinating to discover-- now that we have these functional magnetic imaging machines, MRIs, and whatnot, it is amazing to see how when other people feel something, we feel something, and when other people are in a situation, we can empathize. He goes into this exploration. It is absolutely fascinating. The long and the short of it is all human beings have evolved this way and we are all hardwired. We can explore what that means exactly, but that was where that came from. It's based in some rigorous scientific data that is broadly available and accepted out there.

Erin: Some of it has to do with the rewards of giving, right?

Chris: Yes.

Erin: You have used in the past the example of, say, a runner's high.

Chris: Yes. Yes, exactly. There are these reward systems, and we've all experienced them-- maybe on a call. Not everybody's had a runner's high. I had once, just in my life by accident, and that's a long story.

Erin: I'd have to be chased. [crosstalk] "Hey. I survived a lion."

Chris: Exactly. That evolution over hundreds of thousands of years has meant that the people that survived are the brains that are triggered in a certain way and are rewarded in a certain way. Why do we eat food? Because it's pleasurable, it feels good. For most of us, it's not just the function, but that's instrumental to our survival as a species. It turns out a runner's high, strong reward system. A yoga high even. There's a strong reward system in these things.

The one we may all just point out and go, "Yes, no, dah," would be sexual activities. A strong reward system with that, even though it's a complicated, socially complex thing, human beings in every decade-- since we've been around, have figured it out, but that's because the reward is so strong, we're compelled to do it. They did this study. They put some folks-- they were observing folks, and they give them the opportunity to help other people with a donation. They found that if two elements are true in the experience, that the brain releases a concoction of endorphins that are almost indistinguishable from a runner's high, yoga high, and sexual activity. That puts helping other people at the same level as sexual activity and eating in terms of what evolution says is critical for our survival as species. We're all hardwired to help, except for maybe about 5% of the population that are dealing with what we would call a disorder, like psychopathy.

Erin: Okay, so you talked about two things there.

Chris: Well, yes, there are two drivers. The first one, it's called the helper's high. You can look it up online. We'll actually send some links and make them available in the show notes when this goes live.

Erin: Sure.

Chris: The helper's high is the pleasure we feel when we help somebody. Now, the two conditions are I have to understand the significance of the task, and I have to be able to see the person's face. Now, that presents an issue for nonprofits, right, if you're dealing with a population that cannot be present during a volunteering event, maybe for safety issues, how do you do that? Well, it turns out human beings are incredible at imagining. They call it mentalizing. If you tell me a story, or I watch a movie, I know it's not real, so why do I feel anything? Why do I feel something when I read a book? It's because we can imagine, we can mentalize, we can visualize what it would be like to be in that situation. Even if it's a story about who we're helping, if you paint that story well enough that I can think, "Oh, okay. I see what I would feel like in that situation," and I understand the significance of the past, that can trigger these endorphins, then I can feel good about volunteering. Which is why most people after volunteering, if you surveyed them, and you said, "Why do you volunteer?" They would say, "It feels good." That's what they're talking about, the helper's high. Okay, so that's number one.

The second one is a little bit darker. It has to do with how we understand empathy. Now, we have to start with the pain matrix. If you watch Episode 5 of David Eagleman's series, you'll see all this. Empathy is the ability to fluidly be einfühlung-- my German is not really good. It was invented at the turn of the last century by a couple of academics, one from Germany, and one from a university in the United States. What they were trying to describe is this-- not compassion, not sympathy, something else that goes on. Now, again, with MRIs, we can see what happens in our brain when we watch other people in pain. If you put somebody in a MRI and you watch, that person is watching other people-- this was the experiment, you saw a number of hands, and you saw a needle go into the hand, everybody in the MRI, their pain metrics lit up. Their brain actually couldn't tell the difference between seeing pain in the hand that they were watching and feeling it themselves.

The brain knows it's not happening to you, but there are neurons deep inside that can't tell the difference, and that is the core of empathy. Now, here's the problem. Then they did the same experiment, and they put wristbands on. The one wristband said Christian, one said Muslim, one said Hindu, one said atheist, and so on-- Buddhist. It turns out, you only feel it for the group that you identify with.

Erin: What?

Chris: Christians only felt it for Christians, Muslims only felt for Muslims, Buddhists only felt it for Buddhists. Even atheists who are not religious only felt it for atheists. Now, this has been duplicated a number of times.

Erin: Wow.

Chris: It's in there. All I needed was a name, a word. I didn't need to see the person's face, nothing else. My brain said, "Not you. Not you." My pain matrix knew not to fire up. Is that crazy, that is just an insane thing that happens to us as human beings?

Erin: Chris, I'm wondering if that's maybe some kind of a protection that our brain does so that you're not feeling constant pain for everyone all the time. Do you think?

Chris: Yes. Well, think back, living in caves and eating whatever we could find, living around a fire, yet you definitely need to be able to put yourself in harm's way to save your little family or your little tribe, right?

Erin: Right.

Chris: Evolutionarily speaking, that's done well for us. As we're nomadic groups, moving out of Africa and across the Euro steps, and all that good stuff, you'd come across another group, and you didn't know their values or their proclivities. Were they cannibals? Many groups were, and that kind of thing, and given the circumstances, and not much food and whatnot. Human beings pretty quickly-- the ones that were left were the ones who could differentiate. It's called flexible social cognition which means we don't automatically feel it for all humans, we only feel it for humans that look a lot like us. That's an in-group. An in-group is where there's concentric circles of identity that match. I find a Canadian. "I'm a Canadian." Okay, there's one circle. I find a Canadian from Halifax, "Oh," that grew up in Fairview. "No way," that shares some of my interest in music, and pretty soon were fast friends. All I did was identify things that match, right?

Erin: Wow.

Chris: Versus somebody far away that doesn't speak my language and I don't understand, what they're interested in, and whatnot, empathy doesn't kick in for them. It's an evolutionary mechanism that has kept us alive as species, but you can see it working against us in Ukraine and Russia in diversity, equity, inclusion efforts-- all over the place. The "us and them" thing is our downfall as a species.

Erin: Back in a moment with Chris Jarvis. It was the late actress and UN ambassador, Audrey Hepburn, who said, "As you get older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others." Use those two hands of yours, or even just the thumbs, to share your good works with everyone. There's nothing wrong with being an inspiration with the hashtag REALTORS Care. Thank you for using those hands for good.

Now, back to Chris Jarvis, co-founder of Realized Worth. He helps companies and organizations, even associations like CREA, to help design volunteering strategies. Back to our talk about what Chris calls our in-groups and out-groups and changing who we are most likely to help. How do you get around that, Chris, as somebody who's trying to organize your people in your office to try and maybe raise money for a foster child in Ghana, or just to give any kind of an example like that? It sounds like a pretty big hurdle, but I bet you know your way around it.

Chris: It is. I think the first thing you have to admit is that not everybody's going to care about the cause. They're not. No matter how much it breaks your heart, no matter how critical it is, no matter that the world is ending in-- by 2030. If they do not have an experience that allows them to resonate with what you're sharing, you got to go the long route. The long route is you need to introduce people to a basic experience first, this is how we begin our journey. We call that first-stage space. We used to do-- when I was in Halifax, it's still going, it's called the Sunday suppers, corner of Coburg and Robie, and about 150 people from the community, maybe another 50, 60-- we had 100 volunteers every once in a while, would come and serve, and we would just have a meal together. We would serve, and we would sit, and we would eat, and we would talk. The whole idea was to create space where we would remove the "us" helping those people with their problems. We would look for the shared humanity in the experience.

They didn't have much to offer, according to the GDP. Some of them couldn't read and write. Some of them were in and out of jail. Their lived experience was all over the place, including mental health issues, housing issues, whatnot. So what's the commonality? It's our humanity. It's our shared humanity. We would step back to that, and we would-- in a Transformative Approach to volunteering means that you're going to have to frame the experience so people can bring meaning into it that makes appropriate sense. During the brief, we would say, "Look, you think you're here to help them with their issues around hunger. I promise you, we're not going to make a dent in hunger today. Nutrition? Forget about it. We're doing the best we can with what we have for one meal. That's not going to matter, so why are you here? You're here because all week long you're told, buy more, make more, sell more, be more, be faster, be prettier, be stronger. Prove that you deserve a place in this world. Especially groups, women, or marginalized groups. Prove it. Prove it. Prove it. The folks that you're going to sit with, and serve, and eat with today, and talk to, can't prove it. You're going to see they're just like you in many, many respects. If their value isn't in all the things that we're obsessing about, is your value? Is this what your life is about? So you're here to receive a gift? They're going to remind you of what your life is really about.

Now, this is not going to land for everybody, we've all got things going on, but if you're open, if the time is right, you may experience something where you ask new questions or take a new journey, and that's what this is for, so thanks for coming. I hope you enjoy this experience we created for you." That does a couple of things. One, it turns everything on its head. Now, to be honest, Erin, most people when they heard that were like, "That's nice. Let's go serve the meal, get this done. I have something else afterwards." That's totally fine, there's nothing wrong with that helping posture. But if people came back enough times and heard that, they may be able to begin to ask a different question like, why are people without homes, or why is it so hard to access healthcare in Canada where healthcare is universal?

It put them on a new path, and they began to ask questions about who they were-- that's the psychological change, what they believed-- that's a convictional change, and hopefully, how they behave in the long run, over time, slowly-- that's a behavioral change. Those are the three most important metrics of any volunteering event in my mind.

Erin: Chris Jarvis returns in a moment with what's in it for a company or corporation to give back. Keep up with what's up. Make sure you're down with what's down. It's all right there for you @crea.ca. From advocacy and tech, to design and discussion, crea.ca is your hub for real estate enlightenment. Now, back to Chris Jarvis from Realized Worth as Real Time shares a light on volunteering for REALTORS Care Week, and throughout the year for that matter. Chris, companies are not designed to give back-- to give-- to be-- sort of the opposite of a capitalist. How do you appeal to companies to do that? Bottom line, and not to sound cynical, but what's in it for them?

Chris: Yes-- and there really needs to be something in it for them. The idea of a company or corporation's been around since the Roman Empire, and capitalism has developed since then, and really, companies-- the rules are pretty simple. You make stuff or you provide services, and you make a profit or you don't. If you don't, the rules are easy, you're out of the game. You can try again, and if you do, you keep going. Whatever you do, don't take away from that. When part of the company's like, "Well, what could we give away for free? Like stuff, and money, and people, and networks." Why would a company do all that? It seems self-defeating. I think there's been a lot of conversation, let's say, about the kind of benefits companies can get. Like, "Employees who volunteer, stay longer." Okay. So that's a step they took. Employees who volunteer? Yes. Yes, they typically will stay a couple of years longer. The kind of people you want to stay longer, because people who volunteer tend to exhibit other behaviors like more team-oriented, they can be more productive. It's not to say that these attributes cannot be found among others who do not volunteer, it's just saying that it is an additive that if you offer these experiences as a company, you can see maybe some of this return.

Now, the thing is, I've seen studies and they would say, every employee who volunteers, if you look at productivity and turnover and you factor in the variables that I just covered, you could see that, and when employees volunteer, they contribute $2,400 to the bottom line. Now, that seems like a really good incentive. It was done by a very large firm, and we've definitely referenced some of that research.

Erin: Yes. Would you repeat that? I want to make sure I heard that correctly.

Chris: Yes. The study was done in 2014 by CEB. They found that when they looked at-- two variables were productivity and turnover. If they factored in the cost-- because you can do that with HR-- of what bad productivity and high turnover are, and then you look at people who volunteer, and they seemed to be more productive and lower turnover, couldn't you just use simple math and say, "Well, what's it worth?" So they did, and on average it's $2,400 a person that the company is going to save in expenses or appreciate in productivity from these employees, so far so good, right?

Erin: Right. Yes.

Chris: That's a pretty decent number. If you got a company of 100,000 individuals, and 10,000 volunteer, would you just multiply 10,000 times 2,400 and come up with-- what's the math? 24 million?-- and you presented that to the C-suite or the senior leadership, they'd laugh you out of the building. "You're fired. Don't pick up your stuff on the way out. You need some help." There's no way that getting a whole bunch of people volunteering, is going to add $24 million to the bottom line of this company. There's no way. The problem with those stats is that they're interesting and they can lead to something, but it's the nuance that's more important here. The nuance is that when people have an opportunity to see themselves as more pro-social, more positive, like, "I'm a helping person. I helped build a habitat house. I helped solve a problem of new arrivals in Canada," that kind of thing. You feel good.

That goes to the first one. The helper's high, the endorphins kick in, you feel good, it feels good to help. Right? The translation then is not only to the organization that helped me have that experience but the company that arranged it. Something called effective commitment, which is the only-- there are three types of commitment, this is the only one where there's an emotional quotient to it. "I feel emotionally attached to the company because I like how I look, I like how I feel. I like who this version of me is." You attribute that to not only the organization you worked with, that may be, but also to the company that gave you the opportunity. Not everybody, not all the time, but many, many times this happens. When you see more productivity, more team-oriented, that's what you're seeing. You're seeing that effective commitment play out. If companies could have more people committed at the effective level versus a continuous level. Effective commitment says it's all about emotions, it's how you feel, it's who you are. It's very organic. Employee volunteering creates space where that relationship can be fostered

Erin: More with Chris Jarvis when we return after I remind you that crea.ca isn't just a great resource for realtors, it's wonderful for your clients as well. Find articles like four things to avoid when you're closing on a home, and another great one, moving essentials that every home buyer should pack in the open first boxes. Check it out like I did and see if corkscrew is on the list. Grab your favorite beverage and dive in at crea.ca. Now, once again, Chris Jarvis, living proof, that as Winston Churchill said, "We make a living by what we do, we make a life by what we give." On Real Time, you have said Chris, that we all help in our groups. Our in-groups, right?

Chris: Yes.

Erin: Positive things for each other. Okay. You have said that it's how we formalize or systemize it into a formal event. This is an important development. This is where the work seems to be, right? It's not just, I'm helping you because you're like me. It's helping others and taking those next steps.

Chris: The kinds of helping are going to be in-group or out-group helping. The helper's high, that concoction of endorphins that is secreted when I can see the person I'm helping and I understand the significance of the task, and I reach out and I help the other person-- that's on the same evolutionary level of runner's higher sexual activity-- that's one thing that can happen if the circumstances are right all over the place with an in-group or with an out-group. But empathy itself, we only feel empathy as you've rightly recalled for our in-group. Our in-group are people who have a lot of concentric circles of identity that overlap with ours, like if we grew up in the same neighborhood, in the same town, and went to the same school, and had same tastes, the same language, the same interests.

Erin: Support the same teams.

Chris: Support the same teams. All of a sudden you're not a stranger. You're like, "Oh, you're one of us." We've all had this experience. We do it at parties and dinner parties or get-togethers and that thing. Even family, "I need to establish that identity." We're in the same group, right? We share a lot of these things. The further away you go, the less likelihood that those identity circles overlap-- a different language, a different social context, different religion. Different, different, different. The human brain can't handle that. It only feels empathy or the pain of others who are like me. It absolutely won't work for people who are not like me. The importance of your question is by formalizing an opportunity to go to our out-groups. You're doing a whole bunch of different things there. One, we're all prone to help our in-group. We're hardwired, we'll do it anyways. I really don't need a ton of motivation to be nicer-- maybe when I was a teenager-- but to people in my group, that's normal human-- there's tradeoffs and social capital involved there, and we know how to do that. With my out-group, homeless people in my community, or the unhoused neighbors in my neighborhood, I could live here for years and never talk to one of them. When they're writhing in pain on the street, what do I do? I just walk by and think, "I don't know what's going on." It doesn't affect me. I don't feel it.

If I walk into a coffee shop here, and there's a man in a business suit who's 53 like me, and white like me, and he's got a briefcase, and he's is sobbing in the corner, I might walk over and say, "Dude, what's going on? Are you okay?" One, it's unexpected. Two, I feel it. I don't even know what's going on, but I feel something, right? When a company organizes an opportunity for me to go with people that are in my group to a space where I'm going to meet people who are not, this is where the magic happens, because, all of a sudden, if we can create the right kind of experience through framing a transformative experience, I begin to ask new questions that challenge assumptions about who I am in the world, what I believe to be true about the world, and how I act in the world. I'm opening myself up to an entirely new way of thinking about things. If I repeat that over and over again, a chemical called acetylcholine is secreted in my brain and my brain becomes a little bit plastic-- it's called neuroplasticity or neurogenesis, but neuroplasticity is the more proper term-- and I will grow new pathways, so I will see the world differently. For all of us listening, if you're wondering about your worldview and the way you see the world, it is a direct reflection of how your head is wired, your brain is wired. You cannot will yourself to see the world differently. You can only experience yourself to see the world differently. That's why these programs are so critical because otherwise we probably wouldn't bother doing these things given the way our society goes these days.

Erin: That's why it's so important that an organization such as CREA and their members, their fourth annual REALTORS Care Week where realtors come together across Canada to support housing and shelter-related charities bring in someone like you with your wisdom and with your experience. What has your involvement been with this initiative, Chris, and your focus this year?

Chris: We're very excited about this. We've partnered with CREA to build out the REALTORS Care Week. We actually provided special training for them, and some guidance to help them run transformative events. There's nothing wrong with transactional volunteering, I think we already talked about that, but if you take it to the next level and you offer a brief and a debrief, you provide some intentional framing to the experience. People walk away with a completely different set of questions and insights that they may not get-- not will not, but may not get through a transactional approach. We're doing that with them. Then as well, we're hosting with the CREA board in Toronto an immersive learning event at Dixon Hall.

Erin: Immersive means you're role-playing, and you're actually walking a mile in someone else's shoes. They may not even be shoes, they may be sandals or they may be boots, they may be a pair of footwear that you had never considered walking in before. That's the whole experience, right?

Chris: That's a good image. Yes. That's exactly what we're doing. You can learn in a classroom. You can learn experientially by using tools and whatnot on your table. This is immersive learning in that we're asking them to adopt an identity of any realtor across Canada who shows up at one of these events because "Susie asked me to come. I don't know anything about this issue. I don't even know if it's part of my identity." It's important to understand. We volunteer like we spend money. We typically don't spend money on stuff we don't understand and don't use. I need that connection first. If I'm asked to go there, and I'm having that experience for the first time, it's really important for the board members, the people who are designing this space, to be able to understand what that experience is like. We ask them to become those folks. We do the whole volunteering event in character. We give them a little guidance of what it's like, how they act, why they act that way. Then afterwards, after the whole thing's done, we do the brief and debrief in character. We break scene and say, "Okay. Who is at stage one? Who is at stage two? Who is stage three? How did that feel? How did you know?" It's a bit meta but we start to look at who we were and the implications of what we just experienced at the enterprise level.

Erin: Is there homework?

Chris: Yes, the homework is you walk home and you just notice what you notice. For those of us who can still walk home across the street and maybe not think about what it means to be unhoused in a neighborhood, that's fine, you're on a journey, I hope. Come back, do something else, take another step. It doesn't happen instantaneously for everybody, but for others, they'll walk home and go, "Oh, wait. What should I do?" This person just said hello. I thought I was supposed to not even see them, or-- Do I say hello back? This is the beginning of a journey into a completely different way of being a human being in our cities.

Erin: Thank you. Thank you for what you are doing. We're going to give people a whole bunch of ways to follow you to contact you. Before we go, Chris, let's end on an actionable end note. Now, whether as an organizer or a participant, how can realtors get the most from volunteering both during REALTORS Care Week or more importantly, year-round? How can they ensure that their efforts are as meaningful both to themselves and to the people they're trying to help, as possible?

Chris: These experiences are meant to be shared. When you have an experience on your own, you see a movie on your own and you go to talk to the people and they're like, "Oh, that's great. Nice. Thanks for telling the story." Let's say you're one of the guys like me, a 50-something-year-old white guy, and you're like, "You know what? Maybe gendered language is something I want to think about. I'm not telling you, you have to, I'm just saying maybe it is. You bring that back to your family at the holidays and you say, "I've been really thinking about my use of the word, "hey guys, and whatnot," and everybody looks at you like you got rocks in your head because they have not had any experiences and they are not thinking about it. It's difficult, right?

Erin: Right.

Chris: Shared experiences are the way forward in all of this. When you're doing something in the committee, bring somebody with you. It could be family, it could be friends, it could be clients. Who could share this experience with you, and who could you learn with together? This is not about doing something to those people for their problems, this is about who you are in the world, this is about who you want to be, this is becoming the best version of yourself, and you have to do that with other people.

Erin: That's what it's all about. Thank you so much, Chris. We so appreciate you joining us today, and all of the wisdom that you are imparting to our members. We're just so grateful. Thank you. Thank you.

Chris: My pleasure, Erin. It's a joy to be here with you. I hope we can do it again sometime. This is a lot of fun.

Erin: I would love it.

Erin: Follow Chris Jarvis. Don't miss what he's up to with Canadian Realtors for REALTORS Care Week @RealizedWorth on Twitter. Real Time is a production of Alphabet Creative. Technical assistance from Rob Whitehead and Real Family Productions. Be sure and subscribe wherever you download your favorite podcasts. I'm Erin Davis, and we'll talk to you again soon on Real Time.