Marissa King - The Science of Social Networks - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 217]

My guest this week is Marissa King, a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. I was fascinated by Marissa's work after coming across her book, Social Chemistry: Decoding the Elements of Human Connection, earlier this year. Our conversation covers the three types of social networking styles, the surprising impact of COVID on social networks, and what her research tells us about building high-performing teams. This episode covers many topics I haven't explored before that I find fascinating. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Marissa King. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ------ This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus has built the most extensive primary information platform available for investors. With Tegus, you can learn everything you’d want to know about a company in an on-demand digital platform. Investors share their expert calls, allowing others to instantly access more than 10,000 calls on Affirm, Teladoc, Roblox, or almost any company of interest. All you have to do is log in. Visit tegus.co/patrick to learn more. ------ Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Show Notes [00:04:04] - [First question] - Origin of her career and topics she is focused on [00:04:06] - Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection [00:04:09] - Priya Parker Podcast Episode [00:05:41] - Why the focus on Autism and some of the trends around it [00:08:07] - Prevalence of mental health and substance abuse vs. raised awareness [00:09:16] - The eureka moment for her in this research [00:10:16] - Pattern in growing large social movements [00:11:43] - The Expansionists group and their role in large social movements [00:14:31] - Acid test for the Brokers group [00:15:35] - How she developed the categories of people that drive social movements [00:17:35] - Most memorable moments of discovery in the development of these categories [00:18:58] - Important categories for overall network science [00:20:20] - Behavioral changes we can make to improve the nature of our social connections [00:23:21] - The pitfalls for each group and how they can invest in their own network [00:25:29] - Conveners and what they need to improve [00:26:34] - Downside of being a broker [00:27:58] - The attachments styles of secure, anxious, or avoidant [00:30:07] - Velocity of interactions possible today and what it means for research [00:32:02] - How men and women develop networks differently [00:33:55] - What is unique in organizational behavior through the lens of her research [00:36:19] - Best practice for creating high output interactions [00:37:33] - Putting together the perfect team [00:38:42] - Largest pitfalls in putting together a good team [00:40:00] - Role of conversation in effective network building [00:41:15] - Being a great listeners and distractions [00:42:47] - Eric Maddox Podcast Episode [00:43:41] - Good policy for running a network, being attentive to the network [00:46:40] - The power of touch [00:48:39] - How movements become societal and what role technology has played [00:52:46] - How this applies to a business [00:53:34] - Biological underpinnings of Dunbar’s number [00:57:13] - Kindest thing anyone has done for her