Mike Lehr's Blog

Our names unconsciously influence people. We humorously smile at actors who change their names making them more appealing. Yet, some people relate because they wish their parents had given them better names.

Even in a field striving for objectivity such as science, your name can influence the peer review process. In the August 20, 2011 issue of The Economist, the article “A Black and White Answer” reports racial name research by Donna Ginther of The University of Kansas indicating it does. The article also references the 2003 racial name study, Racial Bias in Hiring, by Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan at the time of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in which names influenced who received job interviews.

While the article focused on the racial connotation of names, an October 23, 2008 article of The New York Times mentions research about non-racial correlations focused on similar names, initials, sounds and letters. Of course, if we overlay the concept of branding from advertising on these two areas of research and the territory between them, we come back to “what’s in a name?”

From an intuitive perspective, what connotation does each of our names have? What feelings do people get when they hear it? How do we feel when we run across names far different from ours, ones we can’t pronounce? Subconsciously, do they trigger our defense mechanisms? All you need to do is look at popular baby names to know we do not distribute names randomly even if we account for ethnicity.

What we can learn from science in this research is that no matter how objective we think we are it is no match for the unconscious emotions truly driving our decisions.

Person A has solved a hundred problems while Person B has only solved five. Who’s the better problem solver? The answer is B, but the question is, “Why?”

Initially, people often say that Person B’s problems were tougher. However, I tell them that Person A also solved all of Person B’s problems in A’s hundred problems. Some say that B did a better or faster job. I tell them there was no difference in the solutions. Occasionally, someone gives this answer: B solved the problems on his own while someone taught A how to solve his.

I once told a friend that I thought someone was smart because of an idea she had. He asked me whether she had read it somewhere. I didn’t know the answer, but it eventually led me to create this puzzle about problem-solving capabilities. Yes, there are many correct answers; however, the one I seek is rarely given.

Consider any brainteaser. It’s more impressive if people hadn’t seen it before than if others had already shown them the solution. Yet, in everyday life, we don’t really care because as long as someone can give us good advice, we don’t question whether she learned it from someone else or discovered it on her own.

In fact, we tend to feel more comfortable with those who can show training and education rather than those who arrive at good solutions without them. Yet, it’s the latter group that has the talent to solve novel situations; the former can only learn from experience, theirs or others.

So, next time someone gives you advice, ask him how he derived it. After all, my math teachers always wanted me to see my work, not just the answer.

When we approach problems too logically and reasonably, we tend to place too much faith in the dominance of consciousness and to discount subjective influences that vary by person. For example, the Innocence Project, by using DNA evidence, has helped to exonerate 271 people wrongly convicted of crimes, but almost a quarter of these people had confessed or pleaded guilty. Why would people give false confessions?

What research shows is that we can easily extract false confessions from others especially when using certain interrogation techniques. The article, “Silence is Golden”, in the August 13, 2011 issue of The Economist mentions two such research projects. The journal, Law and Human Behavior, published one by Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York while the other is the work of Robert Horselenberg and colleagues at Maastricht University.

Since we tend to believe in free will and the dominance of consciousness, we consider confessions fairly damning because no one in her “right mind” would give false ones. Therefore, interrogations assume false confessions aren’t possible. Yet, people give them for many reasons including:

• Avoiding unpleasant interrogations
• Accepting that they might have accidentally committed a wrong
• Believing that
  -   Investigative process will show innocence
  -   Authorities and experts know better
  -   Objective truth and justice exist and will surface
  -   Technologically collected evidence is faultless

Many times our business processes assume people behave with a “right mind.” Yet, as this example shows, by questioning this assumption in our processes, interrogations in this case, we automatically call into question the outcomes derived from those processes, here confessions.

Thus, our processes need to account for more subjective, subconscious and intuitive factors or risk disconnection from reality and erroneous analyses.

People often marvel that more managers don’t use inexpensive morale builders. Of course, many of the same also wonder, “How did that person become a manager in the first place?” It’s that we tend to feel negative power is more powerful than positive power is; thus, we will tend to feel the former would be a more powerful leader.

An article in the July-August 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review titled, “Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind” by  Batia M. Wiesenfeld, Naomi B. Rothman, Sara L. Wheeler-Smith, and Adam D. Galinsky provides research supporting this. In terms of powerfulness, they found that rude managers consistently scored higher than respectful managers did.

To illustrate this, I sometimes ask: Which dog would you prefer as a pet, a collie or a pit bull? Frequently, people select the collie. I then ask: If you lived in a high-murder neighborhood, which would you choose? People frequently switch to the pit bull. While the workplace isn’t that dangerous, evolution and the days of uncivilized life long ago still affect us. Then, we required leaders unencumbered by sensitivities to protect us. It’s why some of the world’s most ruthless, modern dictators (i.e. Stalin) are still admired today by significant portions of their native populations.

In everyday business life, we often experience this bias when people disqualify others as leaders because they “aren’t tough enough.” Negative power is very overt, easy to see. Contrast this to the positive, subtle power inherent in the inexpensive morale builders. That’s why we often see Darth Vader as a very powerful Star Wars figure even though he was the slave of the Emperor.

Thus, when we promote the rude, the Dark Side has successfully seduced us by triggering our insecurities and fears.

Intuitive approaches often work because we don’t believe they do. Advertising is an excellent example: it influences us because we often believe it doesn’t.

This extends to our complaints about politicians not answering the question. Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton researched this and were asked to “Defend Your Research” in “People Often Trust Eloquence More Than Honesty” appearing in the November 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review. They found:

People who dodge questions artfully are liked and trusted more than people who respond to questions truthfully but with less polish.

In fact, when answerers perform the dodge effectively, less than half of the people could remember the question accurately. The key rests in the answer’s first ten words by disrupting the cognitive link we have for the question and expected answer. In everyday life, we like to complain about the fast-talking salesperson; however, on a higher level, fast-talking becomes eloquence. It’s here that we increasingly trust and like eloquence more than honesty.

Even though I promote the practical understanding and application of intuition in business on this blog, people can use intuitive approaches for ill or good. For instance, my guest 12 Most post, lists ways to influence people intuitively to build morale; however, people can use these techniques for questionable purposes too.

How do we defend ourselves? There are two broad introductory ways:

1. Realize people can influence us intuitively and subconsciously even if we believe they can’t
2. Raise our awareness regarding intuitive approaches

In this way, we can begin accounting for these natural biases in our decision-making and actions. However, believing others can influence us without our knowledge is scary for many of us, especially if we believe in the supremacy of the conscious mind and free will.

We can easily defeat sensitive people by encouraging their negative feelings. Since they are so sensitive, these feelings can easily overwhelm them. Under these conditions, sensitive people will have difficulty functioning.  That’s why they usually have courage too.

Imagine a computer programmed to do ill; it feels the same as when programmed to do good. Since people are born with varying sensitivity levels, some people feel less badly about doing ill and less happy about doing good. The movie, The Bad Sleep Well, illustrates how easily some can do ill when sensitivity does not encumber them.

Since sensitive people are talented in many emotional ways that we are not, we will tend to outnumber them in their views. For instance, they are extremely good at feeling the mood of groups. However, it’s easy for a majority not to feel the same about the mood as a sensitive person might. Consequently, sensitive people are vulnerable to defeatism from feelings of doubt and fear when they are:

• Swayed by a majority that can’t feel what they feel
• Told they are crazy because no one feels what they feel
• Convinced that they are hurting others when they don’t have the sensitivity to be hurt

Conversely, sensitive people are potentially full of courage because it’s needed to overcome strong negative feelings. If we feel nothing, why do we need courage to overcome the feelings of doubt and fear that these stir? The less sensitive we are the less likely we will feel doubt and fear.

Thus, the sensitivity allowing sensitive people to enjoy life on a level we can’t has advantages (more) and disadvantages. It’s just important to remember that they have the courage to counterbalance the doubt and fear . . . if they can only muster it.

Other posts in this series:

• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt I): Awareness
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt II): The Unconscious
• Emotional Self Defense for Sensitive People (Pt III): Self-Awareness
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt IV): Talent
• Emotional Self-defense for Sensitive People (Pt. V): Intimidation

In “Before You Make That Big Decision,” which appeared in the June 2011 Harvard Business Review, Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony* suggest that one way to overcome unconscious biases in decision making is that we ask the question: Is the base case [for the decision] overly optimistic? They make the point that:

• “Most recommendations contain forecasts, which are notoriously prone to excessive optimism.”
• “Groups with a successful track record are more prone to this bias than others . . . [especially if the] . . . team has been on a winning streak.”

However, in daily business life we often view those who try to rein in or express contrarian views as downers. As a result, in the desire to show who is less negative, a race to the top of optimism’s ladder begins and at some point becomes Pollyannaism.

Moreover, as we saw in the benefits of viewing a glass half-empty rather than half-full, the fear of being in an adverse situation can be a powerful motivator for taking action. Thus, a Pollyanna state could reduce a group to complacency. That means a team in the midst of success is less likely to change than one in the midst of crisis.

While clearly defining the demarcation zone between optimism and Pollyannaism is difficult, it once again highlights the failure of success and casts doubts on “nothing breeds success like success.” In fact, as the writers suggest, the best indicator that Pollyannaism might have infected a business culture is the degree of success it has been having.

After all, it’s kind of hard to reach a Pollyanna State if you’re not even in the State of Optimism.

*Olivier Sibony is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office.

The two aspects of every interpersonal interaction are thoughts and feelings. You can change people’s views of your ideas by changing how they feel about you; you don’t need to change your idea. This is because emotions are more powerful influencers than cognitive tools such as reason, logic and thoughts. However, we still need cognitive tools. They serve as the diversion, distraction and excuse allowing the emotional aspects of relationship building to work. This is because emotions can create discomfort for people especially in a business setting.

The right-hand diagram expresses this by showing the direct nature of thoughts (red arrow) and the indirect one of feelings (blue arrow). While thoughts become the overt focus of the interaction, the message’s real impact arrives through the back door on a deeper level in the form of impressions. Therefore, thoughts become excuses to build relationships.

For example, when a boy carries a girl’s books home, it’s not because he likes to carry books. He wants to interact with the girl. The visible, tangible acts are carrying books and conversing. The invisible, intangible ones involve developing a emotional connection.  If he were to overtly state his romantic intentions, he’d likely scare off the girl. Carrying the books serves as the boys excuse, diversion and distraction while feelings do their subliminal work.

Even though the emotional connection we develop with employees is not the same as the one in our example, we observe excuses to foster relationships every day in business as “face time” with the boss. From the perspective of the right-hand diagram, the feelings developed in this face time are more important than the actual exchange of ideas. Thus, we should evaluate every interaction’s potential for relationship building, not just for the objective communication of ideas.

Business drastically discounts the interpersonal interaction in favor of group ones. Saying the same thing to ten people simultaneously is more efficient than saying it ten different times to each person. However, this efficiency overlooks two important qualitative, interpersonal aspects:

1. People prefer to interact with their leaders one-on-one.
2. People enjoy talking about their leaders to others.

In a business setting, presidents, executives and managers, can influence the company’s internal grapevine through dynamic, interpersonal interactions with their employees. The right-hand figure illustrates the reverberation these interactions can create. A leader (blue sphere) interacts with an employee (red sphere) causing him to share his experience (red rings) with the leader with others (green spheres). The challenge is making the reverberation a positive one. Leaders accomplish this by taking advantage of opportunities to employ their personalities.

For example, in a thousand-person, five-floor regional office, a sales representative sold the largest single order for a particular type of product in the fifteen-year history of the office. The Regional President sent the sales representative a congratulatory note.

While a satisfactory response, it demonstrates the dynamic, grapevine opportunity he missed. He could have gone done to the sales representative’s floor and congratulated her personally. Even if she weren’t there, the mere sight of him on the floor would have created positive reverberations. Moreover, while he was there, he would have had the opportunity to interact with other employees creating other reverberations.

Every day, business leaders miss these kinds of opportunities to seize control of the grapevine, to make dynamic gestures. The effort is very similar to a public relations campaign except it’s internal. Instead, business leaders moan and complain about gossip, believing it’s beyond their control, when in actuality they actively make the grapevine work for them.

Related post: Tapping the Power of Personality for Executives and Senior Managers 1.0