Mike Lehr's Blog

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.

Long ago I sat in on the reprimand of an employee by a manager. The manager concluded his discussion by asking the employee, “Do you understand what I’m saying?” The employee responded, “Yes.” It suddenly occurred to me how biased we are in thinking that education alone will correct behavior. In other words, we assume that if someone understands our argument and reasons they will adopt our point of view.

In this above situation, there was no follow up by the manager to explore whether the employee agreed with the manager’s alternative action or whether the employee was moved to act accordingly in future situations. Yes, he was aware of the consequences, but we tend to forget that sometimes people are willing to pay those consequences.

I refer to making this false assumption about “Do you understand?” as a cognitive bias; we tend to believe that reasons, logic and rationales are enough to win the day. This bias will tend to make us wrongly believe that we’ve done “our best.”

I also experience this in non-disciplinary situations in which anyone is trying to influence another person. This cognitive bias happens frequently with instructors trying to move participants to take action in such settings as business training. They will ask participants, “Do you understand what I’ve shown (said, did, etc.)?”

Therefore, in summary, I find four basic hurdles, represented by the following questions, that we need to negotiate and verify before we can have significant confidence that we’ve persuaded someone:

1. Do you hear me?
2. Do you understand me?
3. Do you agree with me?
4. Are you moved to take the recommended action (to act on this idea)?

The notion of free will is a byproduct of our conscious, more specifically our ego. It treats emotions as a nuisance which it should control and the unconscious a fantasy which it should  ignore. Yet, these two are fundamental determinants of our personalities which make our choices quite predictable.

In the January 17, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, David Brooks writes in “Social Animal” that “A core finding of this work [cited in the article] is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking.” In other words, we just think we are making choices.

Some people use choice as proof of free will; if we have a choice, we have free will. However, we program computers to make choices all the time. Under one set of criteria, they choose “A,” while under another it’s “B.” They can even make random choices: choosing “A” 65% of the time and “B” 35%. But, do they have free will?

Yes, they are just following coded programs, but we could be following our own program. It’s called personality and is heavily influenced by genetic code. When we understand a computer’s code, we can predict its choices. If it’s too complex, we won’t. The same is true for personality. If we understand it, we can make predictions about a person’s choices. If we don’t, we can’t.

David Brooks describes everyday events that appear choice-filled but are quite predictable. The key is to remember that we are observing a people who 1) believe they have free will and 2) don’t believe they’ve been programmed with a personality.

Related link: Illusion of Free Will Revisited

As I had mentioned in a previous post, who we are (WWA) is different from who we think we are (TWA), an important concept behind intuitive approaches. It can explain many of the contradictions we observe in what people say and do and explain the problems with self-report personality assessments. Awareness of TWA-WWA will help us minimize erroneous conclusions when predicting human behavior.

Who We Are is Different From Who We Think We Are

Whereas TWA resides in our conscious, WWA resides primarily in our subconscious and is much greater. Consequently, TWA only represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of our potential. We often only discover aspects of WWA when we are challenged to learn or face a crisis.

On the downside, TWA holds much of what others (parents, friends, educators, community, etc.) teach us or condition us to believe about the world and us. Consequently, TWA can impede us from doing what we really want to do by causing us to ignore, deny, discount or suppress it. Pragmatically, the TWA-WWA difference will often account for the many errors we find in all kinds of surveys (quality service, market research, etc.). On an interpersonal level, it will account for much of the hypocrisy we see in others.

We learn WWA by listening to what we say, observing what we do and interpreting what we think; we can do the same with others. It works because we cannot consciously control every aspect of what we say, do and think. There are gaps; our subconscious fills them. It’s this “filler” that provides clues to WWA; it’s a matter of learning to read these clues. Many times this can only be done through direct interaction with the person so we can make ancillary observations; something surveys often don’t do.

Looking at beauty as power is important in understanding and appreciating intuitive approaches because it dramatically expands the influences and solutions we see. However, as I mentioned in the A Blue Heron Instructs on Patience, we tend to be prejudiced toward action; therefore, we will often overlook beauty as power because it’s not an active force. Thus, it helps if we initially think of beauty as attractive because the verb “attract” implies some kind of active force.

For example, suppose we saw a metal ball rolling on a level table toward a wall. We might initially think that there was something about the ball that caused movement. However, suppose later we find out that a powerful magnet was implanted in the wall. Now, we begin to see the wall as the active force.

Another problem we tend to have is that we look at beauty very superficially, as something physically feminine. However, beauty can exist in anything, including intangible things. For instance, consider the movie A Beautiful Mind; also consider the attraction of beautiful ideas, prices, cars, paintings, formulae, advertisements, parks, scenery, etc. Anything that attracts us has some level of beauty in it; even power is beautiful to many.

So, if a car dealer stocks his showroom with a car that he knows is likely to attract us enough to buy it, who is really applying the active force: the buyer or the dealer? Similarly, when the Indians attracted General George Custer into the trap on Battle of Little Big Horn because he thought he had a beautiful opportunity to defeat them, who was playing the active force: Custer who rushed in or the Indians who created the attractive situation?

Arbitrariness & First, Second, Third

Arbitrariness is a vital to intuitive problem solving because it’s related to subjectivity which is related to personality and its emotional drivers. Looking at the relationship between arbitrariness and conditionality will help us see this.

For instance, the concept of “first” does not need the existence of another number; however, the concept of “second” is dependent upon the condition that “first” exists, and the concept of “third” is dependent upon the condition that “first” and “second” exists.

House of Arbitrariness & Conditionality

Consider a house. Whereas someone can arbitrarily place the first stone of his house anywhere, the rest is built conditionally around that stone which is called the cornerstone. Ideas and knowledge are also built around cornerstones which we often experience as assumptions. Since knowledge influences how we identify, define and examine problems, our problems will have cornerstones too.

For instance, many of us consider the idea of democracy good. However, if such decision making is absolutely superb, why don’t companies and armies use it where more authoritarian styles dominate? This is because democracy’s cornerstone is placed in a governmental location. If we move that cornerstone to a corporate or military location, we will end up building a more authoritarian-style house.

In problem solving, moving the cornerstone to a new location will help us view our old location from a different perspective. But first, we must challenge ourselves to find the cornerstone of any set of conditions in which we find ourselves and the cornerstone of any set of ideas we are using to evaluate those conditions. That means avoiding an unquestioning, absolutist perspective and employing an inquisitive, arbitrary one.

Word choice and phrasing (phraseology) are simple ways we can assess personalities. As I’ve said in previous postings, everything we think, do and say reflects on our personalities in some way. The challenge is determining what.

Understanding the two aspects of any word – definition and connotation – is a first step. Definitions trigger thoughts about words’ meanings while connotations trigger emotions about the impressions they create. Words can have similar definitions but vastly different connotations. A funny riddle expresses this:

Q: What is the difference between escargot and snails?

A: People don’t eat snails.

Phraseology works as an assessment approach because word choice is largely subjective. Yes, we need to consider the context of the conversation, but there is usually plenty of room for subjective inputs. This occurs because many times several words could suffice, but the final choice is intuitive and based upon the connotation the person prefers. For example, consider these pair of words:

• Determined – Stubborn
• Irrational – Passionate
• Focus – Restrict
• Organize – Standardize
• Fun – Undisciplined
• Rigid – Strong
• Stable – Stale
• House – Home
• Flexible – Soft
• Interesting – Fascinating

Many times we can simply discern from people’s phrasing whether they like something. We can also discern much deeper qualities of their personalities. For instance, they can tell us how they might approach a planning endeavor or collaborative effort. They can also tell us the degree to which they are influenced by qualitative or quantitative arguments or by logical or humanistic ones.

Therefore, the challenge is classifying various words according to such groupings as quantitative words versus qualitative ones, logical versus humanistic, individual versus collective, etc. Once we’ve made these classifications, we can correlate people’s personalities along these spectra by examining the dominance of certain words and phrasing.

The other day a colleague forwarded this link to the BNET blog speaking to intuition. Embedded in it was a link to an article that appeared in Psychology Today back in November 1, 2002. It provided early insight into the scientific advancements into the study of intuition.

Whenever I speak to people individually or collectively about interpersonal skills for disciplines such as sales, management, leadership and influencing, I emphasize that the most dramatic advancements we’ll see in the next 5-15 years will not be in areas such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, communications or even sensors but rather in how we understand ourselves, especially our decision making and knowledge acquisition abilities.

Increasingly, science is finding – as the Psychology Today article noted back in 2002 – that we make decisions and acquire knowledge before we are consciously aware of them. Yes, there are problems with trusting intuition unquestionably; however, there are problems with doing the same with the most well reasoned and supported scientific findings. You cannot make decisions by facts and figures alone. There will always be unknowns; intuition helps here.

The key is integrating both intuitive and cognitive functions. The danger we face now as the article implied is that we are generally living under the illusion that our decisions are largely conscious (cognitive) ones. We are prejudice in thinking our consciences are in control. Of course, this control calms our insecurities; control is often analogous to safety and security. In reality, many factors beneath our radar influence our feelings and thoughts. They encourage us to choose rationales to justify our wants.

Thus, every one of our decisions has emotions influencing it no matter how rationale and scientifically supported we believe they are.

Frequently, I’m asked about the difference between instinct and intuition. The question is difficult because everyday conversation has a gender bias. Men tend to prefer the word “instinct” over “intuition” to describe their emotional processes while women tend to prefer the reverse. So, listening skills are important.

Analogously, instinct is to intuition what an accented note is to a song. Just as an accent adds a particular emphasis to a specific note in the song, instinct adds a particular emphasis to an emotion in the intuitive process. Very simply, there are three types of instincts: survival, paternal and maternal. Survival protects our well being through fight or flight. It accentuates emotions such as guardedness or avoidance. Paternal extends our dominance and control, accentuating emotions such as aggressiveness and competitiveness. Maternal protects and nurtures others, accentuating emotions such as protectiveness and sacrifice.

While instincts can serve us well in urgent, severe situations, they can lead us astray and allow us to be easily manipulated in modern life’s intricacies. For instance, instinctively lashing out at someone for a threatening act could have consequences in the workplace. Intuition would help us balance the emotions accentuated by that threat with the ones fearing the consequences to arrive at a pragmatic alternative fitting our context.

Returning to our musical analogy, this means that rather than reacting to the one accented note we are waiting to hear the whole song before we think and act. It also means that while there isn’t much to creating a single note, creating a song is more involved. Therefore, just as it takes practice to develop cognitive skills it also takes practice to develop intuitive ones. Instincts are innate and thus our default. As such they require very little, if any, development.

As we saw with an earlier post, intuition arrives first when we make decisions. But, how does this happen? How does intuition become involved in our response to an event?

Consider for a moment a restaurant’s ambiance. Objectively, it has nothing to do with the food; however, if it’s unclean, disorderly and ugly we will tend to feel there is also something wrong with the food. Why do children ask their moms and dads, “Are you in a good mood?” They know their parents’ emotional state will affect their decision-making.

Figure 1 illustrates what’s happening. For any event, there are conscious (solid lines) and unconscious aspects (transparent lines). Our cognition cannot capture consciously all an event has to offer.    Analogously, ponder light: some of it we can see some we can’t (such as heat, infrared, ultraviolet and radiation). Still, even if we can’t see unseen light, it affects us. The same holds true for events. Even if we can’t consciously grasp the unconscious aspects; they slip through our conscious defenses and affect us.

Figure 2 demonstrates how this happens. The unconscious aspects impact our emotions which triggers our intuition. Our intuition produces more complex emotions that impact our cognition, our thinking processes. These emotions will select the rationale that best express our wants, desires and needs. These are a function of our personalities and give insights into who we are (red lines).

Returning to our restaurant analogy, the negative feelings produced by the ugly ambiance trigger negative emotions. These in turn encourage us to select a rationale that might have us translate the ugliness into unsanitary. Therefore, we’ll rationalize that the food is unsafe and not good. Conversely, if the ambiance produces good feelings, we will tend to like the food more.