Mike Lehr's Blog

In this series’ previous post, I wrote about using Wordle to help identify word usage and phrasing trends by people as a prelude to identifying personalities in a real-time sense. In this series’ first post, I wrote about using everyday conversation to identify personalities. In this post, I will combine the two concepts to validate our findings, which I call extrapolation. Essentially, we try to predict responses to our questions by changing topics.

For example, after listening to someone, we notice he talks extremely pragmatically about things. Extrapolating, we can ask him a couple decision-related questions such as, “Why do you like your house?” In our minds, we predict a pragmatic response. If he does respond with answers such as, “It’s close to work,” “In the school district we want,” and “We were able to get a good price,” then they support our findings. However, if he responses with, “The setting is beautiful,” “We liked the ambiance when we walked in,” or others, we know we need to work further.

Again, the challenge is being able to spot trends in word usage. The series’ previous post lists five other word pairs in addition to the one here: pragmatic versus emotional. Another challenge is avoiding iron-clad perceptions of people; our observations and conclusions should be ongoing and fluid as new discussions arise. It is quite possible for people to assume different personalities in similar situations depending upon their moods.

For instance, people will often behave one way when they’re happy and another when they’re angry. That’s why results from classical self-reporting personality assessments can vary. The book Was That Really Me? by Naomi Quenk does an excellent job highlighting this phenomenon.

However, this only reinforces the persistent point that personality assessment requires ongoing practice and modification.

Other posts in this series:

• Assessing Personalities thru Everyday Discussions (1.0)
• Real-time Personality Assessment (Pt 2): Important Qualities
• Real-time Personality Assessment (Pt 3): Word Themes

In a discussion with an attorney a while back, he told me about a client who routinely included him in their business planning sessions. He was puzzled because they didn’t seem to require his input on many of their discussions. This caused him to doubt the value he was giving them.

I told him a story about attending a client’s son’s little league baseball game. During the game her husband and the other fathers were busy yelling instructions. Meanwhile, the mothers were shouting encouragement. This exemplified two types of support: instructional (direct) and emotional (indirect). The sons played better because not only were fathers giving tips but moms were demonstrating their love and support through encouragement. Knowing someone about whom you care is supporting you is a powerful motivator.

I then connected this to trees. When businesses hold retreats to do their planning, they often leave the work environment for a serene setting. The setting often has trees. Now, the trees don’t offer any practical business advice but they create an emotional environment conducive to planning very much like the mothers were doing for their sons at the baseball game.

Relating it to him, I said that most likely the clients just felt better by having him there. While they might not acknowledge this consciously, they will rationalize his attendance in some way. In this way, he was like a tree. While he might not provide any practical business advice, he was creating a situation that encouraged his client to plan better.

The attorney chuckled and said he felt better about charging his fees, but the point is that some of us have the influence of trees. Our mere presence can make people do better; we don’t need to offer any pragmatic tips.

Intuition’s most practical advantage to problem solving is the enhanced sphere of good solutions it offers. Generally, this sphere will produce five types of benefits. They will appear as solutions that can:

1. Address seemingly intractable problems
2. Save a tremendous amount of money
3. Reduce work and headaches to employ
4. Reach higher levels of effectiveness
5. Make objective- or scientific-based solutions better

Let’s look at some examples.

We can solve many customer service problems without necessarily solving them directly; we do it by listening, sympathizing and encouraging venting. We can save a tremendous amount of money on moral building efforts; we do it by employing our personal power to remember names, shake hands and extend “thank you’s” which don’t cost a cent. We can reduce the work and headaches involved in disciplinary efforts; we do it through the power of asking and of positive reinforcements. We can reach higher levels of effectiveness in change initiatives; we do it by organizing those emotionally adapt at change and by using compliments to encourage them. Any software rollout becomes better; we do it by selling the effort rather than commanding. Any training becomes better; we do it by influencing expectations beforehand and not just focusing on content and delivery during.

All these solutions employ emotional elements. Listening, sympathizing and venting encourage customers to feel better about a problem. Our personal power encourages employees to feel better about us at no cost. Asking and reinforcing encourages people to feel better about changing their behavior. Uniting emotionally similar people and complimenting them encourages them to feel better about change. Shaping how people feel about software and training encourages them to adopt the new practices.

In short, changing how people feel opens a vast, new sphere of solutions to the problems we face.

The important practical implication of intuition and emotions in decision making is this: if we don’t grasp the underlying emotions and how intuition is driving a decision, then we really don’t understand the decision. That means we expose ourselves unnecessarily to error.

Said another way, no matter how logical or reasonable a decision might seem its tap root is still emotional. Any appearance of logic or reason is purely cosmetic. Looked upon another way, the rationale becomes the “excuse” justifying a basically emotional decision.

This even extends to the scientific method and statistical analysis. You don’t need either to arrive at a good decision. They are rationales allowing the expression of certain emotions, many rooted in the need to feel secure about a decision. Therefore, a person’s intuition will encourage the selection of science and statistics to satisfy security needs.

In everyday life, we will tend to observe the implications of intuition and emotions in decision making when we present a rationale that trumps the one being presented and the decision does not change. We will also tend to observe extremely contorted rationales simply to justify a decision. This is the origination of the derisive expression, “You’re just rationalizing your decision.”

As an example, take a sales situation. If we base our sales presentation on what appears to be the inherent logic of that person’s objections rather than the intuition and emotions driving them, we failure is quite possible: we address the logic but gain no decision to move forward. In the end, we might even conclude that the person is simply being unreasonable. However, we are projecting; it’s unreasonable to expect reason to prevail in decision-making rooted in emotions.

Roles of Intuition and Cognition in Decision Making

In terms of the decision-making process, intuition occurs before cognition. The important practical implication of this process is this: if we don’t grasp the underlying emotions and how intuition is driving a decision or action, then we really don’t understand it. Thus, behind every single decision or action, there will be an emotion or a collection of emotions driving it.

An excellent illustrator of the connection between intuition and cognition is radar. Let the appearance of something on radar represent intuition and the actual sighting of it be cognition. The key implication of this metaphor is that intuition comes before cognition in our entire decision-making process. The movement of something from radar to an actual sighting represents the movement of feelings into thoughts and finally into decisions and actions.

The diagram to the right expresses this relationship. Moving from left to right, intuition processes our emotions which are typically a collection of feelings. Our emotions create our desires, wants and needs. Through these intuition gives our cognition direction. This direction allows cognition to create thoughts. Using techniques such as reason and logic, through cognition a collection of thoughts coalesce into a rationale. These rationales form the expressible, concrete foundation of our decisions and actions.

In short, this decision-making process transforms our vague, generalized emotions into concrete decisions and actions. An excellent metaphor is the igniting of gasoline. Without the concrete form of an engine and car, this event is a potentially harmful explosion. With that form, the event becomes a transformative tool in our lives. Similarly, without the techniques and tools to express ourselves, our emotions lack a practicality that will allow us to enhance our lives. In some cases, they might even harm ourselves and others.