Mike Lehr's Blog

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.

Recently, as I’ve heard on many occasions, someone said “This isn’t personal, it’s business.” A critical assumption underlying an intuitive approach is that everything we do, think or say says something about us. In short, everything is personal. Business is no different; it can tell you much about a person.

The advantage business gives us in assessing personalities is the financial tradeoff it encourages. The stress this often creates allows us to see deeper into people than otherwise possible. When someone says, “This isn’t personal, it’s business,” he is saying the decision is very personal to him. It’s a form of protesting too much. The statement is just the rationale he chose to emotionally justify his decision.

However, we can’t assume that such a statement automatically implies any particular emotions. For example, they could have a miserly orientation or they could be rooted in strong feelings for providing for his family. Many other types of emotions could be at work. Without context, it’s impossible to tell.

Nevertheless, the key point is to realize that this person has one or more emotions that are strongly connected to money. To him, money is very personal. Once you know what these emotions are, money becomes an excellent vehicle by which to influence him.

Virtually all of our decisions are emotionally based. Therefore, as we saw in my previous posting, Decisions: Roles of Intuition and Cognition, intuition (link) plays a vital role in decision making. We often notice this as our confusion about the reasons people give for their decisions. This is because if don’t have a grasp on the emotions causing people on a subconscious level to gravitate to a rationale justifying what they want.

Since the business world often demands we have a rational orientation, we faulty believe that people make decisions about their actions as shown in the left-hand figure below.  If they find Rationale #1 as having the best set of reasons, evidence and logic, then people will select the recommended action associated with it, Action #1. If Rationale #3 is the best, then they select Action #3.

Shopping Rationales: Cognitive vs Intuitive Decisions

However, the right-hand figure shows that intuition, based upon people’s wants and desires, will actually determine the action then the corresponding rationale to support it. So, if people prefer Action #2, they will tend to select Rationale #2 because it justifies their decision. However, as the above embedded posting suggests, this shopping for a rationale will likely occur subliminally. This means that on a conscious, cognitive level, people will tend to believe they are making a rational decision even though they are not.

What does this mean in practical terms? First, good insight into the decision maker’s personality will enhance our abilities to predict his decisions even if we don’t have complete knowledge of the problem. Second, any of his decisions, even if they aren’t similar to the problem, will further our insights into his personality. Taking such an intuitive approach works because personality will always be more consistent than rationales.

The way people look at things is greatly influenced by how they feel about us. People like to hear their names and to have them remembered. Therefore, you can influence their intuitive processes by doing these. While many of us know this, we don’t realize how important it is. It’s an effort very deserving of our time and resources.

In journalism class, instructors will tell students that using names in articles is critical to securing readers’ interest. At a party, someone told me his favorite class was statistics because the professor remembered everyone’s names. A college professor said that a student focus group told his colleagues that professors could improve their course evaluations and standing with students by simply starting to remember and use students’ names in class.

What do names have to do with enjoying statistics or evaluating professors? A lot. They affect people’s intuition which in turns affects their cognition. Their cognition is responsible for producing the rationales that support people’s preferences. The more they like the messenger the more likely they’ll like the message; they’ll learn material, adopt initiatives and perform tasks much quicker and more effectively.

However, remembering people’s names, especially all your employees, might be difficult, but virtually all of us, if we work at it and “cheat” a bit can remember close to five hundred names. First, it’s a matter of saying, “This is important.” Second, it will initially seem like a daunting task, but we become better as we train ourselves. In this sense, our minds work very much like our muscles. They become stronger through training and practicing.

Here are some techniques for using and remembering names.

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.

Cognition is the refining of knowledge and the justifying of decisions through rationales. Rationales are thoughts linked by such techniques as reason and logic. They impact how we view things, both tangible and intangible. Cognition gives us a way to express ourselves, to express our desires, wants and needs.

Cognition is a process occurring primarily on a conscious level. “Refining” and “justifying” indicate that process. Since the formulation of thoughts occurs primarily in our conscious, cognition gives form to what our intuition creates. This form allows us to change our world in accordance with our desires, wants and needs.

Cognition is the refiner of virtually every decision we make, because almost everything we think, do or say needs some sort of refinement to give it focus and specificity before it can effectively impact our world. In this way, cognition crystallizes into a goal, objective or some other tangible form the direction that our intuition gives us. It’s similar to the way an agenda, a score or a script gives form to a meeting, a song or a play in accordance with the tone we want for them.

As an example of what cognition is, consider a message that seeks to influence people. It will contain a rationale using reason and logic to demonstrate the positive benefits of adopting the message. However, if the rationale is not understandable it will appear as unreasonable, illogical, incomplete or indecipherable. As a result, the message will have difficulty influencing people. Witness what happens to a computer when the coding does not follow the language or logic of a certain protocol. The same thing happens with people when confronted by rationales they do not understand. That is cognition at work.