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How the Smartest Minds Use Intuition and Emotional Intelligence to Make Better Decisions, Backed by Science

May 12, 2022 No Comments

Experience matters, but research shows high emotional intelligence can also make intuitive decisions even more accurate.

A 33-year-old patient complained of flu-like symptoms. His doctor assessed him. Nothing stood out. But for some reason…the doctor decided to do a full workup.

Why? “As soon as [I] started to talk to him, my spider senses started to tingle,” the physician told researchers. Turns out the doctor’s intuition was right.

The patient had lung cancer.

According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, “Intuition is thinking that you know without knowing why you do. Like quickly scanning three résumés and, without thinking too hard, picking the best candidate. Like quickly scanning long checkout lines at the supermarket and deciding, without thinking too hard, which is likely to be the quickest.

Like listening to someone speak for a few minutes and deciding, without thinking too hard, whether they’re smart or just a D-K.

Granted, sometimes you’ll be wrong.

But, depending on your level of emotional intelligence, not as often as you think.

How Intuition Works

Science supports the power of intuition. As Friederike Fabritius and Hans Hagemann write in The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, and Happier, the basal ganglia and insula, two distinct regions of the brain, drive intuitive decisions.

Your basal ganglia manage the stored routines and patterns that make up your experiences. Your insula takes care of body awareness, and is highly sensitive to any changes in your body.

Even if you’re not consciously thinking about it, your unconscious brain starts working on a problem or decision right away. Then, when you try to make a conscious decision, your brain compares that decision with the one your unconscious has already made.

And here’s what happens next:

If your unconscious agrees with your conscious decision, your brain gives off a subtle reward response. The decision doesn’t just seem logical. It also feels good.
If your unconscious disagrees with your conscious decision, your insula detects other changes in your body. While the decision seems logical, it doesn’t feel good.

Why? If your brain has predicted a reward, and your body decides differently, your anterior cingulate cortex generates an electronic signal called error-related negativity. (Or, in non-scientific terms, an “Uh-oh!” response.)

That’s where intuition comes from. Make the right decision, and your body knows it. Make the wrong decision, and your body knows it. Like the doctor, you can’t explain why.

You just know.

Now Layer in Some Emotional Intelligence

According to a 2020 study published in Emotion, people with lower levels of emotional intelligence are more likely to misread the signals their bodies send them.

In one case, they mistook their body’s “warning sign” for excitement and instead of proceeding cautiously took more risks. They interpreted “Uh-oh” as “Let’s go!”

Which makes sense; as my Inc. colleague Justin Bariso writes, one aspect of emotional intelligence is the ability to make your emotions work for and not against you — which is really hard when you can’t properly interpret your emotions.

So is overstating your level of experience. Navy SEALs have practiced, trained, and debriefed hundreds of scenarios. They’re able to intuitively respond to new or changing conditions because their storehouse of experience is full. That’s why Sully decided to land in the Hudson River. That’s why quarterbacks like Tom Brady can read a defence and make the right throw so quickly.

As Fabritius and Hagemann write:

Although there’s a common misconception that intuitive decisions are random and signify a lack of skill, the exact opposite is true.

Intuitive decisions are often the product of years of experience and thousands of hours of practice. They represent the most efficient use of your accumulated experience.

When Should You Trust Your Intuition?

All of which sounds good. But there’s a difference between gut feel and guessing. So how can you tell when your intuition might be on to something?

First, consider your level of emotional intelligence. But don’t just assume — like when more than 80 percent of respondents said they were above-average drivers, even though that’s mathematically impossible — that you’re emotionally intelligent. Take a test. (Although you may not love everything you discover about yourself.)

The better your emotional intelligence, the more likely you are to accurately interpret your body’s “Uh-oh” intuitive response. (Or at the very least, pause and consider what you might be missing.)

Then ask yourself three questions Kahneman feels can help determine whether you should feel confident about a particular intuition:

1. Is this a regular, predictable environment?

If something happens on a frequent basis, the outcomes are more likely to be predictable. Take chess. “Intuitions of master chess players when they look at the board,” Kahneman says, “are often accurate.” Or people in close relationships. “Everybody who’s been married,” he says, “could guess their [partner’s] mood by one word on the telephone.”

Or even medical professionals: Researchers have found a strong correlation between a doctor’s “gut feelings” about ICU patients at the beginning of their stay — when medical data was sparse — and the eventual course and outcome of treatment.

2. Do I have extensive experience or practice?

Accurate intuition isn’t something you have; accurate intuition comes from considerable practice.

That’s how experienced hiring managers can make solid “snap” decisions. That’s how doctors sense something isn’t quite right. That’s how you know when something sounds too good to be true.

3. Have I gotten plenty of feedback?

Without feedback, you can’t know whether an intuition was right or wrong — which means you can’t calibrate your intuition.

To Kahneman, that’s the difference between luck and intuition. If you got it right but can’t go back and trace what your unconscious noticed, you made a lucky guess. If you can later look back and articulate the reasons why, that means you knew…you just didn’t know, in the moment, why you knew.

All of which leads to a final point. Intuition isn’t a substitute for data. For logic. For analysis. For reasoning.

But expert intuition — the kind of intuition that comes from genuine experience — can identify moments when your analysis is shaky and your reasoning off.

Especially if you’re emotionally intelligent enough to read the signals your body sends you.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Jeff Haden

Sourced from Inc.

In News

These will be the 15 highest-paying jobs by 2025

February 12, 2021 No Comments

By Jessica Yun

Customer service specialists, digital marketing experts, data scientists and cyber security specialists are among some of the jobs that will see pay increases over the next five years, according to recruitment experts.

Despite chronic wage stagnation in Australia, certain job sectors – like healthcare, trades and government – are currently experiencing salary growth, and tech skills, soft skills and business know-how will be prized.

COVID-19 has also accelerated the growth of some industries; for example, those in aged care, the disability sector, and mining and infrastructure are seeing notable pay increases.

Tech skills are still #1

Thanks to COVID-19’s acceleration of remote work and the digitisation of the workplace, those with digital and technological skills will be in greater demand over the coming years.

“When it comes to salary growth, technology jobs are in a stronger position compared to many other positions in the market,” Robert Half director Nicole Gorton told Yahoo Finance.

Businesses across all industries are investing more heavily into artificial intelligence and robotics, she said.

With the international travel ban still in place, hiring managers are struggling to fill specialised IT roles.

“Both these forces are placing upward pressure on tech salaries as companies compete for the right talent to help them prepare for the future of work.”

Nearly 7 in 10 chief information officers surveyed by Robert Half said they were willing to pay more to secure top talent in IT.

“With the trend likely to continue for the next few years, we expect roles such as cyber-security specialists, DevOps and cloud engineers, as well as front end software developers to show the strongest salary growth, even though they’re not necessarily projected to be the highest salaries in the market,” Gorton said.

Data scientists will also be rewarded for their expertise and specialisation, she added.

Hands holding australian dollars 50 banknotes. Finance and payment concept. — Hands holding Australian dollars 50 banknotes. Finance and payment concept.

Soft skills, business acumen in high demand

But soft skills such as communication and emotional intelligence – will be well-remunerated in the coming years, too, according to Adecco Australia managing director Kelly Van Nelson.

“The ability for employees to deal with uncertainty, pressure, and to continue working at their best during tough times is what will set them apart from the rest,” she said, highlighting resilience as a particularly important quality.

But the rare workers who combine both tech skills, business acumen and soft skills will be the true winners. For example, financial planners and business analysts that can help businesses navigate a post-pandemic world will be in a stronger position to negotiate salaries, said Gorton.

“By 2025, it’s expected that the highest earning roles will be those which have evolved to leverage new technology to enhance a company’s capabilities and competitiveness in the market.

“In other words, jobs that break down the barriers between IT and other business functions, combining technology skills with commercial mindedness, a high degree of business acumen, and niche expertise.”

Traditional departments such as finance, marketing, and HR will prize new hires that also have tech skills, she added.

“Candidates who can enhance the value of their expertise and experience in these fields by developing knowledge of different systems, proficiency with data analytics tools, and their ability to implement and manage systems upgrades are likely to be on a path to the most highly rewarded careers in 2025.”

According to Robert Half and Adecco Australia, these are the jobs that are seeing the highest salary growth:

Software Developer
Sales Representative
Project Manager
IT Administrator
Customer Service Specialist
Digital Marketer
IT Support
Data Analyst
Financial Analyst
Graphic Designer
Cyber-security Specialist
DevOps and Cloud Engineer
Front End Developers
Data Scientist
Financial Planning & Analysis

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Jessica Yun

Sourced from yahoo!finance

In News

It Took Elon Musk Exactly 5 Words to Teach a Major Lesson in Emotional Intelligence

March 2, 2020 No Comments

By Justin Bariso

Tesla has become one of the most valuable automakers in the world, based primarily on its potential for changing the auto industry. So, it’s easy to forget that the company is also in the solar panel business, due to its 2016 acquisition of Solarcity, a company Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been heavily involved in since its inception.

Well, Musk recently announced that Tesla is ramping up installations of solar tile roofs, also known as Solarglass, with international expansion planned later this year. But it was a simple, almost unnoticed tweet by Musk last week that drew my attention, because it gave some insight into Musk’s process for creating killer products:

One simple sentence. Backed up by decades of neuroscience research.

“Please let us know what improvements we can make to any aspect of Tesla SolarGlass roof! Critical feedback is much appreciated.”

There’s a lot to be learned from the process of asking for consumer feedback, but I’d like to focus on the value a single short sentence: “Critical feedback is much appreciated.”

One simple sentence. Five words. But it’s backed up by decades of research, and it highlights a major facet of emotional intelligence: the ability to learn from negative feedback.

What’s emotional intelligence got to do with it?

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, understand, and manage emotions. Put more simply, it’s the ability to make emotions work for you, instead of against you.

Typically, when we get criticized, our default reaction is to do one of the following:

Defend ourselves
Make excuses
Minimize the problem
Attempt to rationalize
Sidestep the issue
Shift the blame

When researching EQ Applied: The Real World-Guide to Emotional Intelligence, I worked with neuroscientists to come up with a simple explanation to sum up decades of scientific research, in an attempt to explain why this happens.

In short, when making decisions, we rely heavily on a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. But when we feel triggered or under attack, a different part of the brain springs into action–the amygdala. The amygdala serves as our emotional processor, and it tends to take over when we feel we’re under attack.

This is known as an emotional hijack.

Emotional hijacks aren’t always bad. In the case of an emergency, the amygdala can provide the courage and motivation you need to defend yourself or your loved ones. But the amygdala can also cause you to act in a way you later regret. And when it comes to interpreting negative feedback, it can lead you to default to one of the above behaviors, before you even recognize what’s happening.

Now, here’s the rub: Nobody’s perfect. We all have blind spots and perspective gaps. We need negative feedback if we’re going to grow. Since most criticism is rooted in truth, it helps fill those knowledge gaps so you can improve. And even when feedback is off base, it’s still valuable–because it helps you understand the perspective of others.

All of this is what makes Musk’s invitation so excellent. By inviting the negative feedback, he puts himself in control. He frames the incoming comments, not as an attack, but as a learning experience. At the same time, he braces himself for what’s coming.

If you scroll through Musk’s “tweets and replies” tab on Twitter, you’ll find a perfect example of this: a two-way conversation between CEO and consumers. Musk uses the feedback to answer questions, clarify messaging, and even to crowdsource ideas–all as a much better way of responding to negative feedback.

Of course, Musk isn’t perfect. Over the past few years, he’s gotten himself into trouble by responding to criticism in the wrong way, also on Twitter.

But this further emphasizes the need to have a plan to deal with negative feedback. And while it would be great to always identify our triggers ahead of time, it’ll usually happen the other way around: We react to something that rubs us the wrong way and say or do something we later regret.

This is why it’s so important to understand the amygdala and how it works. It enables you to sort through your thoughts and feelings, like pieces of a puzzle. And as you begin to understand your reaction, you can train yourself to respond differently the next time.

Train yourself.

Feedback is like a freshly mined diamond. To the naked eye, it’s unattractive. But its true value becomes obvious after a little cutting and polishing. In the same way, it’s easy to see criticism as something ugly. But you can train yourself to view it differently by reframing it.

So, invite negative feedback by remembering a simple, five-word sentence:

Critical feedback is much appreciated.

And when the feedback comes, don’t view it as an attack. Rather, see it as a gift–a chance to learn.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Justin Bariso

Sourced from Inc.

In News

9 Signs You Need To Work On Your Emotional Intelligence

February 21, 2017 No Comments

By Carina Wolff.

By Carina Wolff

Sourced from Bustle

In News

Emotional Intelligence, Generation Z, and the Next Big Leadership Challenge

December 14, 2016 No Comments

By Jeff Haden.

For one thing, they’re a lot less independent than you might think… which is fine if you’re a boss, but does mean you’ll have to adjust your leadership style accordingly.

Generation Z has been called “millennials on steroids.” They’ve been called “the next big retail disrupter.” They’re the influencers of tomorrow.

And they’ll also change the way savvy leaders engage and motivate their employees.

Here’s another in my series where I pick a topic and connect with someone a lot smarter than me.

This time I talked about emotional intelligence and leadership with Dr. Steven Stein, the founder and CEO of Multi-Health Systems (MHS), a three-time Profit 100 (fastest growing companies in Canada) company that helps improve leadership skills and emotional intelligence for Fortune 500 companies, the military, government organizations, and professional sports teams. He’s also the author Emotional Intelligence for Dummies and the international best-selling The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success.

So yeah. He knows a lot about emotional intelligence and leadership.

Let’s start with this: Managing millennials gets a tremendous amount of attention, but Generation Z is a wave that is about to hit the leadership shore.

We looked at 250,000 people, broken down by generation. We found that Generation Z is significantly different than the other generations in a number of ways.

For example, one is independence, or the ability to take actual steps. Generation Z struggles in this regard: Generally speaking,feelings of fear, trepidation, and hesitance keeps them from performing as you might expect. They also have more information available to them than any other generation, but relatively speaking they’re not effective problem solvers.

Another difference is in stress management. They’re much less able to manage and deal with stress.

Any theories as to why?

There are a few possibilities. Generation Z tends to have more helicopter parents, parents who are afraid to let their kids take risks and don’t want to see them fail. Unfortunately, once they get to the workplace they’re afraid to take initiative or take certain steps because they’re worried about failure. In effect they haven’t been given the opportunity to learn how to fail, and that failure is okay.

So for all the stories you hear about Generation Z being entrepreneurial… it’s not necessarily true. So as a leader, you shouldn’t automatically assume a new employee will take initiative, take risks, be entrepreneurial within your organization… in many cases you’ll need to encourage and nurture those behaviors.

So if I’m hiring people who are from Generation Z…?

Look for people that have actually shown leadership ability. Look for people who actually led something. And look for people who have actually experienced some failure. Say, “Tell me about a time you failed at something and how you managed it.” And then dig into specifics.

Another thing we ask is, “Tell me what you’re passionate about. What really excites you?” You want them to love what they want to do. If you need a graphic designer, you want graphic designers who are also into art and photography as hobbies.

We look for people who have passion and can show me that they actively pursue that passion.

Ultimately, managing Generation Z is fundamentally the same as managing anyone: you have to know your people as individuals and have sufficient emotional intelligence to effectively motivate and engage them.

That’s true, but there’s another aspect of emotional intelligence that often is forgotten: the people you lead are watching you for clues, too.

One example is performance reviews. You may think all that matters is the content of the appraisal you deliver. But your employees are watching how you present it, your mannerisms, your style… they’re measuring and assessing you based on temperament and emotional intelligence as well.

That’s also true when you, as a leader, make a mistake.

True. There are a number of studies that show that medical malpractice claims are more likely when the physician doesn’t talk things through, doesn’t show empathy… beside manner is often more important than the actual level of care.

As a leader, it really isn’t the fact you messed up. If you’re up front about that, if you own it, if you’re willing to talk about it, people respect that. And they’ll work harder to try to help overcome that mistake.

So say I’m a leader and I want to better use emotional intelligence so I can be more effective.

The best leaders build a relationship with their employees, so the next level is the ability to focus and use your emotions in a positive way.

If I’m your boss and I really want to galvanize you, I need to show passion in order to get you charged up. Whether it’s really high performers and leaders, or athletes, or musicians… it’s all about using emotions.

You can use emotions to make decisions, to motivate yourself, to motivate other people, and to really win the crowd. It’s not about logic or what makes logical sense. It’s the ability to find out what gets their people excited — that’s what we find in highly emotionally intelligent leaders.

That’s why one of the things we do in our organization is select people largely on EQ. We know what gets them excited, we know they embrace the mission of our organization, we know talking about our mission makes them passionate.

Take that to the practical level.

Employees must have the technical skills. That’s a given. But we don’t just hire programmers; we hire people who care about the work we do. They want to learn and develop and do more.

You want people who want to plug in to your mission. That way you know what already motivates them and how you can keep them motivated.

For example, we conducted a study on Air Force recruiters. They had a 50% turnover rate in the job, and when we tested 1,400 recruiters we found that the ones who stayed in the job were high in EQ. They were strong in areas like assertiveness, empathy, and problem solving.

So the Air Force realized that if their recruiters didn’t have empathy, they wouldn’t be successful. But they took it a step farther: they didn’t want to deselect good people so they figured out a way to train them in empathy.

We were able to increase retention rate by over 90%.

When you select the right people for a job, using the right criteria… it’s amazing what can happen.

That’s great, but if I’m a small business owner with limited resources… how do I find ways to know I’m selecting the right people?

Granted, the most sophisticated level is to use a validated EQ test. If you can’t do that, then it’s up to you to decide the qualities you need and ask good questions during the interview.

Generation Z has been called “millennials on steroids.” They’ve been called “the next big retail disrupter.” They’re the influencers of tomorrow.

And they’ll also change the way savvy leaders engage and motivate their employees.

Here’s another in my series where I pick a topic and connect with someone a lot smarter than me.

So yeah. He knows a lot about emotional intelligence and leadership.

Let’s start with this: Managing millennials gets a tremendous amount of attention, but Generation Z is a wave that is about to hit the leadership shore.

We looked at 250,000 people, broken down by generation. We found that Generation Z is significantly different than the other generations in a number of ways.

Another difference is in stress management. They’re much less able to manage and deal with stress.

Any theories as to why?

So if I’m hiring people who are from Generation Z…?

We look for people who have passion and can show me that they actively pursue that passion.

That’s true, but there’s another aspect of emotional intelligence that often is forgotten: the people you lead are watching you for clues, too.

That’s also true when you, as a leader, make a mistake.

So say I’m a leader and I want to better use emotional intelligence so I can be more effective.

The best leaders build a relationship with their employees, so the next level is the ability to focus and use your emotions in a positive way.

Take that to the practical level.

Employees must have the technical skills. That’s a given. But we don’t just hire programmers; we hire people who care about the work we do. They want to learn and develop and do more.

You want people who want to plug in to your mission. That way you know what already motivates them and how you can keep them motivated.

We were able to increase retention rate by over 90%.

When you select the right people for a job, using the right criteria… it’s amazing what can happen.

That’s great, but if I’m a small business owner with limited resources… how do I find ways to know I’m selecting the right people?

Granted, the most sophisticated level is to use a validated EQ test. If you can’t do that, then it’s up to you to decide the qualities you need and ask good questions during the interview.