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Welcome to this week's useletter
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focussing on your future not my past, the newsletter that's useful.
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Warning: this is Useletter’s in danger of getting meta weird fast.
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It’s seemingly impossible to avoid reason in arguing that emotion beats reason.
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I’ve set myself up to fail. 😟
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in decision making, emotion doesn’t always beat reason. According to Prof Zoe Chance, emotion wins only 95% of the time. (Ref: Influence is Your Superpower).
Reason wins 5% of the time! Woo! 🎉
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if I were to take the time to reason, this rabbit hole is gonna get deep real fast. You see that little spec of light up there, that’s the way out. I hope you’re not afraid of the dark!
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the thing is, the work of people like Zoe Chance and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) has already laid out a pretty convincing case. Our lives are dominated by responses using our emotional brain, not our reasoning brain.
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if that’s the rabbit hole into which you must dive. Start with those books.
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Bottom line is (finally!)
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emotion winning over reason is not always a bad thing. Understanding this can inform our work. It’s being used against the ‘Yes’ vote in the current Voice Referendum in Australia (as described here) - which is great for the ‘No’ campaign, but sadly not for the ‘Yes’. Importantly, it doesn’t always have to come from a position of negativity. We can use it for good in our every day work too. I'm gonna look at how.
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PS: Daniel Kahneman wrote a follow up book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, where he revisits and rethinks some of his arguments in Thinking, Fast and Slow.
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PPS: I’m giving a talk on leadership tomorrow. Details HERE.
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The value of using emotion over reason
It’s tempting to throw up our hands at the victories of emotion over reason. There’s too many big and important issues in the world stymied by the emotional over reason. But it's not all bad, we can also use this insight to our advantage in architectural practice.
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Building a connection with your clients
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Most of us will tend towards thinking that clients will value our expertise. It’s only reason-able right? But we need to invest time in building a good relationship with our clients. When our clients are engaged on a (positive) emotional level they’re not overthinking. They’ll be more engaged, empathic and feel greater ownership of the work you’re doing together. Delivering better trust in the process.
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Resolving conflict
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To be fair this one’s a tight rope. Emotions can be both a hindrance and a help in resolving conflict. On the one hand, strong emotions can make it difficult to see the other person's perspective, leading to impasse and deadlock. On the other hand, instead of utilising reason, by acknowledging and addressing emotions using empathy, we can resolve disputes more effectively by finding more common ground.
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Intuitive thinking
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Gut feelings are often right (not always). In time we’ll develop a refined intuition about people and social situations. This intuitive understanding informs our thinking around dilemmas or problems we may have in interpersonal contexts and the creative process.
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More creative
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Emotional thinking will nurture spontaneity and creativity in brainstorming sessions and discussions. Allowing for free-flowing and unconventional thinking. Avoiding the constraints of reasoned analysis.
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Presenting our work
It’s tempting to premise the value of our designs based on an economy of planning, environmental performance, ticking every box in the brief, etc. But knowing the value of the emotional response, it’s better to weave a story of how the plan will adapt to the needs of their family as they grow, how the sun will fill a nook for snuggling with a book on a cold winters day, or how this might alleviate their current pain points. Emotional touch points. Work on asking yourself, what’s the emotional story in this project?
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An experiment
It’s not so much an experiment this week as a challenge to pay attention to how you’re making decisions and coming to conclusions. See if you can notice how you’re getting there. Is it rational or emotional? It’s likely you’ll think your more rational than you really are. See if you can catch yourself making decisions based on an emotional response, even when you think you’re not!
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Want to develop better leadership?
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I help practices work on their leadership team and strategies.
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Supporting practices to become more open, fluid, and adaptable.
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Realising the collective energy, passion, and capabilities of their people.
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Let's chat about your leadership development
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What else is going on at unmeasured?
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I send news and updates out separately in my occasional Updates & Events email. Click the button below to go to the sign up page and have your details added to that email list too.
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recent useful blog posts...
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It might be time for the architecture profession’s leaders to starting learning form the ground up.
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There’s two main ways to stand out. Be different. or Be better. Copying is the route to unexceptional.
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Or…
do architects do too many of the wrong things?
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”Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.” - James Randi
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