Leadership Realities: The Untold Truth That Leaders And People In Power Need To Know           11/22/2006 

On Trust and Thin Slicing
Dr Karen Otazo

On Trust and Thin Slicing - Dr. Karen Otazo

Why do attack ads work? What is it about them that gets to voters? Whether there’s a jungle beat or overtly sexual feel to them they are trying to evoke some basic fear or mistrust in the viewers.  Why is it easy to do that? Recent ads in the mid-year elections played on those fears but didn’t necessarily work.

How do we learn to trust others and have them trust us? At one level we believe that over time, and with testing, we find out what others are made of.  If someone moves fast, talks loud or annoys us in other ways their actions are reminiscent of creatures that were dangerous at one time in our ancestry.

Very subtle bits of information tell us whether we can trust others.  An amazing book called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell looks at what affect our thinking. Gladwell talks about “thin slicing” where minute bits of information, like intonation, let us know that our doctor cares rather than tries to dominate.  That one difference could predict lawsuits.  That bit of thin-slicing lets you know whether your doctor passes muster or is found lacking. As human beings we “thin slice” all the time.  If we hadn’t learned to do that we would probably have been eaten by wooly mammoths and our DNA lost to posterity.  We quickly notice small things that can be scary like fast movement and loud noises.

This month my colleague, Laura Bellomy, gives us another look at “THIN SLICING.”  She is an amazing networker and powerhouse. Laura, through her networking group, The PowerChicks, makes sure that women connect and support each other in whatever they want to accomplish.

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Visual “Thin-Slicing” - Laura Bellomy

My sisters and I used to play the Biography game when we were younger.

We would go to the airport to watch all the people coming and going and make up stories about who they were, where they were going to or coming from, what they did for a living, what their families were like, what interesting little secret they were hiding, etc. We inferred all of this just by looking at them, and we evaluated each other’s biographies

on a pass / fail basis, and of course for creativity! Sound familiar? It should. We do it each and every day whether we realize it or not, and it’s what our clients, customers, employers, employees, and complete strangers are doing to us every day.

It’s called thin slicing* and you should know how to use it to your advantage. When applied correctly, it can actually alter human behavior. Think of the possibilities!

We toggle back and forth between our conscious and our unconscious modes of thinking all

the time. We make decisions or conscious choices based upon previous experiences and

outcomes. It is the unconscious brain that spurs our spontaneous, split-second decisions and first impressions. Did you know these snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled so you can alter someone’s perception and behavior?

For example, the world today demands that we maximize our communication opportunities,

but many of us overlook the unspoken or non-verbal communications that we send and

receive. You already know that 93% of face-to-face communication is non-verbal (55% facial expression, 38% tone of voice, leaving only 7% for words!). If we want to get really high falootin’ about it, we can talk about neural programming and how our brains filter out “noisy” data around us all the time, then there’s the nature vs. nurture / genetic vs. programmed argument ... blah blah blah!

What it comes down to is this: like it or not, we have ultimately become a product of the MTV generation. We have been programmed to take things in via 15 to 30-second sound bites. We make thin-slice snap judgments, and so do our clients.

Learn to use that to your advantage by knowing what visual communications you’re sending out via the way you look, the way you dress, the way you carry yourself, the way you enter a room, the expression on your face, the tone of your voice, and more. Create your own 30-second sound bite for your communications—visual, verbal, or whatever form they take. Whether your communications are formal or casual, take control of the message you’re sending!

About Laura:

Laura Bellomy has 24 years of experience in marketing, communications, change management / organizational development, advocacy, and business development for professional services firms and not-for-profit organizations. She frequently works with organizations on issues analysis, strategy development, and facilitation of quality, process and performance improvement initiatives. A Certified Change Practitioner in the Prosci ^® ADKAR Model, she offers training programs and consulting services in communications/presentations, change team leadership, business acquisition, relationship management, and personal and professional accountability.

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Your feedback is welcome; email me at karen@otazo.com

To Your Knowing the Truth -