Communication Break-Down

I have a problem making decisions. My assistant, whom I adore, has pointed this out on several occasions. I get the feeling it annoys her.

["You get the feeling?" Val says when I read this to her. "Honey, it IS annoying."]

Every time I need to make a decision – how much to charge for a service, what to wear at a workshop, or even where to go to dinner- I run it by my assistant, best friend, business coach, husband, and on occasion, my dry cleaner.

I pay my assistant and business coach, and due to those pesky wedding vows, my husband has to put up with me. I’ve tried to pay my friend for her help but she won’t accept money. Because I feel so bad for always asking for help and advice, I give her thank-you-for-still-liking-me gifts. I take her for pedicures and lunch, and lately, I’ve given her furniture from my house. It’s amazing I still have a sofa.

Indecision is ingrained in my DNA. My father shops five hardware stores for a new hammer, and after buying one he often takes it back only to start the entire process all over again. Somewhere along the line, we learned that gathering all available information before making a decision is what you’re supposed to do in order to avoid making a mistake.

Turns out it isn’t. Malcolm Gladwell in his best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking calls this into question. He says quick decisions can be just as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately. We tend to over-think, and that gets us into trouble.

Tell me about it. My spare bedroom is missing a bookcase.

Can quick decisions be as good as thought-out ones?

Gladwell says our ability to “thin-slice” can often deliver a better answer than if we research and weigh all of our options before making a decision. He defines thin-slicing as the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience. He says our unconscious sifts through the situation in front of us, throws out all that is irrelevant and zeros in on what really matters.

Nonverbal communication plays a big part in our ability to thin-slice. We subconsciously pick up on nonverbal cues that alert us to the authenticity of an interaction. We scan the faces of people we are talking to to look for congruence between what they are saying and what they are nonverbally communicating, and we watch body language to help clarify the verbal message.

As a nonverbal communications coach I train people to use it systematically. It translates the majority of face-to-face communication, so it’s important to understand what we communicate nonverbally so we can adjust our approach based on the needs of the situation. Which really means I train people to make decisions.

And therein lies the confusion. I trust that the information we receive and send nonverbally assists us in making decisions, especially if we know what to look for. So why is decision making so hard?

Gladwell says that we’re innately suspicious and tend to assume that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it. If something comes easily, we tend to distrust it. I see this over and over again in our nonverbal workshops. For example, our number one skill for giving negative information – have the information on a visual and look at it instead of the person- sounds too simple to be effective. People are amazed -and truthfully, a bit skeptical- that small things make such a huge difference. Until they try it and it works.

Like nonverbal communication, our subconscious is powerful: it collects and stores information from all of our past experiences, and within a split second gives us what we need to make a decision. We’ve been hard-wired from birth to read and interpret nonverbal cues, and our subconscious holds onto information over the span of our entire lifetime. This information helps us make decisions – literally – in the blink of an eye.

Gladwell points out that there are times when thinking through a decision is warranted, and I plan on exploring this in another post. But in general, I think it’s time I started trusting my ability to make good decisions on my own. My new decisiveness couldn’t come a moment too soon. I adore my end table and was not looking forward to giving it up.