Andrew Pain, a motivational, mental health, and wellbeing speaker, explains why we should be cautious about using gut feelings to help us make decisions.
Pain also explains psychological and environmental steps we can take to ensure our decision-making processes are fair and logical and offers ways organisations can make conversations around biases more comfortable and accessible.
“If we want to make better decisions, then we need to understand these biases and how we relate to them,” Pain said.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- Why our gut instincts are often flawed.
- A mental checklist for working through problems effectively.
- Resources to improve our awareness of biased thinking.
- One way organisations can improve bias training courses.
- Environmental factors and stimuli that can interact with cognitive processing.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Welcome to the FM podcast. Today’s episode was recorded live from UK and Ireland ENGAGE. I’m Steph Brown, and on this episode I will be talking with Andrew Pain. Andrew is a motivational and mental health speaker covering issues including burnout, resilience, and impostor syndrome. We will be talking about what it means to trust our gut feelings, the ways we can become more in tune with ourselves to improve decision-making, and the practical ways we can embed critical thinking into our processes.
Welcome, Andrew. Thanks for joining me on the FM podcast.
Andrew Pain: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Brown: Gut instinct is something that’s often discussed when it comes to making decisions. But how can we tune into those gut feelings?
Pain: I think we have to be very cautious actually about using our gut. I think it’s very trendy today to act with your gut. “If in doubt, use your gut.” We live in a very immediate culture. We have everything at our fingertips, so there’s pressure for quick decisions. We put that pressure on ourselves; we put it on others. And yet actually our guts are flawed. Our guts are pushed and pulled by over 180 common human biases from confirmation bias; where you instinctively seek out information that fits your original story. Anything that might challenge that, you’ll naturally discredit it, ignore it.
Our gut is formed by our memory bank, but our memories of what happened aren’t actually what happened. Our memories fade over time, they get mixed up. There’s a huge body of research that shows how terrible human memory is. Of course, if you think about your own memories, you were never the villain; you were never the protagonist. You were always the hero, perhaps misunderstood at times, or [an] innocent bystander.
I think it’s important to consult with our gut. What is that deeper sense of me saying instinctively, intuitively about this situation? But we should consult with other things as well. For me, if I have to use my gut, it will be because there’s literally no time. If I look at this situation, I have no time to go with anything else. It’s all I’ve got. If that situation implicates other people, I’ll be quite open and honest., “Look, I’m making this decision. It’s based on my gut because I’ve got no time, just so that you know.” But if we have some time, even if it’s five or ten minutes, then that’s where we need to be more critical in our thinking. We have to find other strategies.
We will instinctively use our gut when we’re tired, when we’re hungry, where we’re just acting [on] autopilot. It’s really important for these more complex decisions that, alongside our gut, we have some other things.
Brown: That’s interesting, our gut being flawed and sometimes the thing that we tune into almost instinctively the most at times. Are there are some practical steps we can take to take a pause with that feeling and try and understand it more to improve those decision-making processes?
Pain: One hundred percent. For example, I don’t use this for all my decisions because some of my decisions are trivial. If I’m deciding what loo rolls I’m going to buy, I don’t need some complex decision-making. I’ll look at: Are they environmentally friendly? What’s the cost? What’s my gut feel? That’s fine. It’s a trivial purchase. It’s a trivial decision. But for more complicated decisions where things are at stake, that it may implicate other people, I have a quick-fire decision-making strategy that is my own that I use, and I would suggest you have your own as well that you think about: What would be the steps that I might go through that would enable me to make a decision promptly but that would also protect me from the flaws within my gut?
The first thing that I’ll do for a larger decision is [think about] how much time have I got to make this. I’ve got a problem. I’ve got a decision to make. Have I got a week? Have I got a day, realistically? Bearing in mind some people will try and pressure you into making a quick decision, but actually you have more time. If you have a week, then there’s a lot more stuff you can do. I would be sketching out: Who do I need to speak to? What information do I need to seek? If I’ve just got five minutes, then maybe I’ll just ask ChatGPT and I’ll phone a friend. But, how much time have I got? What absolutely is this problem that I want to investigate and what information do I need? Really good, easy three steps. What information? Look widely, so I’m not just going to the same old sources.
Step four: What does a bold or safe approach look like to this problem that I’m facing? What would that require of me and my team and my investment? Step five: my decision.
Anybody could work through that if they only had 15 minutes to one degree or another. They are easy steps. It’s not a perfect decision-making strategy because there isn’t one that exists. But having some simple steps, like a simple checklist, enables you to work through a problem quite quickly, but protects you to some degree from the flaws in your gut. You may have other strategies where all you would say [when] you’re about to make a decision: “ How would a smart person handle this situation?”
You detach quickly and you just take a quick view of the situation when you’re somehow not you, out of body imagining you were a smart person. You could have something as simple as that. I’m not saying ignore your gut instincts. Your gut has a real deep sense of what it thinks is right or wrong. You should consult with your gut but not be completely led by your gut, unless you have no time at all.
Of course, if you’re weighing up, you’ve got some sense of danger, impending doom, there’s a gang of people at the end of the street eyeballing you. Then you would go with your gut, wouldn’t you? You don’t need to weigh up the pros and cons, think about, “How much information do I need? How much time have I got?” That’s a gut-based, danger situation where a very prompt decision is needed.
But [for] most of the decisions we face in business, we do have five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour to an hour. That’s why I would say, have some decision-making strategy that’s simple that you can work through quickly but protects you from the flaws in your gut.
Brown: It’s interesting. We think the more information we find out, especially from other people and colleagues, the more informed that process is going to be. What systems can we have in place, I suppose, to filter out opinions or advice that might be misinformed or flawed?
Pain: Understanding that I like to trust that people will give information with the best intentions. But understanding that in doing so we’re all flawed is a good start. Experts can be flawed. But I also accept that an expert will have more knowledge.
For me, it’s trying to keep an open mind. Because sometimes if I’m facing a problem, I already think I know what the solution might be. I might have a favoured solution in mind, and so I have to be really careful that I’m definitely keeping an open mind. If I’m making a collaborative decision, I have to question what biases I may bring to the table within that group of people. Is there someone there that I always, they appear to be the naysayer, the voice of doom, I’m negatively set against them. But actually, they could have some really valid concerns. Some of it is reminding myself about biases. Some of it is reminding myself that I should be open to what others are saying, experts. But also that I should critique that as well.
There’s no quick and easy answer to that. Some of that is awareness. According to Wikipedia, we have 180 common human biases. I describe confirmation bias, but there’s many: sunk-cost fallacy, halo effect, horn effect, optimism bias. The list goes on. Actually as professionals, we can make progress if we just do a bit of research. What are the most common biases? To research 180, that’s overwhelming. But there’s plenty of resources out there that look at the top 20 common human biases. And for us as professionals to be able to name what they are, understand how they work, that’s a really good starting point.
Matthew Syed’s book, Black Box Thinking,works through a few of those biases, among other things. A really good resource. You’ve got [David] McRaney. He’s got two books: You Are Not So Smart and You Are Now Less Dumb, where he really explores the top most common biases. And those are just helpful things that we can do to bring on our understanding. I mentioned in my session today, Derren Brown’s Audible series Boot Camp for the Brain. It’s quite an entertaining way of approaching decision-making biases. So I’d encourage people to improve their awareness of their biases.
I struggle with sunk-cost fallacy. Do you know what that is?
Brown: No, I don’t. Please tell me.
Pain: I’m naturally tenacious as a person, so I have a tendency to hang in on situations that really I should probably walk away from. I prize grit. I’ve been brought up to dislike “quit” as a word. Sunk-cost fallacy is where you’ve invested your time, energy, maybe cash, in something or other. It means something to you. The more involved you are with that, the harder it is for us to walk away. That happens in a queue. You know those slow-moving queues where you don’t know where the end of the queue is, it stretches on and on. You just get around the next corner, it’s still going. But now you’ve been in the queue for half an hour, you can’t leave the queue because it wastes time. The same thing happens in failing projects, failing relationships. So I know that sunk-cost fallacy is a problem for me.
When I’m facing that dilemma of do I need to pivot? It’s become quite a popular word. Do I need to move my energies into something else? Do I need to stop doing this so I can start something else? I understand that for me, the way I work, that’s a difficult problem because I’m naturally tenacious. I have people around me that I can ask that hold me to account. I know my wife will challenge me. I’m a professional speaker. I’m in a community of speakers. I know they will challenge me and they do. I need that because I’m conscious that I have this bias to stay stuck in things that I should walk away from.
Brown: That’s great. When you acknowledge your own biases, then you become more aware of the things that are perhaps holding you back.
In May, I spoke with an author and CEO called Nuala Walsh, and she found that a lot of people actually are completely unaware that they’re biased, either they don’t understand that they are, or they don’t acknowledge it.
What are your thoughts on that?
Pain: Well, I mentioned this again today. A lot of unconscious bias training, I would say, from what I’ve seen is not that effective. I talk to professionals. I have professionals in my family who have been on unconscious bias training days, and I’ve quizzed them: “Ooh, how interesting, what biases did you learn about?” They can’t name one bias. That’s shocking, really. I think there’s plenty of people, we’re sort of aware that we might be biased, but if you actually asked people to name these 180 common human biases and describe some of them, most people couldn’t. I think it’s really important actually, as professionals, that we equip ourselves with that knowledge.
We are all biased, these 180 common human biases, they do affect us. I feel like sunk-cost fallacy is a big deal for me. I’m aware of confirmation bias. If you recall, I described what that is where you instinctively seek out information that will confirm your existing beliefs.
I think I’m pretty good at that in terms of avoiding that, I’m very aware of it. If I have firm opinions, whether it’s Brexit, for example, I was very, very pro remain. That was my own belief. But I did lots of research to consider, in other media, what is the argument against? Let’s really be clear: Let’s not just go to the same old sources that confirm my beliefs. Let’s be open-minded as well. Because I know if I go to other sources that challenge my beliefs, I’m going to instinctively discredit them. I think I’m quite good, I’m very aware of that, it’s a very powerful bias.
I think the author you mentioned is absolutely right. Many of us are not aware of these biases, but they do play a part in the way we make our decisions. And if we want to make better decisions, then we need to understand these biases and how we relate to them. For you as an individual, you’ll find some of them are more of a problem for you than others. That’s how you’ll feel and that’s how I feel. That’s great as you analyse them and really think about how these affect me.
The danger, if you read a book about 20 common human biases, is you skip through it, and you don’t actually work through it slowly, really thinking about how you interact with each one.
Brown: That’s great. Thank you. How can people, or indeed organisations, do more to help people build an awareness about biases so that they can implement them in their everyday decision-making and thought processes? What ways can they be trained to recognise them first and then how to not put them at the forefront of how they decide things, especially in business?
Pain: I think we can make progress with things more quickly. We can understand things and remember things more quickly if we were having fun when we were learning about them and talking about them. I think some of it is having a laugh about them. Being able to talk about them openly. Being vulnerable and trying to think about which ones we’re going to own.
The more that people can see that their leaders are owning bias and can talk about it openly, the more it encourages other people would say, “Actually, yeah, I struggle with that.” But to make it fun, rather than something that’s very formal, very serious, we’re more likely to remember it and engage with it, I find, with most learning stuff.
Brown: What are some, I suppose, practical steps that people can implement in their day-to-day, especially in their job, to help them improve decision-making?
Pain: Once you’re aware of biases — we’ve talked about a decision-making strategy — that’s definitely helpful. Some practical steps could include, for example, if you are going through a recruitment procedure and you’ve got five people to interview and you interview them through the day and you spend an hour with each one, and you work hard to avoid biases and you maybe have a scoring of competency scoring, whatever it may be. If you’re interviewing the five of them through the day, is that likely to be a fair process?
It won’t be fair because as we come up to a meal break and we’re hungry, our decision-making will be less favourable than just afterwards when we aren’t hungry. The fairer thing if you had five people to interview would be to interview them at the same time each day — either before lunch, where you’ll be less favourable, or after lunch, where you’ll be more favourable.
There are practical steps in terms of understanding how food affects us, how biases affect us, in terms of having a competency framework in a recruitment procedure. There are practical steps in terms of having a decision-making strategy and just bouncing that. We’ll all have a different strategy and there’s no correct strategy. But an awareness of some of these things is where it starts, I would say.
Also having psychological safety so that you can talk openly about weakness, vulnerability, maybe where you have bias, and know that you’re not going to get penalised, belittled, patronised. Psychological safety is that thing where you feel safe to be open, transparent, vulnerable. [If] you made a mistake that you could get away with you’d still tell people because you’re safe. It starts at the top [with] leaders modelling that. If we have psychological safety, then we can talk about this stuff an awful lot more easily than not. If there’s no psychological safety, then no one’s going to want to admit to having biases because it’s dangerous. They don’t know, well, how will this affect how I’m perceived? Some of it is creating psychological safety as a foundation thing, so that we can then talk about this stuff more easily, so that we have then more awareness.
Brown: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Is there anything that we’ve not mentioned in this discussion that you think is quite important to add?
Pain: Just one thing to add as something that I’ve observed. Yes, food and when we have it and when we haven’t had it does absolutely affect decision-making. The research is there. If you check out Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast And Slow, a Nobel Prize-winning book [with] some really interesting research on eight Israeli judges who are unwitting participants in a study and beyond.
I do think, practically speaking, thinking about our actual environment is really important. I shared today that my best work gets done when I’m on a train. Every time. Why is that? I don’t know. The train’s moving. It’s a new location. It’s a quiet carriage. I’m cut off from the internet. I prepare stuff that I’m going to do on the train and leave my more difficult stuff, the stuff I wrestle with, because I know I’ll crack it if I’m on a train. I have that awareness about myself.
But I’ve also shared today that I’ve worked with boards where they’re turbulent, they’ve had lots of fighting around the boardroom table. Actually, for their board meetings, it’s more effective that they just go out to a cafe, go somewhere neutral where they haven’t got all those associations. I also shared how Classic FM has helped me. How sometimes if I’m struggling with a problem, standing up, moving away from my desk to my big revolving whiteboard with different-coloured pens helps me. When it comes to decision-making; location, breaking state, sleep, food — these things really do matter, and having some attention to those details is really important.
Brown: Thanks again. Thank you for sharing all that knowledge and resources with us today.
Pain: Thank you very much.
Brown: Thanks again to Andrew Pain. This concludes our series of recordings from UK and Ireland ENGAGE. We hope you’ve enjoyed the interviews with the speakers. Thanks again for listening to the FM podcast.
