The Gut Check: Comebacks at Work

Commentary: The work place has become a challenging place today. People are on edge, tempers flare, and in some cases the competitiveness has taken a hostile direction.  Simply good communication skills is not enough.  Professionals must become skilled at handling difficult people and in many cases corporate psychopaths.

This series of postings will discuss using communication methods to gain control of circumstances and reduce your chances of becoming a target. We will cover ten (10) chapters in the book "Comebacks at Work" over the next several weeks. I'll attempt to couple these when appropriate with other authors works such as Dale Carnegie.

The Gut Check

Humans are both rational and emotional. They are not mutually exclusive but instead mutually inclusive. To deny one or the other is to deny part of who we are.  When one is cornered, humiliated, frustrated, attacked, or in some way placed on the spot then both logic and emotions form a gut feeling. Our emotional self picks up on the periphery while the logical portion focuses on the central information.  Reason selects the response and emotions sets the intensity.

Commentary: We often speak in terms of IQ and EQ as they relate to the 8 components of intelligence given in Frame of Mind authored by Howard Gardner. Author Daniel Goleman of numerous books on EQ has parsed Gardner's work and better grouped some of the intelligences renaming them. Nonetheless, 4 of the intelligences relate to IQ and the remaining other 4 to EQ.  The 4 Gardner's EQ intelligences are; Bodily-kinesthetic, Linguistic,  Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal. Understanding these intelligences and training on them can dramatically improve your skill in these areas. 

Developing a Gut Instinct

Gut instinct has both experiential and self-confidence elements. Over time you have had events in which you responded learning what works and does not. You also assessed you emotional tolerance levels for violation of your principles developing an anticipation of the situation and direction, intuition.  Intuition requires attention to people and the rules that drive them.

As to learn experientially, you may have a tendency to ignore intuition or to go with it too often. Either end of the range is problematic. You will need to begin assessing your responses to intuition and developing your sixth sense.

Becoming a Communication Detective

We observe the situation for clues about the emerging situation then attempt to connect  action with the anticipation. The more experience we have with a particular circumstance the more adept we are at connecting the correct action with the anticipation. The action becomes instinctive but you have this edge that you do not know why. It is a primal level sensibility.

The root of this ability is an outcropping of the fact that we are people of pattern and nature itself is patterned. The observant communicator picks up on these patterns. Dr. Reardon offers a model she calls the Comeback Component Model, figure 1.

Figure 1: Comeback Component Model (source: 2010, Comebacks at Work)

Effective comebacks originate from one of three components; gut instinct, current information, or episode memory. Proficient comeback artisans consider objectives of their own and the organizations as well what works and the big picture. This is a dance and balancing act.

You should seek to evaluate your weaknesses in the model's components then work to strengthen them. It is a good start to becoming a more effective communicator. The following four are examples of how people have learned to use instinct.

1. Gut Instinct on Moral Issues

You have a moral base and when actions of others violate that moral base you can react sternly and instinctively. However, allowing yourself to manage your reactions and filter information increases effectiveness. Appealing to the higher moral value and bigger picture can build support for an effective comeback. It is a balancing act between reaction and reason. You should even allow for mistakes and demonstrate confidence by recovering with your repertoire of comebacks.

2. Gut Instinct from Prior Experience

You have to build upon the past rearranging the present like jig saw puzzle pieces from the past applying them to the current puzzle. Effective comebacks then are a combination of logical and emotional assessments. This accomplished easily by those who have trained.

3. Gut Instinct in Inflexible Situations

Sometimes the gut reaction is to cut the push and move on due to inflexible circumstances. This can leave you with a sense of unfinished business. You will need to create a clean slate each day dumping any baggage.

4. Gut Instinct Relying on Learned Clues

With age and experience, you develop a sense of when to push and when to back off. Some people draw a line in the sand that denotes when the response is greater than the benefit.  One sort of has to get into the mind of another and anticipate responses and thinking. One has to be a double agent and detect what someone else is thinking about you. Vetting the information coming your way is important and to ensure you do not have incorrect data is just as important. Thus, assessing your emotions and body language is critical.

Dr. Reardon offers a checklist for self assessment in the book.

Commentary:  Project managers often have to rely on experiential knowledge and make quantum leaps in judgments. These quantum leaps often require gut instincts.  A major portion of project management is personality management. This is where gut instincts often act significantly. Project managers must learn how to read people and assess the situation at hand. Diverse cultural multi-national projects become even more complex and even more important to properly read people as some cultures will always show a smile yet be upset beneath the surface. This can manifest in various ways at the most inopportune time. Assessing the correct circumstances and gaining knowledge on your staff and key stakeholders culture is essential. Also establishing up front and early moral and ethical standards as well as workplace etiquette is important to moving production along smoothly. 

Having strong effective gut instincts takes training and a willingness to embrace mistakes as a principle centered leader.

Reference:

Reardon, K.K., (2010). Comebacks at work: using conversation to master confrontation. (1 ED.). Harper Collins publishers, New York.