Difficult Conversations: fast or slow?

in his highly successful work, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahnemann described how our brains work using two systems.  A fast intuitive System 1 and a slow, rational System 2.  In combination they work to help us navigate the world and stay alive.

The challenge is that System 2 is very energy expensive to run. As a result we make many decisions, below our level of consciousness with System 1.  So far so good.

Unfortunately,  System 1 is vulnerable to cognitive biases.  We can use System 1 to create a story about what is happening and how we feel which may be based on biases.  We then compound the problem by using System 2 to rationalise the 'emotional' decision we have made.

In conflict, people feel under attack and often find it difficult to engage System 2. It feels comfortable to rely on their System 1 intuitions and biases. There are ways to de-bias ourselves:

• force System 2 to turn on - by hand writing, doing a maths equation, trying to problem solve
• be aware of biases and the power of cognitive dissonance - check out my previous post on "Mistakes Were Made...But Not by Me"

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