By Bill Richardson PMP, PgMP, CSM, Cert. APM

I would like you to think of this article as my perspective on a common term used daily—judgment. Judgment can be used formally or informally in many contexts—religious, legal, or psychological, to name a few. I will explore how we all consciously and unconsciously judge everything we experience and, by doing so, create our map or mental model of how the world works.

Once I have established in your mind a satisfactory representation of the word and how it meshes with how you manage to make the myriad judgments required to successfully go about your day, I will propose a simple but powerful rule that, The rule simply stated is always put curiosity before judgment, especially when dealing with people.

What You Need to Know about Judgement

Professor Daniel Kahneman from Princeton University and his late colleague Amos Tversky started a revolution in our understanding of the human mind with their 2010 book, Thinking Fast and Slow.

Professor Kahneman realized that we have two systems of thinking. One, which he affectionately calls “System 1,” is intuitive, fast, and automatic. This fast way of thinking is incredibly powerful but completely hidden. It is so powerful that it is responsible for most things we say, do, think, and believe. The other, “System 2,” is the deliberate, slow-moving, time-consuming, logical part of our mind that can analyze a problem and find a rational answer.

According to Kahneman, we are hard-wired to rely on System 1 to make fast, intuitive judgments about what is good and bad, whom to be friends with, and what we should be doing at any moment. Although System 2 is present, it must be consciously mobilized to do the slower, more methodical, analysis and synthesis when System 1 requires help. For example, if I asked you what the result of 5 times 5 is, your System 1 would say 25 in a split second and be comfortable with the answer. However, if I asked what 83 times 156 is, your System 1 would either make up an answer or mobilize your System 2 to go through the step-by-step logical multiplication process we all learned and might have forgotten since school.

The problem comes when our fast, intuitive system makes decisions (judgments) unknown to us that we should pass to our slower, logical system. This is where systematic mistakes, known to psychologists as cognitive biases, creep in. Here are three examples of these cognitive biases:

• Availability Bias, where we work on the basis that all we see is all there is. System 1, which craves cognitive ease, is content to apply a rule of thumb, or heuristic, and only needs the information “available” on which to decide. If System 2 were consciously mobilized, a more detailed analysis would surface the need for more or better context information.
• Confirmation Bias, where we unconsciously (read this System 1) only acknowledge and use information that supports our current beliefs, meaning that we did not mobilize our System 2 to assess the full body of information in a fair and balanced way. This shows up often in employee performance evaluations where the manager conveniently only focuses on some aspects of the performance story, and not the complete picture.
• Anchoring Bias, where System 1 is over influenced by the first bid or the first price in a sales situation to the point of becoming “anchored” in its legitimacy or correctness. Activation of System 2 would counter this tendency by looking at the full context and draw conclusions for an alternative strategy.

The bottom line is that usually, we judge most things without consciously thinking or considering the entire picture or context. Now, for the antidote!

What You Need to Know about Curiosity

In this article, I take the liberty to rewrite the popular “curiosity killed the cat idiom as” “curiosity saved the cat” because the innate drive to explore, learn, and experience is an innate basic emotion (not an instinct) common to people of all ages from infancy to adulthood In plain English, curiosity is eagerness to learn!

Putting the neurological aspects of curiosity aside, think of it as our innate eagerness to learn, which when mobilized, can be an effective antidote to afflictions such as “rushing to judgment” and “jumping to conclusions.” Thankfully, you can use a very simple but powerful tool to bring curiosity to life and show your eagerness to get the context before you respond. The tool, called Path to Action, is described in the book Crucial Conversations–Tools for talking when the stakes are high, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler. I consistently recommend this fabulous, must-read book to all my audiences, especially in the soft-skill capabilities. Their tool is a four-step process as diagrammed below:

Their model shows the relationship among what we see, the story we tell ourselves about what we saw, the emotions that emanated from that story, and ultimately, some form of action. The two arrows in the diagram communicate the direction of the flow thinking and action flow:

• The arrow pointing east on the page explains the path we followed to get to an action most likely in partnership with System 1—fast, intuitive, easy!
• The arrow pointing west on the page explains the reverse direction of being curious about the action we are about to take. Here, System 2 has been mobilized—slowly, deliberately, with effort!
• The first question would be what emotion is motivating us to act.
• Next would be what story did we tell ourselves that spawned that emotion.
• Next would be what did we see or hear that drove the story we told ourselves.
• The defining question would be; do we understand the entire context and clarity on the facts. If the answer is no, then before we act, we need to reconnect with both the situation and the person to learn the complete picture.

You can use several models or frameworks that will help you trigger or mobilize your System 2 thinking. I find this model one of the easier ones to apply because it can be habituated quickly and can be easily taught to your team, which will have what I call the residual income effect. This effect is coveted in financial management circles because the investor receives income without having to exert energy or time.

In short, curiosity before judgment is an interpersonal best practice or operating principle that is easy to learn, easy to habituate, and easy to teach. By clarifying the right mindset (for ex., an overused System 1 strength can become a weakness), the right skill set (for ex., proficiency at facilitating dialogue and curiosity-based interaction), and the right tool set (for ex., two-direction application of Path to Action), you can dramatically influence the holy grail of organizations—the ability to build relationships while getting results. Think of this concept as a creative combination of two natural human capabilities, curiosity and judgment, to form a powerful best-practice partnership for your career.