节目资讯
刊物:职场秘诀
日期:2010-01-05
难易度:Low
关键字:whim, provocative, prime, leery, deliberative, tangible
Advanced Studio Classroom is on the air.
When it comes to business, can you trust your feelings?
Hi, friends. Welcome to Advanced Studio Classroom.
My name is Naomi, and today is January 5th.
We’re still starting out the brand new year of 2010,
and it’s great to be here with all of you.
We’ve had some interesting articles already this month, and this one, I think,
personally, is one of my favorites for January.
I think it’s a really interesting topic, and hopefully you will, too.
So I’m glad that you’re tuning in with me today in the studio to discuss this
BUSINESS article.
First of all, Bill.
Hi, Naomi. And I agree. I think this is a great article. It’s... it’s important
for everybody as far as how they make decisions, so...
You know, I hope our listeners have their highlighter out and underline things,
and we’ll help explain a lot of it.
OK.
Also with us is Brandon.
Good to be here, Naomi. I think this is a great BUSINESS article.
It helps us to kind of analyze the way we make our decisions and helps us really
think through this process.
And I know I didn’t think of it in quite this way, so I’m glad that we can talk
about it today.
OK, good. Both of you mentioned the idea of making decisions and how that can be
a little bit challenging sometimes.
How do you make big decisions, Bill?
Well, that’s a really good question, Naomi.
And on the surface we think we make decisions based on logic and facts and data,
right? And then we make the best decision.
Surprisingly, many decisions we make are emotional.
So, whether we like something or not, like something or somebody, so...
And actually we’re gonna talk about that.
This article deals with the factual, the rational side of things, compared to
the emotional side of things.
OK. Brandon, have you ever had trouble making a decision, a big one?
Oh, definitely. Yes, definitely.
I mean, I’m thinking back to coming out of college, ”What do I do next?” and
that sort of thing.
It can be very difficult.
And you do base a lot on knowledge that you have, of course, but it’s
interesting how much we do kind of make gut feelings.
I think we have to be careful as we’ll talk about, I’m sure, later with that,
but it does happen.
And I think it’s there, it’s built into us for a reason.
OK.
I think men in general tend to rely a little more on logic and reason, and women
tend to feel a little more emotional.
I know from my experience.
Sometimes I’ll be making a decision but something will feel just a little bit
wrong about it.
I’ll just get this sense that maybe this isn’t the best decision to make.
And I think women are a little more inclined to listen to that than men are. Am
I wrong?
I agree with you on that.
And another thing I was thinking... and I... I will tell you that I don’t know
if one decision making process is better than the other.
Men would say, well, you know, logic and rational and facts is the way to go,
and I can’t say I agree with that,
because I’ve seen terrible decisions made by men, and great decisions made by
women; of course the other two, the reverse of that.
Definitely.
Um... I wanna add that one other thing is that, also, my decision making process
has changed over the years.
So, we change how we make decisions.
I make decisions very differently today than I did twenty years ago.
Sure.
And it’s true that sometimes the decisions that we have to make don’t have
necessarily a right or wrong answer.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of making a choice.
But in other situations, we do have to consider ethics.
When we’re talking about ethics, what do we mean?
We’re talking about moral principles - what is right, what’s wrong.
And we’ve learned this through society, what... what we’ve learned from that,
and also what we’ve learned from our parents, and that kind of thing.
And that does help us make decisions.
We’ve been taught and we know that this is right or wrong, and we can make a
decision based upon that.
Sure. So, for example, if I’m trying to decide, say, what to eat for lunch,
there’s not really a right answer.
If I listen to logic, I might choose a salad.
If I listen to my emotions, I might choose a hamburger.
But that isn’t necessarily... I wouldn’t go so far as to say one is right and
one is wrong.
Sure, one is healthier, but it’s not like there’s a definite YES and a definite
NO there.
But if you’re talking about... For example, we’ll see some ideas in our article.
Something like an investment decision with a colleague that will affect both of
you.
Sometimes you really have to consider: Is this the right thing to do? Or am I
going to hurt someone by my actions?
And when those questions come up, I think it’s a little more difficult to make
those decisions. It’s a little more serious.
Right. You know, deciding where to go to lunch is not a right or wrong decision.
But if you and I go to lunch, and we decide whether or not to talk about Brandon
and say bad things about him,
then it becomes an ethical decision.
And... then we have to evaluate: Are we doing the right thing or not?
Yeah, exactly.
OK. So, this is just a little glimpse into what we’ll be talking about today.
Let’s get into the article.
We’re gonna start with that first paragraph on page 14.
And I just want to introduce the topic a little bit more, so let’s read those
first few lines and then we’ll come back and discuss them.
In Defense of Feelings.
Why your gut is more ethical than your brain.
If you’ve ever been part of a discussion on ethics, chances are you didn’t spend
much time talking about your feelings.
It’s believed that to live ethically, we must engage our reason, which reins in
the whims and follies of emotion.
But what if unethical behavior is actually spurred, rather than prevented, by
reason?
OK. We start out with the deck right under the title.
And it says, ”Why your gut is more ethical than your brain”.
So, when I say ”gut,” what am I talking about, Brandon?
Good question. I think this is a clever deck here.
When we see the word ”gut,” a lot of times we think about our stomach, right?
But oftentimes... or here, it actually is talking more about our inner emotions
- what we listen to on the inside.
Like Naomi talked about before having a sense about something, that’s kind of
our ”gut feeling.”.
OK.
This is definitely slang, I think, to talk about, ”Oh, do you trust your gut?”.
Sometimes, we also talk about people having the guts to do something - if they
are very courageous.
And so it’s sort of this inner substance or something.
This idea that there’s something inside you that helps decide what you’re gonna
do, what you’re brave enough for, what’s right, what’s wrong.
Mmhm.
And it asks the question: Why is this strange feeling we get inside our body and
our gut more ethical than our brain?
How come the gut makes maybe better decisions than this logical thing that we’ve
got computing up inside our head?
Mmhm. OK. So, going to the first sentence, that sounds like a funny question,
and this first sentence sort of tells us why that’s a little weird.
Right. If you’ve ever been part of a discussion on ethics, the chances are that
you didn’t spend much time talking about your feelings.
A lot of times, you spend time talking about what you think about something
based upon logic rather than your gut feelings about it.
Right, when we have discussions about ethics, maybe in classrooms and so on,
often some of the things that come up are... do have to do with logic and
reason.
And also sometimes tradition, moral values, religion, so on... all these
different things that can affect our ethics.
But very rarely do people talk about, ”Well, it just feels like the right thing
to do.”.
Yeah, there’s a weakness that’s perceived in that.
And it’s perceived as being right and strong if we can use our brain to make
logical decisions.
Well, OK, and the next sentence sort of talks about maybe why that is.
Right.
It’s believed that to live ethically, we must engage our reason.
And the word engage... We must involve reason in our decision making.
And then it goes on to say, ”which reins in whims and follies of emotion.”.
And the whims here are just the ideas of emotion, and follies is talking about
kind of the foolishness of emotion.
A lot of people think, as Bill said, it’s very weak.
And I think, because we live in such a scientific age, we want to back
everything up with facts.
But it’s true that emotions can be full of whim and follie. Often, my emotions
tell me that I want to do something that’s silly, you know.
And so, it’s true like if my emotions tell me,
”Oh, I wanna sit at home and watch TV all weekend,” I should try to rein that in
with reason and get out and do some exercise,
do some work, that kind of thing.
Well, you said ”rein in,” Naomi, and that’s a great idiom that’s there in line
5.
Reins in, that means to pull back something and to control it.
And it’s a little bit different from a King who reigns, we would spell that with
a G, R-E-I-G-N-S, a King reigns.
But in this case, reins in, imagine holding back a horse.
Right.
You use reins to control the horse.
And so, here our reason is like the reins that control our emotion - keep us
from getting out of control.
But, what’s the ”but”?
Well, if unethical behavior is actually spurred, rather than prevented by
reason...
And here the word ”spur” just means ”urged.” So instead of preventing this, our
emotions, they can... they can help us.
OK. What if unethical behavior is spurred by reason?
So, what if our reason sometimes tells us to do the wrong thing?
That would be a problem.
Yeah, it would be a problem, and actually it is a big problem.
And we have seen it recently in some of the scandals in the financial world.
Yeah.
And that word ”spurred” is actually a great one. It goes back to that reining in
idea.
Again, with the horse, they have reins to control their head.
But then, the rider will also wear spurs on their heels,
which is a little sharp thing that you kind of poke the horse a little bit so
that the horse will go faster.
And so, here, the idea is that our reasons sometimes makes our unethical
behavior increased, makes it worse, right?
There’s actually a saying, Naomi, that ”You can rationalize anything,” and you
can use statistics to justify any decision.
And that’s what we say.
OK.
Let’s continue with the nextreading.