Do you ever have those moments when you ‘know’ something without knowing why? It’s called intuition. In business it has been considered a flaky concept, something serious executives won’t admit to using. But Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, says the phenomenon of our gut instinct can be more effective than our traditional, data-based, ‘rational’ decision-making. Here we take a look at some of the research in Blink and relate it to the way we manage client relationships.

For many of us the quality of client relationships is key to our success at work. One of the examples in Blink is that of Bob Golomb, a highly successful car salesman. Golomb has an extraordinary ability to meet a customer and immediately understand how they are feeling about their car purchase and even the dynamic between the customer and their partner. He can then adjust his behaviour to match the mood of the customer. In our research we found the same ability with highly successful business partners in HR. These HR people could size up an internal client and adjust their own style to match the client’s.

Golomb told Gladwell that while he may make a million judgements about a customer’s needs and state of mind, he tries never to judge anyone on the basis of appearance or first impressions. This too was a rule for our successful HR people. They avoided letting their first impressions cloud the other data their unconscious was collecting and transmitting to their brain. This is a rare skill – but one that can be taught and honed.

This ability to make judgements with little conscious data can be of tremendous benefit to the way we work with clients. For example, Gladwell describes the work done by Dr Paul Ekman to identify the minute facial muscle movements which portray our feelings. This research found that facial expressions are universal.

The movements are often fleeting and not picked up by our conscious mind. But our unconscious recognises them. So when you smile sweetly and agree with your client while thinking ‘what a stupid idea’, remember that, at some level, they may know your innermost thoughts.

Other evidence Gladwell quotes includes the researchers who can watch a brief video of a couple in conversation and predict how long the marriage will last. What this research identifies is the skill we all possess as humans, and one that has developed through evolution to ensure the continuation of the species.

Gladwell calls this ‘thin slicing’. It is the ability of our brain to pick up and react to minute pieces of data and to draw remarkably accurate conclusions and judgements.

Think about the times you have come away from a meeting having secured the agreement of a client but with a nagging feeling in your gut. That is probably your unconscious reminding you of the client’s fleeting facial disagreement before their verbal ‘yes’. Your brain was ‘thin slicing’ and alerting you to the discrepancy.

In our work on building and maintaining client relationships, we train participants to hone their ‘thin slicing’ skills using a number of exercises and simple techniques. Once these skills are learnt they can easily be used back at work. We also train people to recognise the signals, the gut reaction. These are the messages the brain sends as a warning that more (rational) investigation needs to take place. For example, HR people use it as a prompt to probe a little deeper into the client’s motivation.

Blink covers many other interesting ideas on how we can better tap into our intuition and use it in HR. Over the next few issues of HR With Guts we’ll take a look at some of those ideas and how you can use them to your advantage.

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Over the years, many of our clients have puzzled over what makes a great HR ‘business partner’, so we set out to find the answer.

We interviewed some of the best HR people across several different companies – where the CEO believes their HR function really makes a difference to their profitability. Then we built a Success Profile of their HR Business Partners.

We found that the most successful business partners were those who think strategically and know their clients’ market, people and culture inside out. Behind all this we identified a set of beliefs about themselves and their job – beliefs that drove their passion and approach to their work and resulted in exceptional performance.

Our way of describing these beliefs is HR with Guts.
If you’d like to know more about the results, get in touch, and we’ll be happy to share them with you.

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Think of most banks and, well… great customer service probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.

That’s about to change. Despite the growing popularity of internet banking, a recent survey by Alliance & Leicester found that 78% of customers still want the personal contact that comes with visiting a branch. And now several High Street banks are scrambling to make their branches more accessible. And off the high street we frequently hear clients bemoan the service they get from the more ‘up market’ Private Banks. In a recent survey it was found that even the most basic communications were not tailored to the client.

When it comes to customer service, banks could learn a thing or two from luxury brands. Because when you’re selling a premium product, your service has to match.

When luxury menswear retailer Ermenegildo Zegna first came to us, their customer service was pretty good. But they wanted to be consistently the best – across all their stores in Europe, the US and Asia.

Using our Success Profile tool, we profiled Zegna’s highest performing people across all job groupings and regions. Once we’d shown them the differences that make a difference to their business, we developed training so everyone could learn to do what their top people were doing already.

It’s working. People are selling more (results have shown double digit increases in sales in some regions), and they’re selling more to customers and turning new customers into loyal ones. Plus, just last week, Zegna was named New York’s top designer boutique by Zagat, based on the customers’ experience.

As banks continue to vie for customers’ loyalty, the Success Profile could prove invaluable.

Click here to find out more.

Free Success Profile offer We wish to extend our portfolio of Success Profiles in the area of building long-term client relationships. So, we are offering to do a free profile in Private Banking or Investment Banking.

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