Think of yourself sitting in a canoe in a swift flowing
river.  You’re paddling desperately with the intention of making it 100 yards upstream. 

To get there, you’ll need to focus on the task, apply some paddling
skill, and consistently exert yourself.  
Because you’ll be fighting against the current, you’ll experience some frustration and
probably arrive out of breath and needing to rest.

In a figurative sense, this is how most people feel when they
go to an interview.  The fast-flowing
current is called “cognitive strain,” and it’s a silent factor that works
against you in every interview.

In the next couple of WorkPuzzles, we’ll teach you how to
alleviate cognitive strain and start conducting your interviews in the calm
water of “cognitive ease.”

A few weeks ago, I introduced you to Daniel Kahneman, a
Nobel Prize winning psychologist who recently published his best selling
manifesto called Thinking, Fast and Slow.

If you didn’t catch the previous discussions on this topic,
I’d recommend reading the first blog in this series.  It will give you some background for
today’s WorkPuzzle.

In his book, Kahneman introduces his readers to the concept of “cognitive ease.”  In simple terms,
it is the natural desire a person has to make decisions and judgments using “System
1” thinking.

As you may remember, System 1 is the fast, intuitive, and
automatic way of making decisions and judgments.   System 2 is the slower way of thinking that
requires more conscious judgments and critical analysis.

Dr. Kahneman
defines cognitive ease in this way:

“Whenever you are conscious, and perhaps even when you are
not, multiple computations are going on in your brain, which maintain and
update current answers to some key questions:

Is anything new going on? Is there a threat? Are things
going well? Should my attention be redirected? Is more effort needed for this
task?

You can think of a cockpit, with a set of dials that
indicate the current values of each of these essential variables. The
assessments are carried out automatically by System 1 and one of their
functions is to determine whether extra effort is required from System 2.

One of the dials measures cognitive ease, and its range is
between “easy” and “strained.” 

Easy is a sign that things are going well—no threats, no
major news, no need to redirect attention or mobilize effort. 

Strained indicates that a problem exists, which will require
increased mobilization of System 2.

When you are in a state of cognitive ease, you are probably
in a good mood, like what you see, believe what you hear, trust your
intuitions, and feel that the current situation is comfortably familiar. 

When you feel cognitive strain, you are more likely to be
more vigilant and suspicious, invest more effort in what you are doing, feel
less comfortable, and make few errors, but you also are less intuitive and less
creative than usual.”

With these definitions as a background, would you rather have someone be experiencing “cognitive ease” or “cognitive strain” during an interview?

Obviously, you’d want the person to be experiencing
cognitive ease.  If candidates are suspicious,
uncomfortable, and lacking the creativity to imagine themselves in a new
career, your interviews are not going to come to life.  It's very difficult to build a
relationship with individuals who remain in this state.

Here’s something you may not have considered:  Every candidate you interview (especially if
the person is a “new to real estate” candidate) is experiencing cognitive
strain when they arrive at your office.

There are very few exceptions to this rule.  Interviews are stressful.  Being in a new environment, meeting new
people, receiving a bunch of new information, and having the perception you’re
being evaluated puts people squarely in System 2 thinking. 

One of the secrets of successful interviewing is helping a
person migrate from a state of cognitive strain to a place of cognitive ease
during the 45 minutes you spend with the candidate. If the candidate remains in
a state of cognitive strain (and most people do), the person will not have the ability
to truly hear and engage most of what you’re trying to communicate.

How do you do this?  Daniel
Kahneman has some great insight on this topic based on the research that he and
others of have done.  It’s fascinating
stuff, and we’ll cover it during our next WorkPuzzle discussion.  

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.