Making Good Decisions

At work we're reading an interesting book called "Crucial Conversations - Tools for talking when stakes are high" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. It presents some interesting things to consider. Here's an excerpt from page 4:

For instance, consider a typical crucial conversation. Someone says something you disagree with about a topic that matters to you and the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The hairs you can handle. Unfortunately, your body does more. Two tiny organs seated neatly atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. You don’t choose to do this. Your adrenal glands do it, and then you have to live with it.

And that’s not all. Your brain then diverts blood from activities it deems nonessential to high-priority tasks such as hitting and running. Unfortunately, as the large muscle of the arms and legs get more blood, the higher-level reasoning sections of your brain get less. As a result, you end up facing challenging conversations with the same equipment available to a rhesus monkey.

What struck me was how many times I've been in this exact situation and later wondered why I hadn't handled the situation better. Well, funny enough the book says why on page fun.

The truth is, you were real-time multitasking with a brain that was working another job. You're lucky you didn't suffer a stroke.

Okay. These guys just make me laugh! This is great stuff.