Halley Bock: 3-Part Decision-Making

3-Part Decision-Making

Halley has a structure around how she uses intuition in her decision-making, and it looks like this:

• Brain: Halley will ask herself if this is a shrewd decision? Is this smart? What information might she be missing? She uses the power of her logical mind to discover what pieces of information are available to her.
• Heart: She then checks in with her personal values. Does this line up with what she holds dear and valuable? Is the intention of the endeavor or activity good?
• Gut (intuition): She then checks in with her intuition. What is her gut telling her? Does she feel that this situation, timing, and person are the right thing for right now?

These aren't ordered in any hierarchy of importance. All three work together to help Halley make informed decisions that steer her in the right direction.

It's not enough to rely solely on intuition when we make decisions. We need to check the information available against what we know (or know that we don't know), and what we've decided about our operating values. When we use all three areas together, we are operating in wisdom.

To Hire Or Not To Hire

One area in which all of us struggle,  whether you're a solo entrepreneur or a company, is hiring people. You might spend weeks sifting through resumes or profiles on online platforms, or you might say screw it and throw the task at five different people on Fiverr, hoping one of them does the job well. It's frustrating.

Halley has worked with her intuition pretty extensively in making hiring decisions. She noticed that she would see a resumé and think, "Wow, this person is great on paper," but get a feeling that something was off. Conversely, she might look at a resumé that wasn't quite as polished, but get a good feeling about the person.

At first, she ignored those instincts and went with the person that was logically the best fit -- the person who looked like the A++ player on paper, exceeding qualifications in every way. Invariably, they didn't work out as a hire. They were either there for the wrong reasons or left within a short amount of time.

After the third time, Halley started to trust her initial feeling. She started offering the position to the applicants who met the qualifications - of course - but also gave her an intuitive feeling that they were the right fit. Lo and behold, they were wonderful employees.

The Difference Between Work and Play

One of my favorite parts about this interview (and her book, Life Incorporated: A Practical Guide to Wholehearted Living) is where we talk about the difference between work and play.

We tend to think work and play exist on the opposite ends of the spectrum, but Halley takes a different approach: The opposite of play is not work, it's depression.

Stuart Brown MD, a psychiatrist at Baylor College of Medicine, participated in an internationally assembled research team to study mass murderers. This was back in the late 1960s, right after Charles Whitman killed 17 and wounded 41 students at the University of Texas. The team was tasked with understanding what caused Charles Whitman to commit mass murder.

They discovered a major key to his upbringing: as a child, he had a very strict and overbearing father. He was not allowed to play, nor was he allowed to have friends.

Without spontaneous play, Whitman had no opportunity to develop the skill, flexibility, and strength to cope with stressful situations without violence. Brown continued to study after the task force had reached its conclusion, and found that the same patterns emerged in other mass murderers.

Brown was so struck by the implications of the research that he left his position and founded The National Institute For Play.

So, I think we can all see the need for play whether we're children or adults. But do we do play well as adults?

It doesn't seem so. We think we play. We engage in sports, we train aggressively for marathons, we push ourselves hard to achieve a competitive goal, whether we're competing against ourselves or other people. Sound familiar?

According to both Dr. Stuart Brown and Bock, that's not play. Play is unstructured, without goals, without a particular outcome in mind. There's no goal, no desire to look good doing it, no medal or podium at the end of the road.

Here's an idea. Sit down with some play clay (or even Play-doh) and start creating something. Don't start with a goal in mind, just experience the feeling of clay rolling and squeezing between your fingers, and let your mind and hands create what they want to in the moment, without judgment. You can either keep it or smoosh it at the end of your play session -- it doesn't matter, because there is no goal.

How Intuition Saved Her Life

For a spine-tingling story, listen to the episode on iTunes or Soundcloud to hear how intuition saved her life (did you think I was just going to tell you all the good stuff up front? 😉

Halley has been a CEO, a grunt on a factory trawler, a producer of multi-cast live concerts, a burger flipper, and an executive coach to name just a few of her illustrious careers. Halley is the author of Life Incorporated: A Practical Guide to Wholehearted Living, as well as the founder and CEO of Life, Incorporated — an organization that fosters mindful connection in all areas of life as the means to experience a wholehearted, fulfilling, and joyful life. Previously, Halley spent over a decade as a shareholder and CEO of a successful training and development company, where she both worked on and studied human dynamics and relationships and their impact on business and individual success. The focus of her company was on developing the art and skill of conversation as the vehicle for creating connection with teams, employees, leaders, and individuals, as well as transforming individual and collective results.