Rationality lays the foundations for empathy
I grew up professionally in recruitment agencies. Like most of my generation, I fell into it. It wasn’t a conscious career path.
But I got really lucky. I quickly fell in love with it, and now, even though I haven’t done full-time recruiting for a while (except for Attuned: we’re hiring!), I still love it.
Why? Because it’s complicated.
Many of the hundreds of aspiring recruitment consultants I’ve interviewed in the past wanted to get into the industry either because they wanted to help people, because they liked talking to people, or because they wanted to make lots of money. That wasn’t me. Neither Altruism (35%), Feedback (13%), nor Financial Needs (11%) are top motivators for me. But at 81%, Rationality most definitely is.
In my 20 years of recruitment before founding Attuned, I often felt like an oddball. I’m shy, introverted, and while during the week I’d talk to hundreds of people about their problems, on the weekends I didn’t want to meet anyone new. My reservoir of extroversion having run dry, I just wanted to spend time with my family.
What I loved about the industry was how difficult recruitment was. It was, and still is, broken, even though it is such a fundamental part of the circulatory system of companies, not to mention people’s lives. But too often companies and people make the wrong choices. I’ve seen so much time and money wasted, so many emotions inflamed, and the psychological wreckage that’s left behind when people misunderstand each other, have misplaced expectations, and ultimately make bad decisions.
Often, the root cause of these problems is a lack of rational thinking.
Satisfaction in Problem Solving
My first job in recruitment was at a very aggressive, locally founded Tokyo firm, where, on the first day of my orientation, I had a phonebook thrown at me while being asked why I wasn’t “on the f**king phone”. The partners there had a mantra that “Recruitment isn’t rocket science”. But, I’ve come to believe differently. If done well, it is.
In general, neither side of the marketplace—the hiring companies nor the candidates—have enough information. They also have biases and assumptions that jar their decision-making processes, and often draw on information that is incomplete and influences that are irrational, such as people in their 40s making career decisions based on what their parents wanted for them. And then there are the plethora of things that can go wrong after someone joins a company.
The sheer number of neurons that go into navigating this process is monumental, and for me, fascinating.
Work, and our work relationships, are such a huge part of our life experiences, but we often execute them so poorly. Trying to figure out how we can make better decisions, understand each other better at work, and communicate more deeply and empathetically are very difficult problems to solve. There are so many factors at play: neuroscience, psychology, network dynamics, societal structures—the list goes on—but working with a team of very smart, often Rationality-motivated individuals here at Attuned to fix these issues logically and scientifically is incredibly stimulating. It touches my Rationality Intrinsic Motivator deeply, and gets it all kinds of giddy.
The Power of Why
But it’s not always warm, rational fuzzies in my work life—because people are different!
My Rationality needs often manifest in a desire to get to first principles, to ask the five whys. In my 1-on-1s, there is often awkward silence and I sometimes get strange, searching looks from the other person as they try to figure out what’s going on while my brain works through scenarios based on what I’ve heard, trying to take it on board and find where it fits into the puzzle, and estimating how much more I should push. If the other person doesn’t have strong Rationality needs, they can get flustered, defensive, and sometimes even annoyed as I ask another “Why?” or pick apart the logic of their statement.
In a conscious effort to manage people who think differently to me, I’ve learned to lead with an “I’d just like to understand this more deeply” before I go further with my probing questions. It helps the other person understand that I’m not attacking them, just trying to get to the heart of the discussion in a rational and analytical way.
Building a Culture of Rationality
When it comes to decision-making at our company, I love a good debate with a rational thinker. In the past, I’ve had direct reports that were more inclined to ponder things slowly. They were effective in many ways, but couldn’t always keep up during our executive-level discussions, as logic, first principles, probing, and the ability to debate are the backbone of the culture within our executive team. Rationality is one of our corporate values, and it has become fundamental to our company culture. But during our startup journey there have been people (particularly those from the recruiting industry) who didn’t share an appreciation of Rationality, which, coupled with other value misalignments, resulted in them leaving.
Solving this for companies and individuals so that you get all the good stuff (be yourself, have self expression, drive towards first principles) without the bad (misunderstanding, misalignment, conflict) is the mission I am on at Attuned. It’s complicated, a problem that might take a lifetime to solve, and I’m inspired by it every day.
Through intuition and a bit of luck, I’ve got to a point in my career where all three of my top intrinsic motivations are deeply stimulated (the others are Autonomy and Competition). We are at the cutting edge of research on Intrinsic Motivation, deep into Psychological Safety, and pushing further and further with nudges and behavioral science. Exploring these areas and expanding the boundaries of what we know doesn’t feel like work to me.
Using Attuned and the systems we have created, companies and people no longer have to rely on luck and intuition. Instead, they can use science-backed, data-driven insights to help people understand each other better, form deeper, more human connections, and ultimately make better decisions.
And the fact that this pathway to greater empathy starts with a focus on Rationality makes me very happy indeed.