We all know what I mean when I say 'the vibe was off'. Should this be factored into our decision making?
Given I also advocate for reference class forecasting as 'the norm'...am I a hypocrite?
I actually won a role for a transformation at a major South Australian institution; in the context of this state, a 'once in a lifetime' opportunity. I wanted it, and I prepared hard for it.
Then I sat in the foyer of the transformation office before the interview, and watched an intra-team meeting end.
Disgruntled body language. Bemused glances. Passive-aggressive shrugs and snarky remarks on the way out the door. But more than that...something I'd felt from the moment I walked into the building, before I could rationally name a single reason for it.
I did the interview anyway and genuinely liked my 'would be' bosses. Less than 2 days later and I was offered the job. I turned it down for defensible (and true) reasons about being offered a more lucrative contract concurrently.
But in reality and through a vignette I will share at the end of this article...I was out the moment I felt the danger.
Was that data, or paranoia?
In my formative years I was lucky enough to regularly work with TMS Global® - Igniting Human Potential at Work and their highly effective Team Management Profile (TMP). It helped me understand my earlier leanings towards 'Belief' in processing information and why often my honest answer on planning and decision making was "gut feel" — said with the confidence of someone hoping nobody asks a follow-up question.
I then spent the next 10 years of my career becoming much more strategic, commercial and hard-nosed; arguably, I was successful. But it was still my honed ability to 'read a room' and gauge what someone truly felt, that my colleagues really valued.
The science behind why my sense of 'the vibe' was a career advantage, came into sharp focus when I was lucky enough to hear Fiona Kerr speak at a Newday Leadership Summit (and hence one of the 10,000 reasons I am forever indebted to the wonderful humans Katrina Webb-Denis PLY OAM and Matthew Wright-Simon!)
Dr Kerr was as 'on point' and engaging as the reputation that preceded her (Founder of The NeuroTech Institute, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and a PhD researcher into the neurophysiology of what happens between humans when they interact) backed up by her published proper academic work on all of this.
I'm not smart enough for most of it but thankfully she and co-author Lekki Maze were kind enough to also write a brilliant holiday-read version — The Art & Science of Looking Up — and I've re-read it every summer since, as a way of encouraging myself to actually follow its principles.
Gut feel is the real deal, if you understand the science. Or someone kindly translates it for you...
The science: brains synchronise.
The most salient point I took from the talk that day and my dog-eared copy: human connection is a physical event. When people interact through gaze, voice, touch and movement, their brains and bodies synchronise; within a person, and between people.
The peer-reviewed anchors run the same direction. Uri Hasson's lab at Princeton scanned speakers telling unrehearsed personal stories, and listeners hearing them, and found the listener's brain activity mirrors the speaker's; the tighter the coupling, the better the comprehension.
The sharpest finding in the paper sits a layer deeper: in the best listeners, parts of the brain ran ahead of the speaker — predicting where the story was going a beat before it arrived. Is this what I have (more through enjoyment rather than professional grind) calibrated my brain towards?
Suzanne Dikker ran EEG headsets in a real high-school classroom for a semester; brain-to-brain synchrony across the group predicted engagement and how connected students felt to each other.
I realise this is a young field with plenty still contested or even 'unknown unknowns'. But the direction is consistent: your read of a room, is your nervous system reporting data it genuinely collected. Mine collected a full dataset in that foyer, and a confirming sample later in the most unexpected circumstance...
Leading complex change requires you to engage with the vibe
Hasson's coupling happens between a speaker and a listener.
A broadcast message has a high failure rate in terms of that 'coupling'. It's pot luck if a nervous system falls into step with a cascade pack.
Change happens one conversation at a time. Chapter 6 of my upcoming book carries the argument in full. Belief, the honest name for culture, travels on synchrony. And synchrony is built in conversation.
Multiple conversations and if possible, some shared sense making and collaboration.
Yes, it's effort - intensive and ongoing. But is it more effort than a failed transformation?
Returning to reference classes, the one for transformations isn't good...so if it means something to you, try something different.
(Sitting with a change where the belief clearly isn't travelling? That's exactly what Pragma was built for…bring it your real situation.)
Human connection first, even remotely
My whole practice is remote-first, so I approach this research with a practical question rather than a return-to-office agenda: how do you receive the signal through a screen?
My honest answer is that it takes extra effort and I've had to retrain.
I scan the full Teams grid now, not just the speaker.
I notice who's laughing on mute.
I make rapport chat before and after meetings (mostly because I'm lucky enough to really like the project teams I work with!), and I call people for five minutes about nothing in particular…which is really five minutes about them.
I've relearned to read the shift in a seat, the glance away — in nine little rectangles instead of across a table.
Those skills came from years physically in the room. The digital versions had to be deliberately rebuilt.
An indulgent epilogue: does the universe have a sense of humour or was it looking out for me?
Trust the read; it's data. Then verify it the only way the mechanism allows — one conversation at a time.
After that fateful foyer experience, in the evening (in a coincidence I appreciate is neither typical nor particularly relatable) I was on a date, and we inadvertently ended up at the pub where the same transformation team happened to be having their '3 month milestone' drinks...
It was strange to be suddenly hiding from my new potential bosses that I had met only hours before! Even more strange (as I was making a hasty exit) was the confirmation bias I got walking past an assortment of teams on the way to the bathroom: loud grumbling, outright frustration, inter-table mockery...the group dynamics on full display.
Two bursts of bad vibes in one day?! This program would be a complete slog, fighting the sheer volume of disruption the whole way.
If culture is a verb, then it's time leaders better understand why, how and when we can create the literal resonance we need for true engagement.
Dr Fiona Kerr and Lekki Maze's The Art & Science of Looking Up is the accessible entry point to this field. The Newday Leadership Summit is a highlight for freshening up your perspective. Researched quoted in this article: Stephens, Silbert & Hasson (2010), PNAS on speaker–listener neural coupling; Dikker et al. (2017), Current Biology on classroom brain-to-brain synchrony, since extended in follow-up work.