Thin slicing, Trust and Teaming – intuition and science?

Marc de Rond introduced this idea of thin slicing to a group of us during an offsite…and I am fascinated, truly fascinated, by how we could be thin slicing in our virtual work worlds. Though the origins of thin slicing are in the real world.

What’s thin slicing?

The term thin slicing refers to the process of making very quick inferences (usually in less than a few minutes) about the state, characteristics or details of an individual or situation with minimal amounts of information. Research has found that brief judgments based on thin slicing are similar to those judgments based on far more information. Judgments based on thin slicing can be as accurate, or even more so, than judgments based on more information. This holds true even when based on observing only a few seconds of the interaction with the first moments of the interaction being the most relevant.

Why the fascination with thin slicing?

My fascination with this is that we have been hard-wired from neanderthal times to thin slice. In the work world, we talk and train endlessly for body language and non-verbal cues. But what happens when a pandemic hits, we rapidly switch to Zoom, and some of that training gets thrown out of the window as I no longer know how strong Mrs. Client’s handshake actually is?

With the pandemic, we had to shift this ability of in-person thin slicing to in-virtual thin slicing. Can our brain even do that?! Has the hard-wiring been reset since the pandemic? The pandemic was a species-level event that could have/may have rewired our brains to allow us to take the in-person thin slicing skill into the virtual world. Did it? Have we as a species now developed a new physiological/physical part in our brain that allows the in-person thin slicing to transfer over to the virtual world?

My colleagues, Sarah Bachert and Nazneen Kheriwala , did a quick Google search (because that is what you do!) to see if there is research since the start of the pandemic on how thin slicing might work in virtual environments. And we didn’t really come up with much. Ruchi Srivastava , our EY wavespace Knowledge Lead, found some research on Moral Thin-Slicing: How snap judgments affect online sharing of moral content by Julian De Freitas and Alon Hafri.

How’s Gitanjali handling thin-slicing on Teams calls?

Knowing that thin sliced judgments are being made - of me, of you, and by others - allows me now to prepare for these virtual interactions. Being aware of and then preparing for a virtual interaction may increase my chance of creating the impression I want to make vs. one that is made for me by the team on the other side of the laptop screen.

Knowing that one’s traits are observed and judged on a subconscious level and being aware of the difficulty to thin slice virtually has allowed me to finetune the cues I send out on a Teams call.

1. Cue – Smiling, authentically: The subconscious judgment I hope the Teams participant will make is that I am approachable, and that I am not mad at the world or had missed breakfast.
2. Cue – Attention with intent: Making sure that I give people my full attention, even though I really badly want to continue messaging others on Teams, or desperately need to reply to a client’s email. This means having discipline: No multi-chatting, no phone, no staring off into space.

My personal take away: Thin slicing and trust go hand-in-hand. In my daily life, I work with many different people, roles, personalities. Reflecting on our brain power to thin slice helps me understand that I can trust my gut feeling, as well as continue to learn as my brain slices reality into very thin bits. In our collaboration settings in EY’s wavespace, participants are often comforted to know that we design sessions that cater for capturing "gut instinct." The power of thin slicing plays an important role in our decision making: trust your and others gut feeling.