The fine line between suspending judgement and trusting your BS meter.

I caught up with a close friend today who is pretty down. He has been let down because he trusted a few people he shouldn’t have. With all the best intentions, he went against his gut feeling and what his experience told him to do and gave folks the benefit of the doubt at the request of others. He “suspended” judgement and ignored his better judgement and got burned. It left me thinking: where does the fine line sit between being a “good person” by suspending pre-judgement versus listening to our personal bullshit meter?

Full disclaimer: I have not yet read the book but I have heard Malcolm Gladwell in three recent podcasts talking about his latest – Talking to Strangers. Rather than butcher it, I will only highlight my key takeaway from it. We, as humans, suck at judging whether or not someone is telling the truth based on what we observe. And when I say suck – I mean REALLY suck. As in not much better than guessing. We trust people way too much and tend to assume they are telling the truth. We may even be wired that way to always give people the benefit of the doubt.

We also know that over time, through experience, we develop the ability to exhibit foresight or projections in some settings which are better than average guesses based on what we have seen, heard or felt. While we must not be quite that good when it comes to judging character, I believe that we all somehow develop a “gut feeling” on who we should trust. That’s what I consider to be my “BS meter” and I have grown to trust mine. Sadly, I have also found, frankly, that very few people I am around recently have a very functional one. Almost daily I am shocked that people I work with can’t see through some people’s crap.

I was thinking of this as I did some reading around ‘left hand column’ thinking and communication. God help the world if my left hand column thoughts ever came out of my mouth as I listen to some folks! Paint would peel from the walls and my grandmother may rise from the grave to wash my mouth out with soap (as she did many times). But you know what? I trust my meter! And some of my meter readings actually make their way into my left hand column! Don’t get me wrong – thinking about why I may have preconceived ideas is a good exercise but when it comes to trusting people – I kind of think I will listen to that inner voice most of the time. I may not verbalise them, but those left hand column thoughts and my gut meter readings have more often than not been pretty close to accurate at the end of the day.

I felt bad for my buddy. He’s a great person and doesn’t deserve to pay the price because others wanted him to be “fair and suspend judgement”. Sorry – sometimes you have to trust your gut. In my opinion, that’s the art of leadership, coaching and life.