Selecting the Right Home: Follow your Gut!

So far this year NFL QB Tom Brady has eclipsed even his own stratospheric standards for good decision making, as evidenced by a touchdown to interception ratio of 27/4.  How does he do it?   Tom’s decision making happens repeatedly in a few frenetic seconds before a linebacker crushes him into the ground.  He must make a series of choices that happen so fast that they don’t really seem like decisions.  The velocity of the game makes thought impossible.  As soon as Brady glances at one of his receivers, he must immediately decide if the receiver will be open a few seconds in the future.  He’s evaluating options in his sub-conscious mind, and is taking his guidance from his EMOTIONS.  When he glances at a receiver who is covered he FEELS a slight twinge of fear, and when he glances at an open receiver, he experiences a “subtle burst of positive emotion.”

It’s clear that the quarterback is the most important player on the team.  There is an un-mistakable correlation between the quarterback’s decision making and the team’s success.  If you want to win, you MUST have a top-tier quarterback.   Because quarterback play is paramount, the poor teams with the high draft picks often select a quarterback with their first pick. Yet, it’s risky to spend a high draft pick on a QB.  For every Peyton Manning there is a Ryan Leaf. 

Determining which QBs will succeed seems to be more art than science.  NFL teams evaluate all draft prospects with a battery of tests: athletic ability, arm strength, release time, footwork, throwing accuracy… and cognitive ability.  The Wonderlic is the main test administered to test cognitive abilities.  For QB’s there has been limited predictive value for this test.  Alex Smith and Matt Leinart both scored high on the Wonderlic, and have been poor decision-makers on the field.  I wonder if NFL executives are looking for a way to measure how finely tuned prospective QBs emotions are.   The two best quarterbacks I have seen are Tom Brady and Joe Montana.  Joe was a third round selection, and Tom was not taken until the sixth round.  Joe Montana and Tom Brady must have emotional sensors that are significantly more sensitive than their peers.  Is there a test for this ability that NFL executives are missing?

It seems paradoxical that your emotions can be more sensitive and accurate than your rational thought centers.  Lehrer will help you understand the role of dopamine and how it “automatically” detects subtle patterns that we cannot consciously comprehend.   The brain then uses these patterns to create predictions about how the world works, and then translates these predictions into emotions.  There is a great real-world analogy/experiment about information overload in the stock market.  Subjects are given lots of information about twenty different stocks over a ticker-tape.  When asked which stocks performed best, the subjects had difficulty answering.  If instead they were asked about which stocks trigger the best feelings, they were able to identify the best stocks.   The second question quizzed the emotional brain, which is remarkably sensitive to the actual performance.

Joe Montana and Tom Brady may have entered the NFL with superior “emotional intelligence,” and it’s clear that they nurtured these talents.  Lehrer describes how dopamine neurons need to be continually trained and retrained.  “Trusting one’s emotions required constant vigilance; intelligent intuition is the result of deliberate practice.”   Maybe the most common trait shared by Montana and Brady is the quality of their coaching. 

How We Decide is full of many great stories of superior and problematic decision making.   I was fascinated and humbled by stories of truly heroic and creative decision making under pressure.   There are also tragic stories about the consequences of too much logic or not enough logic in the decision-making process.  I gained a heightened appreciation for the game of poker which seems to equally challenge the logical and emotional parts of the brain.

Lehrer confirmed for me that our service for buyers is fundamentally sound.  We spend some time during each buyer appointment talking about the economics of our market and the traits of neighborhoods and homes that are more highly valued.  We do not get specific about the valuation or negotiation strategy for any particular homes until it has been chosen.   Picking the right home is a decision best done by emotional sensors of the brain; adding logic can confuse the selection process.  After the right home has been selected, we work through an exhaustive estimation of value and develop our negotiation strategy.  With this strategy in place, we then maintain the discipline to only proceed with a deal if it meets the pre-established business requirements.  Decisions requiring emotional intelligence are unburdened by the noise of logic, and the deal must adhere to the business logic. 

We’ll take our guidance from the likes of Joe and Tom’s coaches, Bill Walsh and Bill Belichick, and measure our success by the quality of the decisions made by our buyer-clients.

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