Episode 13: Finding Gold In Unexpected Places And Why Your First Impression Might Be Costing You

Are you writing off opportunities, people, and situations before you've really given them a chance? Your snap judgments might be limiting your potential more than you realize.

In this episode of "Conversational with Carrie Olsen," I explore the hidden cost of instant judgments and why stopping at your first impression could actually be costing your business. You'll discover how to find unexpected value in scripts, people, and situations while developing the curiosity that separates exceptional leaders from average ones.

Episode Highlights:

• The Speed Of Judgment - Research from Princeton University reveals we make character judgments in one-tenth of a second, faster than a blink, and these snap decisions often stick even when contradictory evidence appears (02:37)
• The Christoph Waltz Lesson - How the Oscar-winning actor found humanity in playing a Nazi villain by refusing to see his character as simply "evil," instead playing him as a detective who happens to wear a Nazi uniform (04:14)
• The Driver Safety Script Story - How discovering the real purpose behind a seemingly boring e-learning script transformed a simple narration job into a mission to protect actual people and solve real business problems (08:26)
• The Empathy Advantage - Why people with higher empathy skills are significantly better at interpreting ambiguous material and people, holding multiple possibilities in mind instead of committing to first impressions (06:04)
• The Five-Step Framework - A systematic approach to moving from judgment to curiosity to understanding that works for both voice acting scripts and navigating complex human relationships (10:28)

3 Key Takeaways

1. Hold Your First Reactions As Data, Not Decisions

Your initial impression that something is boring, difficult, or not worth your time is valuable information about your immediate reaction, but it shouldn't be your final verdict. Research shows that snap judgments stick even when we encounter contradictory evidence later, so the key is to notice your reaction without letting it become your conclusion. Ask yourself "why am I reacting this way?" as the beginning of curiosity, not the end of analysis.

2. Find The Logic That Makes Complexity Coherent

Whether you're interpreting a voice over script or understanding a difficult team member, your job is to find what makes their complexity make sense from the inside. The employee everyone has written off as lazy, the client who seems impossible to please, or the business partner who just doesn't get it—they're not one-dimensional. They're navigating complexity, pressures, fears, and motivations you can't see from the outside. The richness isn't in making everything simple; it's in honoring the fact that human behavior is layered, complex, and sometimes contradictory.

3. Professionals Bring Deep Engagement To Everything, Not Just The Exciting Stuff

As a voice actor, when you only dig deep on scripts that immediately inspire you, you're leaving money on the table. The scripts that appear less interesting on the surface are actually where you can add the most value. The same is true in leadership—when you only deeply engage with easy people and exciting opportunities, you're leaving massive potential untapped. The people and situations that require the most work to understand are often the places where you can create the most significant transformations.

My Perspective

I used to be terrified of what people thought about me, wasting mental energy obsessing over every conversation. But voice acting taught me that the more authentic I was behind the microphone, the better I performed. That authenticity started spilling over into everything else. I stopped micromanaging other people's experience of me and started showing up as myself. This same principle applies to how we see others—when we stop flattening people into simple categories and start honoring their complexity, relationships transform.

Action Step: The Five-Step Framework For Finding Gold

Apply this systematic approach to one person or situation you've already judged this week: 

(1) Observe without deciding—notice your reaction but don't let it become your conclusion

(2) Research the context—what's happening in their world that you can't see?

(3) Get curious—why would their behavior make perfect sense from their perspective?

(4) Make it coherent—don't stop until their actions make complete sense,

(5) Test interpretations—could this be something other than what you assumed? Document what you find and notice when your first judgment was wrong.

Resources Mentioned

• Princeton University research on snap judgments and character assessment
• Memory and Cognition study on empathy and interpretation skills
• Inglourious Basterds and Christoph Waltz's approach to playing Hans Landa

Connect With Me

• Follow me on Instagram @carrieolsenvo

• Text VOICE to 55444 for my free resources
• Leave me a voice message to let me know what you thought of the episode 

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Thanks for tuning in to Conversational with Carrie Olsen! See you next week!