How do you use your intuition as a tool in decision-making?
Tag: decision-making
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Listen In -> Planning Yourself Out of Career Suicide #3: Criteria
After opening up so many possibilities by exploring clues last week, we now need a way to make choices. We need to go somewhere in particular instead of everywhere in general.What makes work meaningful and rewarding to you?
The answer to that question is different for each of us.
You may be looking for a particular role. You may want to fund a certain lifestyle. You may want to continually expand your responsibilities. You may want to leave work at the office at 5:00 p.m. You may be drawn to a certain industry.
The key is to be able to articulate (to yourself) your criteria for making your next decision.
Join Claudia and I as we discuss the value of knowing your criteria for making career decisions and the risks of not doing so.
Listen in.
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Loving Monday: Comic Book Superhero?
It’s the last week of school for the kids. Nothing is normal.My high school senior needs to be at school at a different time for a different purpose every day this week. My middle school senior—yes two graduations this year—still needs to be dropped off at the crack of dawn.
Am I supposed to be effective at work with all this stopping and starting, coming and going, switching between contexts and roles like a comic book super hero?
We all wear a variety of hats and assume a range of identities for the many roles we play at work, home, in our faith communities, and in our various social networks. But the willingness, agility and poise to make these sudden shifts are not always as simple as they seem to be for the comic book superheroes.
But is the real life superhero, the one for whom their instant, often sacrificial choices saved the day in the end? Or is the real life hero the person simply willing to make an instant, often sacrificial choice?
What validates the decisions we make in the midst of our complicated schedules, competing priorities, and unexpected demands, is not that the complicated becomes straightforward or the competing become ordered or the unexpected becomes regular. What validates our decisions is that we step to the plate and make them.
We don’t get to know ahead of time the outcome of all we choose. But such uncertainty doesn’t release us from still having to make the choice. Choose and choose again. And as soon as we see a choice not working out as we intended, adjust and choose again.
And so my schedule is undergoing its biannual massive shift around the school schedule. Life might be easier and my work might be more effective if such were not my situation. But my reality involves change, so I must face the change and adjust accordingly. Maybe not with the agility of a comic book superhero, but to the extent that I face the facts and deal with them… a hero nonetheless.
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Question of the Week
How will postponing this decision—in order to gather more information—really improve the decision you end up making?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
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Loving Monday: Do It Today
What’s the one thing that, more than any other, you want to get done this week?I know there are many candidates all shouting for your attention. But which one do you want to see completed most of all?
Do it today.
Yeah, go ahead and do it this morning. Get it done. Start the week off with a success that is important to you.
Give yourself the gift of diving into and polishing off a significant task right off the bat. It’ll feel great.
If it’s not a one-day project, then break it into three parts and complete the first part now.
You’ll give yourself a great Monday and set yourself up for a week of making and acting on choices.
On your side,
– Karl
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Question of the Week
While making a decision may cost you if it doesn’t work out, not making a decision will cost your more. How do you quantify the costs of your indecision?
The Question of the Week is offered to increase awareness of one’s personal leadership practices and encourage experimentation with creative alternatives.
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Deciding to Make Your Next Choice
Decision-making requires choices. But choices do not always suggest what decision needs to be made.We would like our options to lay themselves out neat and tidy as easy-to-compare alternatives where the pros and cons of each translated into a prioritized ranking with the clear winner presenting itself plainly.
No such luck!
Instead, a myriad of unrelated issues collide into incoherent and often contradictory alternatives from which every gain involves its share of setbacks.
My suggestion is to give up trying to make the “right” choice and settle on making the next choice. The next choice can be made over and over again, with appropriate adjustments for learning from previous choices.
Trying to discern the “right” or “correct” choice can quickly absorb a disproportionate amount of time and energy. The “next” choice can be incremental, experimental, and partial. You will be in motion making your “next” choice, which is far more productive than sitting still while searching for the “right” choice.
Do you have trouble making choices when no clear alternative presents itself? I’d love to hear a story or two about a recent decision-making quandary you faced.
On your side,
– Karl
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If You Resist Making Decisions At All
“It’s your fault!”
Whether your own words or words being said about you, they are decision-making killers.
If failure is a blame opportunity instead of a learning opportunity, then chances are you don’t gravitate toward making identifiable decisions. After all, if it doesn’t work out, then it’s your fault and there will be some sort of blaming consequence or punishment involved. So why bother?
If that sounds childish, it is. Leaders and teams that blame are using childhood finger-pointing to divert attention.
The trick is to own one’s decisions and be proud of it. Yes, even if they don’t work out. The difference lies is remaining in on-going decision-making mode and not shifting into conclusion-drawing blaming mode. One is a learning stance. The other is a judgment stance. One is coaching on the playing field. The other is name-calling from the sidelines.
In learning mode, we are able to adjust right away when a decision doesn’t work out as anticipated. We are motivated to say involved and make any necessary improvements. In blaming mode, time slips by while fault is assigned and consequences meted out. Morale drains away, and we become increasingly gun shy about sticking our necks out with future decisions.
If you have trouble making decisions at all, try adopting an Own-It, Learn-From-It and Adjust-Quickly approach to decision-making. It will change your life. And you’ll make better decisions along the way!
(Find the entire podcast/discussion series Decision-Making with Poise here.)
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If You Shoot From the Hip When Making Decisions
Ready… Fire!… Aim.
Does that describe your decision-making style? Well let me start by saying congratulations on being willing to make a decision! So many leaders avoid decisions, that I find it refreshing to come across those who don’t.
Unfortunately, the shoot-from-the-hip style has a serious weakness. It’s not grounded in reality. It may or may not be connected with the facts on the ground, understand the implications to other processes or people, or take into account facts and dynamics only known by others.
How about a simple pause? You don’t need to change your decision-making style altogether. But you probably could make a better decision and lead a healthier process if you had more information and involved more people.
So, pause.
Talk to a few people. Examine a couple of financial projections. Weigh the implications.
Then go with your gut, as you normally would. An informed intuition is better than a blind one.
And, yes, thank you for being willing to make a decision!
(Find the entire podcast/discussion series Decision-Making with Poise here.)
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If You Waffle When Making Decisions
Politics comes part and parcel with people at work. The dynamic of negotiating diverse opinions, agendas and priorities need not be negative.
Some of us find ourselves wanting to make everyone happy, though. As soon as we see the implications of our decision from a different perspective, we change our decision.
Willingness to change a decision can be a positive attribute if a better understanding of the facts on the ground will have a significant impact on our ability to achieve our stated goal.
But changing your mind can be disastrous if your rationale is rooted in self-protection, office politics, or people-pleasing. In such a situation, your focus has shifted to the response you are trying to elicit from others. Your focus needs to be steadfastly locked on the desired outcome of the decision.
Your team is proceeding down a certain path, and when they come to work the next day to discover that the path has been changed on them, frustration, resentment and resistance are sure to follow.
It doesn’t have to be this way. How has your waffling on decisions affected those around you?