How much ego gets wrapped into your decisions?
Can you imagine how freeing it would be not to have to dedicate so much energy to self-protection? Do you inadvertently avoid making a decision in order to avoid complaints, blame or other consequences of being the one to make the final call?
In this week’s podcast conversation, we talk about developing a secure poise in decision-making. Join us as we think about being willing to make difficult calls with limited information.
Listen in.
Well it seems to be a toss-up among the economists whether or not the U.S. is in a recession. Of course, the semantics are lost on anyone who has already lost their job.
I hope you are not struggling with the fear and anxiety of job loss. If you are, then let’s get together and talk.
Sometimes it takes something difficult to force us to take action on something good. I want to suggest that a tight job market may actually be a opportune time to rethink your career direction.
Instead of passively hoping against hope that you don’t lose your job, take control and use the opportunity to reimagine your professional possibilities. It’s the difference between a posture of worry and paralysis versus a posture of composure and choices. Same ambiguous situation, completely different experiences of it!
If you don’t have a copy of our Passion Finder yet, it is an excellent tool for times such as these. Take a look at it now. Get a copy for a struggling friend.
And, of course, I am available to help you take a more intentional look at your job and yourself.
On your side,
– Karl
How do you use your gut feelings or intuition as a tool in decision making?
A timely decision in not necessarily a quick decision.
In this week’s podcast interview, Claudia and I highlight the unforgiving reality that time imposes on decision-making.
Whether we like it or not, with us or without, time marches on. We do not have the luxury of evaluating data and issues until we are certain that we’re making the “right” decision.
We offer three categories of decision-making urgency: crisis issues, functional issues, and structural issues. I think you’ll find them helpful for discerning how quickly you need to make your call and move forward.
Listen in.
It might be your decision to make, but your decision isn’t about you.
A sure-fire way to make a poor decision is to make yourself, your reputation, your authority, your work standards, or your self-perception one of the issues.
In this week’s podcast interview on being more intentional in decision-making, we share some ideas for shifting the focus of your criteria off of yourself and onto the outcome you want coming out of this decision.
In any healthy workplace culture, we are accountable for achieving outcomes. Some of us, though, find that accountability a cause for concern. Subtly our attention shifts from achieving results to how we are being viewed by our superiors. Deadly.
Our best chance for making decisions that achieve is to keep our own egos out of the equation. That may be the most difficult decision we ever have to make!
Marcus Goodyear solicits a story from me about an odd job I’ve had.
As ordinary as the job might normally have been, it became an extremely odd one the day I had to tell 10% of the firm that they were being laid off… effective immediately.
How it became my job to fulfill this grievous and thankless task, I’m not quite sure. I remember dreading it for days. I remember the look of shock on each person’s face. I remember every question about their future well-being, for which I had no answer.
Life and work collide in strange ways at times. Decisions ensuring the well-being of the whole result in harm for more than a few. Short term harm, we hope and trust. But we do not know.
Once the employment relationship is severed, other forms of relationship feel awkward… even inappropriate. Who am I to ask about their feelings, when I have just upended their world from my position of power and security?
It’s the difficult decisions that make us think most deeply; feel most intensely; and, hopefully, choose most courageously. We don’t get to track the future implications, consequences, and eventualities that came of that fateful day. I am left holding neither all the responsibility nor no responsibility for all the choices by all the people involved from that point on.
It’s life and work in real time. Often it involves the oddest jobs.
Not all our decisions are based on facts. Not all our facts are accurate interpretations of reality.
Our “take” on any given decision depends on the accuracy and completeness of our understanding of the issues involved. In other words, whether or not our perceptions are grounded in reality.
Could your frustration with a certain employee’s performance really be a frustration with your own inability to provide clear instructions? Could the recent drop in sales have more to do with a drop in product quality than the missed goals of the sales team?
Crucial is whether you have a safe way to get as many issues as possible out on the table. Are you involving others in the issue-unearthing process or are you operating in isolation? Do you have access to a variety of perspectives and sources of information?
Listen to this week’s podcast conversation and tell us how you stay grounded in reality when making decisions.
This week Claudia and I begin laying out a positive framework for more effective decision-making.
Key is becoming aware of your focus. Is it the decision itself? Is it the problem being addressed? Is it on getting enough information to make an informed decision?
We’re going to suggest you focus on the outcome you want to see result from the decision.
Listen in.
If you were to delegate 50% of your workload, what criteria would you use to decide what would be done by others? Why?
I’ve been thinking about the value of formal education since returning from a college tour with my daughter.
Granted there’s an expectation in the culture that necessitates degree work for appropriate professional credentialing. But in addition to that, there is the importance of being able to think clearly, comprehensively and complexly in order to meet the challenges of 21st century planet Earth.
I’m not a big fan of the job-focused approach to education. While being able to secure a job is vital in this money-based world, we need more than the capacity to impress to result from our education.
Try asking yourself, “Whose world is this?”
If your answer is, “Theirs” then your focus becomes figuring out what “they” expect and making sure you have it. Once you learn their rules, your education becomes a means to comply and compete. To get the job and to keep the job.
If your answer is, “Mine” then your focus becomes figuring out what “you” want and making sure you are taking steps to make it happen. You become a participator in making the rules, and your education becomes a means to think and act more creatively, more systematically, more resourcefully. To show up fully and make a difference.
If you have teens like I do, whose world are you preparing them to inhabit?