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LEADERSHIP: TESTING YOUR GUT INSTINCTS
"How to test your decision-making instincts"
by Andrew Campbell and Jo Whitehead, McKinsey Quarterly, May 2010
(Please note: pages linked here may require a subscription with the publisher to view the full page)
What do these four statements have in common: I always exclude my own interests from business decisions; I exercise a strong sense of objectivity; I’ve learnt to proceed slowly and not rush decisions; unsurprisingly, the record shows I make good ones? The first link is lack of self-awareness – assuming I believe them. More importantly, as the authors of a recent article argue, there’s need for psychological checks to keep us honest – and out of trouble. Here’s how.
Let’s start with a bit of background. The authors of the above article stress (and it’s intuitively easy to accept) that each of our past experiences has an emotional tag on it. The horse that kicked you would have left a negative tag. Your first boss’s generosity a positive one. And, the mixed behaviour of the first team you led may have created a tag reminding you about humans and their differences. So today when you meet a new horse or boss, or lead a new team, the old imprints play a part in your reactions and decisions about whether to go riding, agree to work with that boss or how you lead the new team.
Let’s now look at the authors’ four tests. Ask yourself how your colleagues would rate you on each?
- Independence: when the business has to relocate, do you keep your commute and other personal priorities out of the equation? If you personally have a lot at stake, do you table your conflict?
- Measured emotions: tags are not all of the same intensity. If your first experience with Government employees was upsetting and unsuccessful, will that inhibit you in negotiating a Government contract for your company? Can you neutralise that emotional loading?
- True familiarity: is your current situation really similar to previous ones? Just because it’s a crisis, doesn’t mean it’s the same as previous ones you handled well. The lessons from what you did and their emotional success-tagging may be quite misleading. Would team members say you detect the differences between current and past situations – and adjust your decisions and actions?
- Feedback: did you get honest feedback on those earlier situations – thus ensuring each received its right tag? Perhaps it wasn’t as successful as your thought. Did anyone have the courage to tell you you’d stuffed up? And, did you believe them – or rationalise a different memory?
Think of when you were last appointed to a new role: how well did you evaluate the new challenges and the relevance (or irrelevance!) of your experience? Today, with so much technological and market disruption, how have these depreciated your experiences and the relevance of their associated tags?
In addition, with the team you lead today: have you worked out how they differ from other teams (in age profile, skill attributes or personal requirements) and recognised the need for different leadership actions? To this end, you should create a personal Leadership Action Plan – ignoring old assumptions and approaches and their now-irrelevant emotional messages. Otherwise, you’re heading for a failure – with a new and nasty emotional tag attached.
Categories for this Potshot:
McKinsey articles, Career planning, Take tough decisions, Foster learning and reinventing, Be EQ-effective, Show self-leadership,
Dr. Timothy Pascoe AM
PhD (Cambridge), MBA (Harvard), BE & BEc (Adelaide)
Creator, V|E|C|T|O|R Leadership®
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