WHAT IS YOUR DECISION-MAKING STYLE?

By: Nick Tasler

Best-selling author, Nick Tasler, reveals how to start making winning decisions about your career, your people and your strategy.

Great decisions require two things: a map and a G.P.S. Most organizations understand the power of good decisions so they train their people to use a standard decision-making process, problem-solving or critical thinking model. That model is your map.

But have you ever identified from which direction you’re coming from? If I were leaving from Minneapolis and you were leaving from Atlanta we’d both need to take two very different paths to get to Chicago, wouldn’t we? That’s true even if we were using identical, company-issued maps. That’s why shopping mall directories always tell us “You are here.” That’s also why a Global Positioning System is quickly replacing the road atlas as the must-have navigation tool.

So does your organization’s problem-solving model come equipped with G.P.S.? If not, many of your people might be getting lost, even if you’ve taught them how to use a perfectly good map.

Factoring You into Your Decisions
Everyone comes from one of two basic directions when approaching a decision. In other words some of us come from the east and others of us come from the west. That direction depends on your innate decision-making style. Take the brief quiz below to give you a ballpark estimate of your style.

1. a) I do my best work when I have to make quick decisions
b) I do my best work when I have plenty of time to think through my options

2. a) I would choose a 100% chance of winning $1,000
b) I would choose a 50% chance of winning $2,000

3. a) I thoroughly analyze before making a decision
b) I make quick decisions even if I don’t have all the facts

4. a) I thoroughly examine the consequences before trying something new
b) I’m usually one of the first people to try something new

5. a) I choose my words carefully
b) I say what’s on my mind without much thought

6. a) I usually go for it when I see something I want
b) I closely examine the risks before making a choice

7. a) I am quicker to jump on new opportunities than most people
b) I prefer to think things through before pursuing new opportunities

8. a) I rely more on gut instinct
b) I rely more on research and evidence

If you answered mostly “a” then you probably have a Risk Managing style of decision making. Three out of four people like to consider every option closely and will almost always choose the safer bird-in-the-hand option.

On the other hand, if you answered mostly “b” then you might be the one out of four people who are Potential Seekers. You pay attention to risk, but it’s not nearly as important to you as the potential for reward.

You can be a great decision maker with either style. The first step is understanding from which direction you’re coming from, and whether you naturally pay more attention to risk or to reward. Because that style is literally shaping the decisions that shape your future.

Find Nick's book "The Impulse Factor" @:
http://www.amazon.com/Impulse-Factor-Innovative-Approach-Decision/dp/1439157278

The One Asset Every Effective Leader Must Have

By: Nick Tasler

It’s not charisma. It’s not intelligence, either. It’s not even integrity. It’s a skill that all of us have, but surprisingly few of us know how to maximize.

What is the one thing all effective leaders have in common? That’s the multi-billion dollar question posed virtually every day from Minneapolis to Mumbai by store managers and sales associates to the top brass in the C-suites.

To find out, let’s do a quick experiment. Take a few seconds to imagine the most effective leader you’ve ever worked with. Get a clear image of that person in your mind. Was that leader bold or sensitive? Were they known for being charismatic or soft-spoken? Were they visionary or pragmatic? Were they book-smart or streetwise?

An effective leader can be any one of those things, can’t they? The only thing every effective leader does is make good decisions—good people decisions and good strategy decisions. Here’s why: Other people—whether they are hourly sales associates, corporate team members or company shareholders—won’t follow somebody whose choices lead to dead ends. Without good decisions, no amount of charisma or honest intentions can save a leader from failure.

How to Start Making Better Decisions
The good news is that anyone can become a better decision-maker by better understanding the two key elements that produce a decision: the person and the situation. Think of it like this: Person x Situation = Decision.

Most decision-making experts focus on identifying how people make decisions in different situations. For example, if people are given a choice between one bird in the hand or two birds in the bush, we know from common sense and decades of research that most people will—you guessed it—take a bird in the hand. Sounds right, doesn’t it?

The problem is that “people” don’t make your decisions, you do. So, it doesn’t matter that three out of four people will choose a bird in the hand, if you’re the fourth person who dove headfirst into the bush. It doesn’t matter if three out of four people are reluctant to open that new store in Shanghai or invest in that new social media channel if you’re the fourth one who already signed the lease and uploaded your avatar on TheNewNewThing.com.

What matters is that you understand how you tend to make decisions, as well as how you leverage that tendency for the best results. You not only need to know whether you’ll make the decision or not, but also how you’ll tend to execute it, how you’ll tend to adjust during the process, and how you’ll learn from it in order to make an even better decision the next time.

Be Your Own Coach

By: Nick Tasler

In today’s highly uncertain environment, wouldn’t it be nice to have a wise advisor available to you 24/7? Help keep you, your team, and your organization on track?

In fact, that sagely guidance is more accessible to you than you think, and it doesn’t even require you to keep a high-priced executive coach on retainer. You could be just the advisor you’ve been looking for.

Executive coaches perform two essential functions. First, they provide clients with sound, objective advice. Secondly, they help clients execute that advice. With a few simple yet highly effective, proven techniques you can start tapping into your inner coach.

How to Give Yourself Sound Advice
Recall someone you know - a colleague, an employee or boss - who recently made a decision that they now regret. You saw it coming. Your advice was right on the money, even though you’re too big of a person to say “I told you so” (even if you're thinking it).

Now, think of a regrettable decision that you made recently. Maybe you wasted budget dollars on that unnecessary office equipment, or let your envy of a competitor drive you into a saturated market. Or maybe you compounded a problem with your team by putting off a tough decision. In hindsight, the right choice was clear all along, but you botched it up.

We’ve all been in both of these situations. Why is it that we’re so good at giving advice to other people, but so often blunder when giving ourselves advice?

It's all about objectivity and emotion. When we dish out advice to others, we really don’t have anything to lose or to gain, which removes emotion from the situation. So, we can give clear advice on what someone should do because we don’t have a vested interest. On the other hand, our emotions kick into overdrive when we’re the ones taking the big risk or potentially receiving the big reward.

But with just a little imagination we can overcome our less rational selves. Psychologists have discovered that when people imagine a situation as though it were happening to a friend instead of to themselves, they are able to think much more logically. Katherine Milkman, a researcher at the Wharton School, explains that this simple trick can shift our entire mode of thinking. Pretending that we are the coach advising the client moves us from what psychologists call "system 1" thinking (the “want” system driven by our impulses and emotions) to "system 2" thinking (the more deliberate and logical “should” system).

So, the next time you’re trying to decide what to do, imagine that a friend has come to you for guidance on the situation. What would you advise?

Of course, once you’ve adopted that outside perspective and decided what you need to do, the next step is to actually follow the course of action.

How to Act on Sound Advice
NYU Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer and his colleagues have amassed more than two decades of evidence supporting the idea that wording can make all the difference between intention and action. When we frame our advice with an if-then format, we are far more likely to follow through. For example, instead of saying that you “want to spend more time on strategic planning,” or that you “will try to be more strategic this month” you should phrase it as “if I’m still at the office after Wednesday’ status meeting, then I will spend 30 minutes on strategic planning.”

The power of the if-then format comes from its ability to create instant habits. The “if” part of the statement places an automatic reminder in your brain to be on the lookout for a specific situation. When your brain recognizes that you are indeed sitting in your office after Wednesday’s status meeting, it automatically cues you to perform the “then” action (i.e. “spend 30 minutes on strategic planning.”) If-then formatting replaces the years of behavioral conditioning it would normally take to create a habit. Gollwitzer has found that if-then phrasing makes people as much as two to three times more likely to stick to an exercising regimen, eat healthier, avoid distraction, and do just about anything else that typically pits us against our own wills and wants. The same technique can help you bridge the gap between your intentions and your behaviors.

One day, you might find that you want the expert guidance of a bona fide executive coach. Until then, you can turn yourself into a quality interim by taking an outside perspective on your future courses of action, and by using if-then planning to execute them.

Help Your People Do a Better Job

By: Nick Tasler

Disengagement happens. Contrary to what most of us think, however, poor management isn’t always the cause. The fact is that being an inspiring, emotionally intelligent leader and an excellent coach isn’t always enough to keep your people fully focused and productive. Sometimes they need a change to their job more than they need a change to their manager.

A team of researchers led by Justin Berg, now a graduate student at the Wharton school, developed an innovative tool called the Job Crafting Exercise. Based on more than a decade of research, the tool helps guide employees through a process of reorganizing their current job tasks into new self-defined “roles.” It not only helps employees see their jobs differently, it helps them do their jobs differently. The result is a more engaged and ultimately, more productive employee.

Five Steps to Reinvigorating Your Team With Job Crafting:
1. Clarify the Business Objectives of their Job. Before allowing employees to begin the Job Crafting Exercise, it’s vital for managers to clearly state the outcomes that an employee’s job needs to produce for the organization. After all, the exercise is futile if employees become fully engaged in a job that fails to produce results.

2. Allow Employees to Complete the Job Crafting Exercise. The tool instructs employees to list their current job tasks, and then their strengths—what the employee is good at doing; their passions—what types of tasks the employ enjoys doing; and motives—what outcomes the employee wishes to achieve from their work, such as pay or recognition. Employees then arrange their strengths, passions and motives into clusters with certain job tasks. These clusters become the new self-defined roles of their job. Berg emphasizes that employees don’t actually eliminate any of their essential job tasks when completing the exercise. They simply reorganize their job tasks in a way that is more personally satisfying.

3. Don’t Interfere. “Managers have to let go of the prison guard tendency,” Amy Wrzesniewski says. Wrzesniewski, a professor at the Yale School of Management and one of the tools co-creators explains that as long as managers have properly clarified the job’s required outcomes and provided adequate reasoning for why these objectives are necessary, the manager must let her people go through the exercise on their own. This key distinction is what makes the tool so much more effective than traditional “job design” techniques in which managers or HR departments designed an employee’s job for them.

4. Create a Plan with the Employee. Once the employee completes the exercise, managers should sit down with employees to discuss how they can help the put that new job role into action. This isn’t a managerial sign-off ritual as much as it is a short working session (30-40 minutes) to make sure that both manager and employee are working toward the same ends. It’s also a learning opportunity for the manager. Co-creator and distinguished professor at the University of Michigan, Jane Dutton points out that one of the bonuses of job crafting is that management often learns about more effective ways of working that they can apply to other areas of the organization.

5. Craft in Teams. “In a team environment,” Wrzesniewski says “it’s often beneficial for employees to do a little job-swapping.” Inevitably, the Job Crafting Exercise will reveal necessary tasks that an individual employee doesn’t care much for doing. Some employees like more social tasks such as making phone calls or attending meetings, while others love digging into more solitary problem-solving tasks. Both sets of tasks need to be completed by the team, but it usually doesn’t matter which individual performs which task.

While it’s undoubtedly true that disengagement happens, nobody says it has to happen for long.