What Are You Asking People to Lose?
Publication: change management | decision making | influence | leadership | Loss Aversion
Have you ever held on to something longer than you should have because you didn’t want to let it go? Perhaps it was a project you’d spent months developing, a role you’d outgrown, an item you no longer needed or a decision you were reluctant to revisit. You can become attached to what you already […]
The Shortcuts That Cost You Influence
Publication: decision making | Leadership effectiveness | workplace efficiency | Workplace Trust
My mum recently had a medical appointment, and my dad went along for support. Like many conversations, it wandered a little, and at one point Dad mentioned something about his own health. What my parents didn’t know at the time was that the doctor was using an AI tool to take notes. When Mum later […]
What Happens Before You Make Your Case?
Publication: communication | decision making | leadership | priming | Strategic influence
One thing people often ask me is, “How do I get people to listen to my ideas?” Usually, they’re thinking about how to make their case more compelling, explain their thinking or get someone to see what they see and agree with their idea. But there’s another part of strategic influence that receives less attention: […]
How Do You Challenge What You Can’t Immediately Disprove?
Publication: Critical Thinking | decision making | Evidence-Based Leadership | leadership | Workplace Culture
Recently, I read an email from The Atlantic that took me behind the scenes of its fact-checking process, with research chief Yvonne Rolzhausen explaining how far fact-checkers go before a feature is published. Depending on the story’s complexity, the process can take hours, weeks or even months. The article is reformatted with wide margins. Checkable facts are […]
Who Holds the Leader? Why Authentic Leadership Needs Trusted Challenge
Publication: Authentic Leadership | decision making | leadership | leadership isolation | mentoring
Recently, several senior leaders have asked me for advice as they navigated genuinely difficult situations. There were complex relationships, competing expectations and decisions with no obvious or risk-free answer. I asked questions and challenged assumptions, offered analysis and different perspectives, and we worked through options. Yet when they later reflected on what had helped the […]
The Negotiation Trap That Starts Before The Conversation Begins
Publication: BATNA | decision making | influence | leadership | negotiation
Second article in a three-part series on negotiating at work. Early in my career, I was involved in a high-stakes negotiation that required far more preparation than I had expected. Before we entered the room, we went through intensive negotiation training. We prepared the issues, mapped the stakeholders, tested our assumptions and rehearsed how the […]
The Blind Spot That Power Creates at the Negotiating Table
Publication: decision making | leadership | negotiation | Perspective-taking | power
First article in a three-part series on negotiating at work. In 2006, researchers from Northwestern University, New York University and Stanford ran a deceptively simple experiment. They handed participants a marker and asked them to draw the capital letter E on their own forehead. There are two ways to do it. You can orient the […]
When Doing Nothing is the Ultimate Productivity Hack
Publication: decision making | Doing Nothing | Productivity Multiplier
You don’t have to look too far to see conversations about productivity. From the recent Federal Government’s Productivity Summit (which ironically didn’t appear to be all that productive), to newspaper reports of slowing output. Productivity dominates today’s economic and political discourse. The assumption driving some of the debate is that more hours worked should translate […]
Are You Ready to be the Leader of Your Career?
Publication: Career leader | Career leader tips | Career readiness | decision making
Earlier this year, Roger Federer spoke at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (USA). He asked the audience a question. “In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80 per cent of those matches…What percentage of the points do you think I won in those matches?” The answer was 54 per cent. “In […]
Do You Want to Have Greater Impact? If So, Get Curious
Publication: Curiosity Core Practices | decision making | Elevating Awareness | Great Impact
Curiosity – it’s a simple concept. Yet, as we advance in our careers we can find it harder to pursue. We stop questioning. We stop seeing exploring as a good use of time. Curiosity is abandoned for the comfort of ‘knowing’ and the desire to reach an answer as quickly and painlessly as possible. We base […]