Women at Work - Making Great Decisions

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

Being a great decision maker is uniquely challenging for women. It’s not us; it’s sexism. Stereotypes about the way we make calls can be insulting and distracting. Knowing that we’ll be judged more harshly than men when we make mistakes is discouraging. We talk about how to make informed decisions that stick, despite gender bias. Guest: Therese Huston.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. We all make a lot of decisions at work. Some are easy and they go over well. Others, not so much. And when we're struggling to make a decision or someone pushes back on what we've decided, we might ask ourselves, is this because I'm a woman? I think it's pretty much a daily concern of mine of, am I making the right decision? And is the fact that I'm a woman affecting the decision I'm making right now? Maybe is the fact that I'm a woman affecting the decision I'm making right now? Maybe, because decision making is not gender neutral. Research shows that women are less

likely than men to be overconfident. This is the good news. The bad news is research also shows that when women make a mistake, our colleagues are harder on us than they would be on men. I'm going to take responsibility, like ultimate responsibility, for any problems that may come up, but I'm not being given the authority to make calls. Sometimes the issue is not having enough access, even if you're in senior management. And you're always assured you have a seat at the table. Then they forget to tell you that there's more than one table. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Nicole Torres.

I'm Amy Bernstein. And I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. This episode, we're talking about women as decision makers. Therese Houston is a psychologist who basically wrote the book on all of this. It's called How Women Decide What's True, What's Not, and What Strategies Spark the Best Choices. Therese, why do you think women in particular need to understand decision making?

You know, it's funny. People like to say that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. But I find that when it comes to decision making, it's much more like men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but I find that when it comes to decision-making, it's much more like men are from Mars and women are from a less respected part of Mars. Because, you know, decision-making is challenging for all of us, men and women alike. But when a man faces a hard decision, he only has to think and focus on making a judgment. But when a woman faces a similar hard decision, she, especially in business,

has to think about both making a judgment and she also has to navigate being judged. And that puts a lot more pressure on her in the whole decision-making process. What's an example of advice about decision-making that tends to work well for men, but not so well for women? You know, there are two pieces of advice that I think can backfire for women, even though they work really well for men. One piece of advice that you'll see in a lot of decision making books is to take the time to consider a wider array of options. It makes perfect sense when a man takes the time to consider a wider array of options, he's considered strategic and he's considered very contemplative. When a woman takes the time to consider a wider range of options, she's typically seen as indecisive and as someone

who's dithering, right? Another piece of advice that you'll see in a lot of decision-making books is try to find a solution that meets everyone's needs. Again, if a male leader were to do that, he would be seen as very inclusive. If a woman were to do that, she would probably be seen as someone who lacks vision, that she needs to lean on other people to make a decision. And so there are pieces of advice that if women were to follow them to the letter or to up the way that they're approaching a decision, it can really be challenging for her because she's being judged under so much more scrutiny. Since we're talking about women making choices, I feel like we have to talk about the stereotype of women's intuition. What's really going on here? You said there's two sides

to it. Often when we talk about intuition, people mean a gut feeling, being guided from the inside. You know, it feels like knowing without any effort. There's another kind of intuition, and that would be what social scientists would call social sensitivity. And that kind of women's intuition would be you are being really attuned to the verbal and nonverbal cues of the people around you. So let's say you walk into a meeting later on this afternoon, and before anyone says anything, you look over and they're like, oh, Carl is in a really bad mood. Oh, this is going to be a long meeting, right? And that would be, some people would also call that women's intuition.

And the first kind, the first part where, you know, this notion of going with your gut, the research actually shows men do that more than women, that we should be calling that men's intuition because women don't tend to go with their gut. Women tend to do a lot more analysis and double check their data before they go with a decision. The second kind, the kind of social sensitivity, the reading nonverbal cues, that kind women do more effectively. Women do pay more attention to nonverbal cues. Yeah, I'm curious to know where that comes from

because earlier you were saying, you know, men and women are both from parts of Mars. Right. Right. So where does that come from? Well, so, you know, there are really two things to understand there. One is around expectations. So if you tell people that you're testing them on social sensitivity, women are going to really outperform men. But if you tell people you're testing their intelligence or their cognitive abilities and you give them the same test of reading nonverbal cues, suddenly men perform as well as women. So part of it is,

am I supposed to be good at this? Does this matter? Right? To what I think men or women should be good at. The other part has to do with power. So there have been fascinating research studies where people are assigned either the role of a leader or sub subordinate and they're discussing an issue. And what they find is that the subordinate is much more sensitive to the nonverbal cues of whoever is the leader. And it doesn't matter if you're a male or a female. If you're in the subordinate role, you notice the nonverbal cues of whoever's in charge. Vice versa, whoever's the leader doesn't tend to notice the nonverbal cues of the subordinate. And so some people, instead of calling this women's intuition, call this subordinate's intuition. And all too often, unfortunately, women are in a subordinate role.

How do you take this intuition and use it as the basis for a well-informed decision? Well, intuition is really reliable in certain circumstances, right? So intuition is really good if you're making a what decision. So if you're trying to decide on colors for your office, and that's a what decision where it's about your tastes and your preferences, it's actually best to go with your first strong gut feeling. Research shows that you tend to actually like that decision better in the long run. The place where it's really problematic to go with intuition for men and women alike is on who decisions. We might get a gut feeling about someone like, oh, there's something, there's just something

I really like about him. He shows a lot of potential. And there's something about her that just doesn't sit right with me. There's a good chance that's unconscious bias. So you've said that society often expects us to make decisions like mother ducks. What do you mean by that? In general, I'm not saying this is true, but we tend to expect women to make decisions that are focused on other people, that are about maintaining relationships, that are about thinking about our communities, right? And making other people comfortable. And social psychologists would call that, we expect women to be communal. And where I see that is it's like kind of like a

mother trying to get her brood across the street, you know, that mother duck is going to make sure that everyone makes it across. If I need to back up to make sure that there's a straggler that's going to make it, I'm going to do that. But you certainly don't expect to see a mother duck just proceed ahead of the entire group, regardless of what's happening behind her. Because the idea is that would be a bad mother duck. And likewise, women are often penalized for making a decision where they're not taking everyone else's needs into account. You know, classic piece of advice for women when they're negotiating for a raise or a promotion is to point to the needs of their team, right? It's not enough to say, I need this, but instead, here's how this would be good for my team. And that's a very mother duck piece of advice.

So what price do we pay for all this communal decision making for getting input and consensus? I think there are two prices that women pay by being more collaborative. So one price is that they're often seen as less decisive. Unfortunately, people think that collaborative and decisive don't mix. And if you're making a decision and bringing other people in, is it because you can't make that decision by yourself? That's often how women can be viewed when they bring in other people. I had a female manager that I interviewed, and she said in her organization, there was this problem of the last person who touched it. She said if there was a decision to be made and a female manager had to make it there'd be a line of people outside of

her door on the day that that decision had to be made and she said basically people viewed it as i want to make sure i'm the last person who has any say in this because that will be the person that she listens to and i asked wow yes right I asked, what happens for the male managers? And she said, no lines outside of their door, because when he makes his decision, you'll find out about it. And she found this very frustrating as a female manager, because on the day that you need a decision to be made, if anything, there might be people you want to seek out,

but perhaps you want your door closed and to be left alone. So very different views of how men and women are making decisions, and a pretty insulting view of how women make decisions, if you ask me. The second price I think women pay for being collaborative is that they're seen as less visionary. There's a fascinating HBR article about the fact that the one leadership quality that women are seen as lacking is vision. And I think part of that is because they're often bringing a lot of people in on decisions. And unfortunately, that's then seen as that person, that woman leader doesn't have some essence of vision that perhaps Steve Jobs or some other great male leader has. Therese, is there a way that we can act decisively and collaborate in a way that works to our

advantage? I think there are some strategies that I've heard women leaders use really successfully. So I'm going to offer you some of the language that I've heard them use. So you want to focus on action. You want to express, I'm still interested in your concerns, but I want to focus on action. You want to express, I'm still interested in your concerns, but I want to focus on action. So what that language might look like is, okay, you've read the report that I sent around. I need to move ahead with this decision because management wants the decision yesterday, of course. Are there any objections to our doing this, this action that I've proposed? Does anyone see a reason why this isn't a good fit for us? And that's really

nice language because it's focused on we're going to act, I'm going to make this decision, but I want to make sure before I make the decision that I've included your brilliant input. And I think that's really nice because it's combining both the collaborative and the decisive components. Another important strategy is to clarify the kind of input that you want. So you can specify, I'm seeking input from marketing and engineering, or I really need input from sales to let people know this is the group that needs to weigh in. And that way, it doesn't feel like everyone in presents when she's leaning towards a decision and she's already 80% of the way there. She comes to her team, her leadership team, and says, okay, I'm leaning towards saying yes and going ahead with plan X. I want five pieces of data on this by Friday. It can be data for or against. And so that's very nice because she's already let them know here's the direction I'm going unless I hear

otherwise so give me data either to back this up or to challenge it and I think that's really nice because again it's collaborative but it's it's showing your decisiveness what does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey, listeners. Thank you. hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. One of the concerns that we've been hearing from some of our listeners is that financial decisions at work can be especially tricky and they sometimes have trouble owning their right to

make those calls. So I want to play a little bit of tape for you now and we'll just hear from one of our listeners. I've often felt with financial decisions that though I lead an entire department, that I'm unable to actually make those decisions on my own, that I still need permission to spend money that I've already been given, that's already in my budget, that I still want either a group consensus or I still want my boss to approve it. I have felt like maybe I'm not qualified enough to be able to make this decision or I don't have enough business acumen to make this decision or I haven't led this department long enough to make this decision. I'm lucky that I have a very supportive CEO

who tells me, you know this best. So if you think it's worth the money, we should do it. But it has been a struggle through my whole career to say that I have enough information or enough experience to be able to make small or large financial decisions on my own. What stands out to you, Therese, in hearing that? It's not surprising that she's struggling with this. So the decision to spend money on X and to not spend money on Y, especially when it's large amounts, can feel really risky. And men are much more socialized in our culture to take risks than women are. One of the key findings is that women are especially uncomfortable taking risks that are new. And I'm guessing for that listener that part of her anxiety comes up when there's some

new possible expense, not with an expense that they've done in the past. In terms of what I think that listener needs to do, I have advice that kind of goes in two different directions. So I think she first of all needs to decide, does she want to wean herself off of the boss's input? Or does she want to accept that this is how she makes financial decisions? And I think either of those would be fine. She just needs to move forward on one of them. If she decides that she wants to wean herself off of her boss's input, I'd recommend, I love spreadsheets or some way of tracking the impact of her financial decisions.

All too often, we don't keep track. We remember the anxiety of a decision, but we don't pay attention to what were the actual consequences. And so if she could track what's the actual impact of a financial decision, she might see that, oh, they got lots of good ones in my track record. If she decides she really wants to accept this is how she makes financial decisions, she should be reassured it's smart to get buy-in. When women leaders make autocratic decisions, there's more of a penalty for them than there is for men who are making autocratic decisions. So getting buy-in can be really wise protection for her if there are big ramifications for that financial decision. heard from listeners is this struggle around when do you have enough information? Is there a kind of tip or rule of thumb that you've heard that has sort of helped you cut off debate and kind of say, we have enough. We don't need to fill out more spreadsheets. We have enough info. Let's just make a call. You know, it's hard to set what that threshold or tipping point should be.

I think the thing that's really helpful, what the research shows is that people make better decisions when they have at least two, preferably three concrete options on the table. Now by that two concrete options, it doesn't mean, you know, should we build the parking lot or no, right? That's really only one option and you're trying to decide yes or no. A second concrete option would be, let's give everyone a bus pass. That's a really different option and it could also solve that problem. Or the third option, very different, would be let's give everyone one day a week to work from home. That could also solve the problem if the problem is employee parking.

So what I'm trying to point out is that if you're having trouble making a decision, a really productive direction to go in is do we have more than one option? Or are we just debating back and forth on the yes or no? Should we go with the one option? Research shows people make worse decisions when they only have one option. And the other I love this piece of advice I got from a woman in the C suite. She when she's mentoring women women what she says to them is okay you need to ask yourself two questions question number one do i know more than most people on my team about the factors that are affecting this important decision and usually the answer is yes she said okay now you need to ask yourself a second question do i know everything there is to know no okay let's

circle back to question number one. And I really like that because chances are you do know more. Do you know everything? No, not possible. The other thing that often comes up in this same neighborhood is risk-taking. And I have seen sort of arguments on both sides. One, that women are less comfortable taking risks, so therefore they don't make as good leaders. I have also seen some on the other side saying, well, you want a, you know, risk-averse leader because they make more intelligent decisions. But are women more

risk-averse? And if they are, how does it show up in their decision-making? So on the issue of risk-taking, there's a lot of mixed data on this. Of all the topics we've discussed, this is where there's the most controversy, at least for researchers. So there are certain areas where men definitely take more risks. Leisure activities. You also see more men taking risks when something is novel. And I think that's concerning in the workplace because if there's a new project and nobody knows exactly what that, you know, the outcome is going to look like or how to get that project done, men are more likely to be the ones raising their hand and eager to do it

than women are. I would love to get into some more of the advice that you would give about handling some of these decisions. So when it comes to something like making a risky decision, do you have a strategy for determining if it's worth taking? One that I really like is called the 10-10-10 strategy. This comes from Susie Welch. She's a journalist. So the notion is this, what are the consequences of this decision in 10 minutes? What are the consequences in 10 months? And what are the consequences in 10 years? All too often, we're only focused on one of those timeframes. And often, it's just the 10 minutes, right? How am I going to feel? Or it might be 10 months, should we move or not? And you're thinking about how my life will be different 10 months

from now. But it's really helpful to think about all three, because it can often put in perspective, like 10 years from now, it's not going to matter. Or 10 years from now it's not going to matter or 10 years from now I am going to be set up for a much better position within the company right if you're thinking about asking for a raise or a promotion and so even though it might make my life unpleasant for the next 10 minutes it's worth it in the long run so 10 10 10 that's a really helpful one oh also like even if you're in a meeting and you're trying to decide should I make this point or not it's not going to matter probably even 10 months from now, although maybe it will because you'll be seen as someone who's an innovative thinker. That's powerful. So let's talk about risk-taking and decision-making when you're working

with a team, when you're making collaborative decisions. How does risk-taking factor into that? What's interesting there is, particularly if you're a female leader of a team, there's an expectation that you'll collaborate and take other people's views into account, particularly if it's going to be a risky decision that might fail. And women tend to pay a higher penalty for making decisions autocratically. And if those decisions fail, she pays a much higher penalty than a guy who makes a decision autocratically, and then that decision fails. If a woman brings other people into the decision and it fails, she's much more easily forgiven for that than if she made that decision on her own. And so I think that particularly for risky decisions, there's a lot

of wisdom in bringing in other people into the decision because if it turns out that it doesn't work, you've padded yourself. It's frustrating, but it's interesting. So what if taking a risk when you're making a decision kind of freaks you out? What do you do to calm down and focus? Alison Woodbrooks out of Harvard talks about reframing anxiety. And I find this very useful. The notion being when you're getting anxious about taking a risk or just anxious in general to instead of saying, oh my goodness, I'm nervous. This is going to hurt my performance.

Instead thinking, hey, this isn't anxiety. This is excitement. I'm excited to do this. So that's one way. That's how Alison Wood Brooks talks about it. What I find even more helpful in my own head or the way that my husband and I egg one another on is to say, this is how my body prepares for something that really matters to me. I'm going to do a better job because of how I feel right now. Because anxiety and excitement are very similar things in terms of your body's physiological response. But what's fascinating is if you reframe it as this is going to help me, this isn't going to hurt me, research shows you actually do make better decisions. You're more astute at assessing risk.

You have better reasoning abilities. So you're not clamping down on your body's response. You're harnessing it and actually freed up cognitively to do better work. And hasn't research also shown that women perform particularly well under stress? So yes, they do. This is one of my favorite findings that's out there. It's not the case that you want to stress women out so that they can make better decisions. That shouldn't be the takeaway from this, right? But there is this very, probably the most popular international belief about men and

women is that women are more emotional than men. Like you can find that in just about any culture that people believe women are more emotional than men. And people especially believe that women are going to fall apart under stress, that their emotions will get the best of them, that they'll have trouble thinking rationally. And what the data actually shows is that emotions affect both men and women under stress, but they affect them differently. So what happens when women are under a lot of stress is that women decide differently than when they're calm, and they tend to go to the guaranteed wins.

They tend to go to the thing that's safe, the known solution. Let's just do the thing that we know works. Men, under stress, they go for the risky option. They go for the big rewards. You know, whether you want to think about that as they go for the home run, even though that might be a ball that's caught. But they, under stress, men tend to go for really risky options, even if there's a very, very small chance that it'll work out.

And so where I think the advice comes is that we need both men and women in the room when high stress decisions are being made. And all too often, at the top level of an organization, you only have men in the room, which would suggest they're going to lean towards risky decisions and not even be checked on it. So what is stereotype threat? So stereotype threat, I think, is one of the most powerful concepts in this whole arena. It's the anxiety that you're about to live up to someone's negative expectation of a group to which you belong. And this happens in the workplace for women.

A number of researchers are looking at the ways that when we become concerned about other people's stereotypes, even if we completely disagree with them, we don't believe in them. We become preoccupied. It becomes important to prove them wrong. We need to show that that is not a problem for women, and that's not true for me. And as a result, that takes away some of our cognitive resources to actually do the task at hand. And so this has been shown to affect decision making, particularly for women in math and

science and engineering roles. If you're the only woman in the room, that's one of the cues that triggers stereotypes where you become preoccupied. Because why am I the only woman in the room, that's one of the cues that triggers stereotype threat where you become preoccupied because why am I the only woman in the room? It changes participation in meetings. It changes your willingness to lead. There are lots of ways in which this preoccupation with someone else's stereotype hinders performance. So is there a way to shield ourselves from that? Thankfully, yes. Thankfully, yes. So first of all, it's simply knowing about stereotype threat So is there a way to shield ourselves from that? is to tell yourself that the anxiety I'm feeling right now, because stereotype threat tends to happen on really hard tasks. If it's an easy task, it doesn't happen. But if you're in a really judgmental meeting with really smart people, this is where stereotype threats likely to happen.

So telling yourself, you know, anyone would find it hard to get a word in edgewise in this meeting, the anxiety I'm feeling is about the fact that this is hard. And the other one is to do a little work. If you're going into a situation where you know you're going to be the only female or you know it's going to be a really hard task and high pressure, to do what's known as a values affirmation. And that means to sit down and write for 10 minutes.

You can get out your iPhone and do it on your phone or you can do it on a piece of paper where you write about something that's really important to you. It could be your health. It could be your family. It doesn't have to do anything with the task that you're about to perform. But writing for 10 minutes about something that really matters to you and times that having that value has made a difference, research shows that that inoculates you from stereotype threat. Because now you're more than just that person at work. You're more than the person who is the only woman in the room.

And you've expanded your identity. And that now protects you so that you're less likely to get preoccupied. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work.

That's netsuite.com slash women at work. When you think about confidence, you've described it as a dial. So you can sort of dial up your confidence. You can dial down your confidence. How does that work? You know, one of the women that I interviewed for my book gave me this idea, and I love it. So all too often, both men and women see confidence as a hammer and every problem as a nail, that we just need more confidence, particularly women. More confidence, more confidence, and that will

solve the problem. And the research shows that confidence interferes with decision making. You make better decisions if your confidence is turned down. And I much prefer to think of confidence as a dial or like a volume knob. And the idea is you want to keep your confidence turned down when you're making a decision and you want to turn it up once you've made your decision and you need to communicate it or you need to convince other people. I love that. I think that piece of advice, just be more confident in all the decisions you make, that has always frustrated me because, you know, overconfidence is not a good thing. But related to communicating their ideas, what should women know when communicating the decisions that they've made? You know, there's been some great advice from, I love your podcast,

I've been listening to the episodes, and there's been some great advice from some of your other guests. Thank you. Oh, sure. But, you know, the avoiding the tentative statements of, well, I'm thinking that we should do this instead saying, I strongly believe we should do this, or it sounds as though we've come to this decision, or based on everything we've said here today, this is going to be the plan. But to speak very strongly, or, you know, and you might even want to ask, is there anything that we haven't heard yet before I make this decision, right? To make it clear that we're now moving to action. All too often, there can be a blurry line for people about the distinction between we're gathering the input and we're making the decision. Lower

confidence and tentative during the decision-making part and then a clear demarcation. Here's what we're doing. And I think that people respond well to that. If you figure out later on that you actually made a bad decision as opposed to a decision that just didn't work out, right? Like something was wrong with your decision-making process and you made a mistake. How do you communicate that without sounding weak or undermining yourself? This is such a tricky issue. First of all, identify what a possible remedy could be, right? In terms of, is there a different decision that could be made or a change,

a way that we could pivot now to get to a better decision. I do think it's important to do a post-mortem where you talk with the group about, okay, so what information didn't we have? I do think it's important to have that conversation, male or female leader, because otherwise people can wonder, do you realize it was a bad decision? Are you, right? There can be that question of whether the leader has blinders on and is ignoring the fact that something had bad repercussions. I'm not sure I ascribed to this, but a thing that I've heard some leaders say is there are no good and bad decisions. There are just consequences. And I think that that can be helpful to take a group through, okay, what were the consequences and what could we have anticipated and what was unknowable?

But it's really hard to figure out should women tread differently in this space than men should. But how can we look back at those decisions in a more productive way? How do we stop all the ruminating? How do we avoid beating ourselves up? I think when it comes to avoiding ruminating, I haven't seen research on this, but a thing that I've done is I've given myself a window of, okay, I'm going to think about it for this long. I am going to make, you know, lists of here are the factors that were important that I didn't consider, and then I'm going to stop, right? So I'm going to ruminate on this until Tuesday, and then that's it. And that that

can be helpful because you're giving yourself permission to, I really want to understand what went wrong that I didn't expect, or I want to bring my team in to reevaluate this, but to put an endpoint to it and to give yourself permission to stop. Because I think all too often when a bad decision is made, we beat ourselves up for it, and that becomes unproductive. Given all that we know about women and decision-making and the unique pressures women face, how do we support each other in decision-making? It's such a nice question.

I recommend that women form networks, if they don't already have them of groups that they can get together with. I belong to one that's'm facing, and here's the support that I need. It might sound very structured, but it's incredibly helpful because you get to find out. For some women, there's some decision that they need to make, and there might be someone else at the table who can help them make that decision. Or it could be someone is needing to take a risk, and they just need encouragement from other people or discouragement of like, have you thought about this? You know, so I find that's an incredibly empowering experience. And there's research to show that when women have strong social support networks at work, they're more likely to stay and they're more likely to move into higher leadership roles. Therese, thank you so much for talking with us today.

You're so welcome. This has been tremendously helpful. I feel like I will make many decisions this week with this all in mind. I just kept thinking about the double standard. It was a little frustrating to find out how to avoid that double standard. I feel like the onus should be on organizations to be aware that that happens. But I don't think you can avoid it. I think that was one of her points.

So for me, hearing the way she described it and the kind of the clean thinking about it, I found encouraging. I think knowing it's out there, knowing you can't do anything about it, helps you navigate those situations better. Yeah. That 10-10-10 strategy she said, I thought that was great. And at first when she was saying that I was like, will this lead to more analysis paralysis? Will you try to think about 10 minutes

from now, 10 weeks from now, 10 years? But I think that's actually something you can think of fairly quickly. Like once you realize like what is the impact this is going to have 10 years from now, you'll know like it will be fairly small and then you can move forward with your decision. I also liked her advice about turning up the dial of confidence after you've made the decision. Oh yeah. Something I do that kind of along the same lines is sometimes I pretend I've made the decision. I basically make the decision, but then I don't tell anyone about it if it's a really big decision for like an hour, if I can wait an hour or a day, if I can wait a day. And I just walk around and think I've made this decision. This is what's happening. And I sort of live into it for a while. And if I start to feel like overwhelming anxiety,

I'm like, maybe this is the wrong call and I should make another decision. But if I start to feel sort of more and more confident naturally, then I'm like, oh, I think this was maybe the right call. Amy, I'm wondering, do you have advice on how to make decisions stick if there's people who keep trying to reopen them? Yeah. You know, sometimes you just have to say, you know what, this decision is made and we're moving forward. You don't have to keep examining every additional factor. It might be that you hear something that moves you one way or the other, but there is a cost to the time you take to making the decision.

100%. So you have to ask yourself whether it's worth taking the extra hour, the extra day, or the extra month. And many times it's not. The consequences of a bad decision most of the time are pretty minor. As a veteran of many bad decisions, you know, it seems like what you don't want to focus on is the bad decision. Own it. Figure out what made you make the bad decision. What information did you lack? What question did

you neglect to ask? To me, the far more important thing is to figure out the better way forward. So focusing so much, ruminating, is not helpful. I'm curious if either of you two do this. Something I've found myself doing more now that I'm making more collaborative decisions is like I do seek input, but I will kind of limit or specify the type of input I'm looking for from particular people. Because I've been in a situation where I'm like, what do you guys think? And I'm really looking for, you know, advice on a final step of something. But then I get advice on the entire thing. Yeah. So when she was talking, I kept thinking about the difference between,

you know, decision-making and leadership and the need for buy-in, which for me is different from the need for consensus. Because, you know, if you ran an organization as a democracy, you wouldn't get anywhere in most cases, right? You need a vision. You need someone who's going to execute on the vision, who can get people aligned, making decisions in alignment with the vision. But seeking consensus on every little thing is going to get

you nowhere fast. You're never going to get to a decision. And if you yield every time someone pushes back, you'll never move forward. And I think to Nicole's point about the kind of, what are your thoughts? I think it can be dangerous to ask such a broad question. And it's actually sometimes infuriating as someone forwards you an email and it just says, your thoughts? Question mark? Or, you know, that's crazy making because it's like, what do you want me to do? Sort through this entire email string, try to figure out what it is that you need from me and then respond.

So I think it's a really good idea to ask the targeted question of what it is you actually want information on. Absolutely. And when you get feedback on stuff that you're not trying to work through, you can say, you know what? I kind of know where I am on that one. That's good. But what I'm still struggling with is this point.

So I'd love to hear what you think about that. That's so helpful. Yeah. Yeah. You have to use your own filters. You have to figure out what you can control and what you can't control. You can control how you make a decision. Yes.

Right? Yes. You can't control all the feedback you're going to get. Right. Except to channel it a bit. Right. You can channel it. And you can say, thank you so much for your input.

This is the call I'm making. Yeah. And then up your confidence and move away. Yeah. Yeah. That's our show. I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Bernstein.

And I'm Sarah Green Carmichael. Our producer is Amanda Kersey. Our audio product manager is Adam Buchholz. Maureen Hoke is our supervising editor. And we get production help from Rob Eckhart and Isis Madrid. We've already told you about the discussion guides we've made for each episode. Another new thing we're doing this season is giving you a platform where you can talk to us, our guest experts, and other listeners about issues related to women and work.

It's an online community we're calling the HBR Idea Lab. We'll post questions to get everyone talking, swap stories, and lead you through projects that'll help you apply the practical advice you hear on the show. To sign up, check out our show notes. We hope you'll join us, and thanks for listening.