For Financial Advisors being curious and sceptical can help to ensure they question when they need to question, and reflect when they need to reflect.

Curiosity – it’s a simple concept in many respects. And yet it is something we find harder to do as we get older.

It’s almost as though it is abandoned for the comfort and safety of wanting to have all the answers.

We stop questioning. We base decisions on assumptions, hunches and past experience. We stop seeing exploration as a good use of time, and instead want to get to the answer as quickly and painlessly as possible.

It also becomes harder to say those three little words – “I don’t know”.

This is particularly the case when professionals operate in advisory roles. They are conditioned to believing that they have to all the answers, and that being an expert means knowing more than others and having the answers at their fingertips. It is about being in control and certain of their actions.

This approach enforces the notion that it is better to be certain than to be open to different possibilities. When that happens a person can close themselves off to new ideas and different ways of doing things.

An approach which, in today’s ever-changing and complex world, is incredibly unhelpful. In fact, it’s important to be sceptical and curious.

When a person does this they recognise there are multiple ways to approach things, and different perspectives. They embrace a growth mindset, rather than having a fixed idea or opinion. They question. They critically think and ponder ideas. They reflect on what is really happening, rather than just taking things at face value.

They take the time to ensure they are:

• Considering – what’s happening around them and reflect on what they are seeing and hearing, and therefore what action they should take
• Challenging – assumptions they and others may have to ensure they are making a good decision and are being open to dissenting views and outlier opinions
• Checking –  their facts and interpretations of those facts as they are on the lookout for bias, which may adversely impact their thought processes and decisions.

For Financial Advisors being curious and sceptical can help to ensure they question when they need to question, and reflect when they need to reflect.

Other benefits include:

1. Builds your leadership brand – real leaders are open to questioning and happy to admit what they don’t know. They know that providing the opportunity for their team members to share their ideas and to contribute to the discussion will lead to better organisational outcomes.
2. Builds new neural pathways – remember the delight you experienced as a child when you did something for the first time. It’s the same with curiosity. When you discover something for the first time and try something new it lights up new pathways in the brain. It’s just like taking your brain to the gym. You are giving it a work-out!
3. Builds better relationships – When you are curious about a person’s behaviour you can be more open to wondering what is driving their behaviour and what is triggering a reaction in you. This approach allows you to be open to what is happening and therefore suspend judgement. This is necessary if you are to really hear what the other person is saying, and be open to different points of view. All of which are essential for good relationships.
4. Expands your frame of reference – Curiosity enables you to question with interest and compassion. It isn’t judgemental or about finding fault. It helps you expand your frame of reference, which in turn helps you to generate insight and understanding, and consequently make better decisions.
5. Helps you better understand yourself – Being curious as to what drives your own thought processes, reactions and actions enables you to better manage how you react in any given moment.   This is mindfulness in action, which is scientifically proven to help you make better decisions and manage stress.

It was the great 18^th century French philosopher, Denis Diderot, who said: “Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

So don’t hold yourself back from being curious. Embrace it and relish in the knowledge it will help you make better decisions.

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with global leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress. She is the Author of Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work.

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How well do you cope with workplace pressure?

Pressure! Some people hate it. Other people thrive on it.

We all react to pressure differently and have different levels of pressure we can cope with. There’s no doubt that Financial Advisors often work in high pressured environments.

The research shows that a certain amount of pressure is good for us because it helps motivate us to take action and keeps us focused.

This is because when we experience the right amount of challenge and interest, chemicals are released in our brain (noradrenaline and dopamine), which make us more alert, motivated and ready to learn.

Researchers and educators often refer to this as the Goldilocks zone. This is the zone of optimal performance where we are working on a task or learning something that is neither too hard, nor too easy.

Just like the children’s story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears it is ‘just right’.

This zone has parallel ideas with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’, which is a state a person experiences when they have the right level of skill and the right amount of challenge. If one of those elements is missing they either end up anxious, bored or somewhere inbetween.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth checking out Mihaly’s TED talk on this.

So how do you know when the pressure is just right or too much?

Pressure can become unhealthy when you feel like you:

• Have no control or autonomy
• Are making little or no progress
• Have so much to do it feels overwhelming
• Are going backwards
• Are ruminating about the same issues – again and again

Life is a series of ups and downs. Progress is never linear.   Living life through the peaks and troughs successfully and sustainably is about finding ways to release the pressure.

Here’s some tips to get you started:

1. Be clear on what you can change and what you can’t change. It’s easy to spend a lot of time focusing on the things we can’t change, rather than directing our energy towards those we can change
2. Take the time to stop, breath, reflect and then respond to an event helps ensure that your actions are more mindful, and less reactive
3. Identify tools you can use to help you make decisions – when you are faced with an unwelcome situation work through the options and what decisions you can and can’t make. Feeling like you have a choice as to your response helps empower you
4. Adopt a gratitude mantra because expressing gratitude is scientifically proven to help you feel happier, more resilient and less stressed
5. Do something nice for someone else as doing good things and helping others makes you feel good about yourself
6. Strive to find purpose and meaning in your life – people with purpose are generally happier and more resilient as they are clear about their goals and where they are heading in life
7. Learn to say no and be confident with saying no to things that aren’t good for you
8. Maintain strong connections with friends and family – sharing how you feel, talking to people and being open about experiences is healthy and good for the soul
9. Exercise often, eating well, meditating and laughing lots are all key ingredients for releasing the pressure valve

Change happens. Make it work for you.

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with global leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress in complex environments. She is the Author of ‘Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work’.

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Networks go a long way in developing your business.

The old saying “It’s not what you know – but who you know” is still relevant today. While career success isn’t solely determined by your network, there’s no doubt that a strong and sustainable network is a key influencing factor.

Financial advisors who want to grow their career and practice need to look to build a network which is:

• Broad – includes a range of stakeholders both internal and external to their organisation, and across a range of sectors
• Deep – includes stakeholders from different hierarchical levels
• Established – based on trust, authenticity, reciprocity and transparency

Building a network takes time and energy, and it must be genuine.

Do you know how effective your network is? Does it help or hinder your ability to grow your practice?

If you want to boost your networking effectiveness, here are ten things you can do:

1. Regularly identify your network. Ask yourself – who’s in it, and how effective it is? Identify any gaps that exist, and where there are blockages (ie people with whom it’s hard to get things done)
2. Drive energy into your network – so that you strike the right balance between reaching out to people and asking for something, and you reaching out to others and offering help and support. Be proactive in helping others. Remember – the more you share, the more you will gain, over time
3. Consistently follow through and live up to your commitments. This is a critical ingredient for building trusted relationships
4. Consciously seek out people with different opinions, who will challenge your thinking and mindset, so that your network has character and depth. The more you broaden your mind, the greater your ability to think issues through, take on different perspectives and manage complex business decisions
5. Support your team with their networks and find out how your team collaborates. Is it effective? Are they collaborating across the team and into other areas of the organisation?   How they network can impact your success
6. Know the connectors and influencers in your team and network. These people know people, and therefore know how and who to influence. In short, they know how to get things done and can more easily navigate hierarchical roadblocks
7. Reward and encourage your team members who engage in healthy and effective collaborative behaviours
8. Help integrate people who are new to your organisation and team. Introduce them to key people and let them know who they can turn to for information, expertise and support
9. Actively facilitate collaboration across teams, business areas, geographic boundaries, particularly where it’s critical to business outcomes. You’ll not only be helping to secure progress, but you’ll also be building your brand as someone who is well connected
10. Enjoy building your network, and always do it from a position of integrity. I’ve left the most important item until last. Your integrity is essential and it is something that you should protect and nurture. If you lose your integrity you will have little credibility or trust with your stakeholders, and therefore, an ineffective network

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with global leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress. She is the Author of Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work.

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Preparing for change can make it easier.

The financial advice community has experienced constant regulatory change over the last decade, and it is now facing a wave of technology driven change.

Technology is changing all aspects of how we work and live, with the inevitable result being rapid change in the workplace.

This pace and quantum of change is so great that the World Economic Forum has called it the fourth industrial revolution.

So what do you need to do to be prepared?

Start from the inside out

It’s much easier for a person to sit back and identify how team members or colleagues need to change, than to identify what may need to change in them. To effectively lead change and make it stick, leaders need to firstly understand themselves and then be open to shifting their mindset, operating style and behaviour to suit the context of the change.

Be alert to bias

Bias pervades decision making, and most of it happens at the sub-conscious level. This is because people don’t make decisions on facts alone.  They make decisions on hunches, feelings and gut reactions.  This is because brain discards information that doesn’t fit with its world view.  It takes short cuts when it makes decisions, and it can be easily influenced.  In times of change you need to be alert to the bias that can negatively impact your decision making.

Encourage a growth mindset

A person’s mindset impacts how a change is initiated, implemented and sustained.

The renowned Stanford academic, Carol Dweck, coined the terms – fixed and growth mindset. People who have a fixed mindset see intelligence as static – a fixed trait.   Consequently, they want to always look smart and have all the answers. They believe that success is based on talent alone – not work. They ignore feedback and struggle to cope when things don’t go to plan.

In contrast, people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed through effort. They are therefore more eager to embrace learning, take on challenges and persist, despite setbacks.   They love learning, often display higher resilience, and are more willing to learn from others and receive feedback.

Having a growth mindset, helps you to more effectively cope and thrive through change.

Roll with it

With change comes challenge, and obstacles and roadblocks. It’s important to manage your energy levels during change and to have the internal resilience to roll with the ups and downs of change.

It can help if you also work to:

• Eliminate the friction in the system that makes the change harder than it needs to be. This may involve removing bureaucratic processes and unnecessary activities
• Be clear about what you can change and can’t change with respect to the change. Don’t waste your energy on things you can’t change
• Understand how you and those around you are reacting to the change and what you can do to provide support
• Celebrate progress in a way that is meaningful to team members and stakeholders and keep progress visible

The future is filled with change. With change comes opportunity. The question for the financial advisor is how ready they are to step into that opportunity.

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with global leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress in complex environments. She is the Author of ‘Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work’.

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Are your skills up to the challenge?

It’s a cliché to say the world is changing. It has and also will. What’s indisputable is that the pace is getting faster.

To have a thriving career as a financial advisor, you need to keep your skills relevant and continuously refine and adapt your operating style. If you don’t, you’ll quickly become outdated.

Equipping yourself with new skills and ideas requires a willingness to learn new things.

This is not a responsibility that can be outsourced to someone else. Successful people know it’s their responsibility to direct their career and that learning is a critical part of that process.

Everyone learns differently, but what’s common is that people learn better the more involved they are with their learning.

As the famous Confucian text said: “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; but directly involve me and I’ll make it my own”.

So, if learning is essential to career success, and it’s more successful if the person finds it interesting and relevant then it naturally follows that each person should have a tailored plan that helps them target how and what they learn.

The good thing – this is a simple exercise to do, and it can be fun.

Here’s how it’s done…

Step 1 – Examine the present: Find a quiet location and somewhere that is relaxing. Write down all the current skills and knowledge you have. These skills should be both technical, functional and behavioural.

Step 2 – Imagine your future: Think about what you really want to do? What would it be? What would it involve? What would it take to get there? Don’t limit your thoughts or ideas. Be bold.

Step 3 – Identify the skills: Consider what new skills you would need to land that role. Once again, these should cover technical, functional and behavioural skills.  You may find it useful to talk with someone who works in this field or do some research to discover what those skills may be. 

Step 4 – Know the gap: Look at the gap between the skills you have and the skills you need to land that job. For each skill rate yourself on a scale of 1 – 4:

1. No current skill or knowledge
2. Some skill or knowledge, but not proficient
3. Competent at this skill and have knowledge
4. Expert with a high degree of skill and knowledge

Step 5 – Get creative: Think about what activities and courses you could undertake to close the gap, and what activities you would prioritise. This may include: books to read, courses to enrol in, journals to subscribe to, new people to meet and new practices to perfect.

Make sure you stretch yourself and have a balance of activities that will be challenging and fun. Consider having a mixture of activities that are cerebral, physical and spiritual – i.e. good for the mind, body and soul.

Step 6 – Build your plan: Take the ideas from Step 5 and create a personal development plan that maps out your learning goals, what you will do and by when. Having dates is critical – as you need to hold yourself to account.

Make sure the plan includes clear measurements so you can monitor progress and know when you’ve closed a skill or knowledge gap.

Step 7 – Get busy doing: The last step is to put your plan into action, and check progress. Also, don’t forget to reward yourself. Celebrate your learning and the progress you’ve made.

Learning to love learning is a life skill, and it’s even better when you are learning with purpose.

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress. She is the Author of  Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work. To purchase your copy of Michelle’s book click here.

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Ten tips for better decision making.

You make decisions every day – in both your personal and working life. They can be as simple as what time a meeting should start, or as complex as the best strategy to adopt for a business. Regardless of the decision’s complexity, making a bad decision can have negative consequences.

To get things done – and done well – you need to make good decisions. So if you want to step up and be more influential, it’s time to master the art of decision making.

1. Know your bias

Bias pervades decision making. This is because most people don’t make decisions on facts alone. The brain discards information that doesn’t fit with its world view, and it takes short cuts when it makes decisions.  Consequently, you can be blind to the obvious and closed to other people’s opinions. Be conscious about the decision you are making and alert to influencing factors and how you are processing information.

2. Challenge your mindset

Examine the mindset you are applying to your work and relationships. Letting assumptions drive your thought processes, and ultimately behaviour, can negatively impact your decision making and interactions with colleagues and stakeholders. Instead be curious and invite different opinions as ‘out of the box’ thinking often comes from unexpected quarters.

3. Don’t silence the dissenters

People are easily swayed by the opinion of others. Be alert to when a group or team is ignoring the person who is raising the dissenting idea. It may be this person who helps ensure the group doesn’t fall into the trap of groupthink.

4. Ignore hierarchy

Talk to people at all levels of the organisation. Hierarchy can interfere with the information you receive as it can be filtered and sanitised before it hits your desk by people who are trying to paint a situation in the most favourable light. Talking with people across, and up and down the organisation ensures you know what is happening, and are therefore better able to make a good decision.

5. Get deliberate

Be deliberate about what decision you are making. Identify who needs to be involved and what decision making process you are using.   It’s easy to get distracted, so be clear on what you need to do to get the decision made. Multi-tasking and good decision making are not a successful combination, as you lose concentration and productivity as you switch between tasks.

6. Know your options

Decision making is essentially making a choice to do one thing, rather than another. It helps if you are clear on the options that exist and the likely consequences or outcomes of those options. Often choosing to do one thing, prevents you from doing something else. Understanding the trade-offs mean you are making the decision with your eyes wide open.

7. Be determined

Making a decision can be hard work. Some decisions are easy as the best path forward is quickly identified. Other decisions are more complex as the solution is not easy to find. Be comfortable with the fact that sometimes you need to make a decision with incomplete data. The world is complex and the solution to a problem may not be straightforward.   In these situations, maintain your focus and determination to make the best possible decision based on what you know at the time.

8. Get some sleep

When your brain is tired it eagerly takes the path of least resistance, and this is where it gets dangerous. Taking the path of least resistance means you will let expectations and assumptions drive how you think and act. If you want to make better, more deliberate decisions you need to be conscious about how and why you are choosing one option over another.

9. Make the decision

No decision is a decision in itself. Procrastinating will not make the decision process any easier. Be clear on when the decision needs to be made and put in place the process or framework to make it happen.

10. Reflect on it

Not all the decisions you make will good or bad. Take the time to reflect on important decisions. What happened? Did it turn out as you expected? If not, why not? What could you do differently next time?

Decision making is an essential part of life. It’s time to master the art.

Michelle Gibbings is a change and leadership expert and founder of Change Meridian. Michelle works with leaders and teams to help them accelerate progress. She is the Author of  Step Up: How to Build Your Influence at Work. To purchase your copy of Michelle’s book click here.

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How prepared are you for any changes ahead?

The financial planning sector has faced enormous change in recent years. The velocity and frequency of this change is unlikely to diminish.

It’s essential that financial planners have the skills to be able to thrive through complex change.

The scouts have a motto – ‘Be prepared’. It’s a good motto to embrace when you are leading or going through a change. Why? Because invariably something will go off track.   It’s almost impossible to map out every step of a change process – in advance.

However, often people try to do this, and when they do their planning is usually overly optimistic.

Often with the best of intent, people over-estimate what can get done, with a particular set of resources in a set timeframe. Consequently, projects end up getting de-scoped, while timeframes are pushed out.

The difficulty is when projects are initiated there are many unknowns. As those unknowns become knowns what can and can’t be achieved (in the timeframe and with the allocated resources) becomes clearer. This too can lead to changes in the delivery approach and timing.

Change is easiest when it’s incremental, technical based change that you have planned. It becomes much harder when it’s disruptive and adaptive change that is thrust upon you.   Transformations of this nature are complex and there are many unknowns at the beginning.

It’s therefore critical, before you start to execute a change, to undertake a realistic assessment of the potential issues that may arise. This change risk assessment helps you understand your organisation’s current state and the issues that may arise to impede the transformation.

When you understand the risks you can put in place plans to minimise the likelihood that they will eventuate, and minimise the impact if they do.

This approach also helps you be better prepared in the event that the issue does arise. Experience shows that contingency planning enables people to cope better and the issue is better managed, because they’ve thought about it beforehand.

Once you understand the risks you can establish appropriate early warning indicators to monitor the risks and provide an alert or trigger to do something if it looks like one is about to happen.

Through these three elements of identification, planning and alertness you can ensure that you, your team and relevant stakeholders are ready for things when they go pear shaped – both situationally ready and structurally ready.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter talks about how “Everything can look like a failure in the middle”. How true that is. So when things start to go pear shaped, be thankful that you have your contingency plan in place and you are ready to activate it.

Most importantly:

• Draw on your resilience. Make sure you are taking time to take care of yourself and those around you. It is at times such as this that stress levels can be unmanageable and cause health issues. Be wary of this and alert to the danger signs for you and your team

• Don’t lose focus. Your strength of character as a leader is being tested. Your team are looking to you for guidance and direction.   Be available, supportive and encouraging to those around you, and find ways to keep moving forward

• Seek guidance and advice from those around you. There will be lots of people who will have ideas about what you should do. Know who you need to listen to, and be open to the voices of dissent as they can provide useful perspectives. Also, be conscious that you don’t need to have all the answers. The wisdom is usually in the group – so seek it out

• Make decisions effectively and swiftly. In times of challenge, people can become reticent to make decisions. However, it is at precisely this time that the need to make decisions is at its strongest. People are looking for leadership and making a decision goes with the territory

• Look on this as a learning opportunity. Out of every failure or thing that goes wrong there are immense opportunities to learn. It is only when you learn that you grow. So whilst you may not enjoy the experience, you will certainly benefit from it

Change happens. Make it work for you!

Michelle Gibbings is known for making the complex, simple. She helps people to think more deliberately, act with greater purpose and accelerate progress by understanding the art and science of human behaviour.  

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Michelle Gibbings

We live in a world where there’s lots of information, ideas, tasks and activities vying for our attention.

You may be juggling requests from clients and employees, as well as trying to manage expectations from your employer, partners or suppliers.   It’s very easy to get distracted.

Have you ever counted how many times a day you check your emails or social media? When you’re alerted to a new email, SMS or social media item do you quickly switch your focus from your current task to that alert?

We all love to believe that we’re brilliant multi-taskers. However, the sad reality is that we aren’t.

When you multi task your attention is fractioned, and as you switch from one activity to another you lose concentration and ultimately, become less productive.

If you are sitting in a meeting and typing an email (or reading this newsletter) you won’t be fully concentrating on what is being said in the meeting. You may think you are listening, but you won’t hear the entire conversation or fully interpret the information being delivered. This is particularly because so much of what is communicated is transmitted non-verbally.

At the same time, each time you switch from one task to another your brain is activated, and that uses up precious resources.

Our brain isn’t hard wired to handle multiple issues simultaneously or to rapidly switch back and forward between tasks.

David Rock, in his brilliant book “Your Brain at Work” uses the metaphor of the pre-frontal cortex as a stage. The pre-frontal cortex is that part of the brain that handles the executive functions such as thinking and decision making.

Issues arise when there are too many actors on your stage, each trying to play multiple scenes. He notes: “While it is physically possible sometimes to do several mental tasks at once, accuracy and performance drop off quickly”.

Research has shown that a person’s productivity dips as they switch backwards and forwards between competing tasks.

Of course, we all try to multi task because there is an incredible sense of busyness in today’s work environment and there always seems to be so much to do.

When you’re asked ‘how are you?’ does the word busy figure in the answer? For many people the answer would be yes.

When you combine this busyness with the need to get lots done and the ineffective use of multi-tasking, there’s a real danger that we achieve little because our attention is fragmented and unfocused. We keep peddling hard, but we are getting nowhere.

To make progress and enable higher quality work think about how you can apply the best attitude, attention and aptitude to the task at hand.

Attitude is a state of mind that means you are conscious of precisely what you need to get the job done effectively and efficiently. It’s about being prepared to listen and reflect, and being present with the task at hand. This means you should turn off your phone and emails if you want to focus on a complex task and get it done well.

This targeted concentration enables you to ignore the distractions that divert you from making progress.

Attention is about being focused on the task in front of you and giving yourself enough time and space to devote to it. This involves doing work in dedicated chunks of time. It’s best to work in 60 – 90 minute time blocks with a break when you finish a task.

Highly productive people will tell you that they time-box their work day, and set aside the morning for highly complex thinking.

They also ruthlessly manage their schedule to ensure they don’t waste time. They know how to use their brain energy purposefully.

Aptitude is about being really clear on the purpose of the task and having the plan and patience to carry it through.

It’s important to know what you need to pay attention to so you can prioritise your focus. Being clear on why a particular task or project is important to you is helpful as well.

The clearer the purpose the easier it is to maintain your energy when you face roadblocks or obstacles to progress.

So if you feel like you aren’t making enough progress or gathering enough momentum think about what you can do to stop fractioning your attention.

Remember, change happens. Make it work for you.

Michelle Gibbings is a leadership and change expert, who is known for making the complex, simple. She helps people to think more deliberately, act with greater purpose and inspire more value by understanding the art and science of change.

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Michelle Gibbings

Financial advisors and planners make decisions every day – for themselves, and their clients. Having highly attuned and skilled decision making skills is critical.

However, most people are unaware of the bias that surrounds decision making. This bias is pervasive, and often unconscious.

This is because we don’t make decisions on facts alone.  We make decisions on hunches, feelings and gut reactions, all of which are based on our past experiences.

Your pre-frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that’s involved in thinking, analysing and reasoning, gets tired easily.

Consequently, your brain, very cleverly, has found a way of conserving energy. It takes short-cuts. A mental short-cut is known as a heuristic. Your brain uses heuristics to make big things and complex issues easier to manage, and ultimately remember.

As your brain takes in new information it tries to make sense of it, so that it knows what it needs to do. To ease the cognitive load this processing takes, it compresses information and sorts it into patterns. It looks for things that it’s seen or experienced before and goes – “I now know what to do”.

Of course, the brain’s short cutting process isn’t always reliable, and it gives rise to bias in decision making.   For example, your brain may expect to see something in a certain way, and so it will seek out information to validate that view. It filters out information that doesn’t fit with its view of the way things should be.

Consequently, you can close your mind to new information that may be relevant.

Daniel Kahneman in his brilliant book “Thinking Fast and Slow” shared his years of research into this field.  He explains how the automatic and instinctual part of brain can lead to cognitive bias, and that people can place too much confidence in their own judgement.

This leads to traps such as: sunk cost (where due to loss aversion people don’t walk away from something, even when the facts show they should), anchoring (where decisions are influenced by the earliest piece of information received), and others.

A number of researchers have put anchoring to the test. Using examples such as the age at which Ghandi died, the height of the Brandenburg Gates in Germany, and the population of Turkey, they’ve found that the figure first given to people influences the answer to subsequent questions.

For example, two researchers, Strack and Mussweilier (1997), asked two groups a different question:

• Group 1 – Did Ghandi die before or after the age of 9?
• Group 2 – Did Ghandi die before or after the age of 140?

When the groups were then asked to guess the age at which he died, the initial anchor of the 9 and 140 influenced the response. The first group suggested his age was 50, while the second group suggested 67.

This happens because the brain relies on first impressions or details when decisions are made. Once this ‘anchor’ has been set, you will make decisions based around that anchor, often without taking other information or views into consideration.

Savvy negotiators know this and use it to their advantage when they negotiate.

So how do you overcome these barriers and help ensure that your decision making has the right level of robustness?  It’s about having the right level of awareness, analysis and aptitude.

Awareness – it’s important to understand the level of consciousness you have about the decision you are making.  Are you aware that a decision is being made?  Are you alert to influencing factors and how you are processing information?   Are you conscious of limitations or bias that may be constraining how you think?

Analysis – be clear on how you analyse and secure a range of information sources, and ensure you are not selectively filtering out information.  How much information are you looking at? Are you seeking views from a range of diverse sources?  How are you prioritising the information and using a clear process to sort, rank and select the possible outcomes?

Aptitude – be willing to challenge assumptions, pre conceived ideas and to take on different ideas and opinions.  During your thinking processes are you being curious and opened minded, or is your opinion fixed?  Are you ensuring that the decision has been analysed from multiple perspectives?  Are you willing to change your mind? Are you listening to the silent minority and looking for outliers?

Alfred Sloan, the former CEO of General Motors is quoted as saying: “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here…Then I propose we postpone further discussion on this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about”.

Perhaps it’s time to take your decision making to a new level.

Change happens.  Make it work for you.

Michelle Gibbings is a leadership and change expert, who is known for making the complex, simple. She helps people to think more deliberately, act with greater purpose and inspire more value by understanding the art and science of change.

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