October 20, 2021 • 36 mins
We have all experienced some challenging "stuff" in the past two years, we have probably had a little 'stuffing' knocked out of us, so...
Are we ready to dust ourselves out? To build our own narrative? To go in search of a new way of working? To look for opportunities and be ready when they appear?
In our latest podcast we are diving into further into smart risk taking and unpacking what great decision making looks like, the decision making biases that could be sabotaging you and building your decision making muscle.
ELEVATE CHALLENGE:
Identify a decision you need to make in any aspect of your life that you want to feel a greater level of confidence around what that decision should be.
Bring that with you to next week’s ep and bounce it off the decision making tools and techniques we’ll be covering to see if one or more of them resonate with you to help you with that decision.
Risk Profile Survey: https://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au/post/risk_profile_survey
SHOW NOTES
HBR Ideas Cast, Interview with Dorie Clark https://hbr.org/podcast/2021/09/how-to-make-strategic-career-decisions-even-in-a-crisis-back-to-work-better
Mike Bayer, The One Decision
Annie Duke, How to Decide
Dominic Price Atlassian, https://domprice.me/what-if-the-great-resignation-is-entitled-bs/
Seth Godin - Sunk Cost Bias
Gary Keller, The One Thing
Emma Isaacs, Winging It
Blog coming soon on power and agency keep an eye on our website or jump onto the mailing list so you receive the latest blogs straight to email: http://www.elevatewithgrace.com.au
We keep referring to linked in learning so felt it only fair that we sought out a free month for you to check this out: https://linkedin-learning.pxf.io/Elevate
If you are keen to check out any of the books we spoke about today: http://www.booktopia.kh4ffx.net/Elevate
**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.
Music created by Claire's daughter Hannah
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Claire (00:00):
Welcome to the Elevate with Grace podcast.
For women who were short on timeand long to take steps to create
success on their own terms.
Our aim is to curate and sharethe best tips, insights, and
knowledge from all of thecontent out there.
Then take the brain strain outof it by giving you the, so
what, and some immediate,actionable steps for you to
seamlessly slot into your lifeeach week that will help propel
(00:23):
you from where you are, to whereyou want to be.
In each episode, we take a lookinto one of the pillars of our
Elevate with Grace success onyour own terms" Model, where we
explore taking smart risks,cultivating our careers and
fueling our financial power.
These three elements worktogether even better when we
look at them within the broadercontext of the big picture
(00:43):
aspirations we have for what wewant our lives to be like for
our future selves, while alsopaying attention to not letting
stuff that might be holding usback, get in our way.
Miranda (00:53):
It's episode seven of our Elevate with Grace podcast.
I'm Miranda and joining me isthe exceptionally talented and
insightful Claire.
In this episode, we arefollowing up last week's
episode, where we discussed whysmart risk taking was important
to your future.
And this week we're talkingabout taking smart risks and
what superpowers you need totake on this feat, which takes
(01:14):
us swiftly to decision-making.
We are exploring the idea thatyour decision making approach
will ensure that you areconfident, do a whole lot less
second guessing and have apositive impact on inspiring you
to take braver, smarter risks onyour journey to living a life of
success as you define it on yourown terms.
To do this in this episode, weare going to be running through
quality decision-making, some ofthe current pressures that might
(01:36):
encourage you to build youracumen of quality decision
making quickly, decision-makingbiases, different types of
decisions, the limited fountainthat is your decision-making
muscle.
And this week's ElevateChallenge.
I've really enjoyedinvestigating smart risk taking
in deeper detail andinterrogating what
decision-making really is.
It's been quite interesting towatch my 2.5 year old leap,
(01:58):
climb or jump, heart and soulfully invested, and definitely a
little risk taker himself, butit doesn't work for the rest of
us.
So how do we ensure that we'vealways got somebody there to
catch us?
Or trust that the universe isgoing to make this happen.
And we all know that's somethingthat we have to take on
ourselves.
So with this smart risk takingand the benefits of
decision-making acumen, we canmake that leap without having
(02:21):
that very nervous parent, readyto catch us.
For much of my life, I've givenlittle thought to this area and
the leaps I've taken in thepast.
And I wonder whether this issomething that you guys also,
maybe haven't given a lot ofthought to.
And if an opportunity wasoverlooked or not as thoroughly
interrogated, as we probablyactively haven't been working
this muscle, so I'm excited thatwe start to bring this area to
(02:43):
life.
Before we leap in let's quicklycheck in on the Elevate
Challenge from last week.
Here, we provided an insightinto your risk taking profile.
This was a 10 question surveyfor you to take and learn more
about yourself and I hope youreally enjoyed the insights into
what your default risk responseis here.
With this awareness in hand, itopens you up to either
considering taking on morerisks, or if you are closer to a
(03:05):
five on the risk profile,ensuring the quality of your
decision-making process and yourrisk calculations are high.
And we'll talk more about thiswhen we talk about biases
shortly.
Wherever you are, there isalways more muscle to train here
and more tools.
Claire, how did you go with thechallenge and more importantly,
how have you been?
Claire (03:23):
I'm doing pretty well considering we're living in a
city that recently took thetitle of being the most lockdown
city in the world from COVID.
I came across a concept recentlycalled active hope, which I
found is quite helpful.
It's where you're acknowledgingand accepting the really tough
realities of our currentexistence.
And at the same time, balancingthat with focusing on the small
(03:44):
things that you can do each dayand each week to help you
facilitate outcomes that youwant for yourself and for your
community around you, so that'skept me up beat this week.
Learning about myself and how Ican actively work on being a
better, stronger version of meis one of those active hope
activities that I've been doing,and so doing our Elevate with
Grace risk-taker survey was agreat activity for that.
(04:06):
I found that I sit closer to therisk-taker end of the spectrum,
which wasn't surprising initself, that felt right to me
around about the three and ahalf to four spectrum.
Filling out the survey was agreat way for me to have an
opportunity to reflect on thelast five years.
It helped me recognize thatwhile I have taken some big
risks from time to time, it ishugely dependent on what's going
(04:28):
on in my whole of lifecircumstances at that time.
And also that my confidence doesebb and flow quite significantly
too.
If I take a risk and it doesn'twork out well for me, I become
quite risk averse after that andfor a long period of time from
then on in where I'm rebuildingmy own self-confidence.
Taking a leaf out of EmmaIsaacs' book,"Winging It", I
need to get much better atdusting myself off quicker after
(04:50):
a failure.
I go into risk averse mode forlong periods, and that is really
slowing down my progress ofgetting to the life I'm aspiring
to for my future self.
What about you?
What did you find out aboutyourself Miranda when you did
the exercise?
Miranda (05:03):
Oh look in the risk taking exercise.
I see just over a four, which onreflection, I think I'm probably
more risk adverse in my personallife.
Perhaps using that grounding toallow for more chances, maybe a
more professional life.
Which was interesting because Ihave worked for the same company
for a long time.
But there have been loads ofopportunities to take risks,
(05:24):
stick my neck out and changejobs within.
A lot of difficult conversationsor challenging conversations.
I've been lucky that I've beenable to do that I think it'd be
really interesting to hear frompeople that have changed
companies frequently, how theyscore with this, and I wonder if
that makes you more of a risktaker or less of a risk taker in
your activities within theworkplace.
So, yeah, just an interestingreflection.
(05:45):
Sure it's a personality thing,but after talking about the why
of smart, risk-taking, I am sokeen to jump into the so what.
This has really got me thinkingthat since we're living in this
COVID impacted world, is now areally great time to be talking
about smart risks and bigdecisions, I feel like we've
really played it safe in thelast two years, as much as
possible.
Claire (06:03):
Yeah, I know what you mean.
I think this is a complex thingto talk about, but I actually
think it's a very opportune timeto be talking about
decision-making and smart risktaking.
Almost every single one of ushas had our lives turned on its
head in some way, shape or formover the last 18 months, and
within that, each of us haveexperienced feelings of loss,
sadness, and even anger forelements of our life that
(06:25):
existed in the pre COVID world.
Loss is deeply personal andunique for all of us.
What I might find or feel as aloss, someone else might feel as
a bonus or win, in the contextof their lives and vice versa.
Working from home is a topicalexample from many.
The thing about loss is that itgives us a beautiful opportunity
to pause, reflect, and questionwhat truly matters to us.
(06:48):
And I think when we startquestioning, we start thinking
about whether we should bechanging anything in our lives
and that can get uncomfortablepretty quickly.
We often shy away from askingdeep questions of ourselves and
the world around us, but askingthe hard questions and using
that information when we'remaking decisions can help us
better steer ourselves towardstaking, considered and mindful
(07:08):
steps in the direction of a lifethat we want to create for
ourselves in the future.
It's actually not that easy tomake the right decisions, you've
touched on this earlier in theintro Miranda.
There's lots of stuff that's atplay if we want to make quality
decisions, but there's a bunchof helpful concepts and content
that we're bringing to the tablein today's episode that will
help us be more mindful aboutthe quality of our
(07:29):
decision-making.
What do you think aboutdecisions in lockdown?
Miranda (07:32):
I can definitely say that the point there, the
confinement of lockdown wasdefinitely unsettling and, it's
a roller coaster ride.
We've all just been on thiscrazy rollercoaster.
Some days we're up some dayswith down.
There's definitely that loss.
And also I guess that freedom,freedom is probably the wrong
word, but this idea that you dohave that time to reflect and to
(07:52):
just do what you're allowed todo in your four walls or within
your five k's.
as opposed to being on themachine.
I think we've come off thetreadmill a little bit.
I found it time to think aboutwhat I want for the future and
gain clarity around where I wantto be for the next five to 10
years.
Definitely a silver liningthere.
We had the opportunity to knowourselves better and there's
power in that.
To answer your question, I wouldsay, yes, let's do it and let's
(08:12):
make sure that we do so with areally clear intent of
decision-making that we focusand use those decision making
tools to ensure our leaps are ata time and the most advantageous
to our situation.
Claire (08:25):
A hundred percent.
Being mindful of situationalcontext and what's most
advantageous to us in aparticular timeframe right now.
And what that means in a yearfrom now, or three years from
now, or five years from now, isreally important, particularly
after the year that's been.
But anytime really, thesedecision-making tools and
techniques and this wholeconcept of exploring good
(08:46):
decision-making I think it'salways relevant.
There's always times in ourlives where we're wanting to
change jobs or move interstateor, a tree change, or looking at
our relationships and all thatsort of stuff.
There was a good episode on theHBR idea cast podcast recently
about how to make strategiccareer decisions, even in a
(09:06):
crisis.
The podcast hosts, Alison Beardchats with Dorie Clark, who has
written a book"The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in (09:11):
undefined
a short term world".
And there was a lot of goodadvice that Clark shared about
how to lift our heads up whenthe global pandemic has pushed
many of us even further intoheads-down mode and forced us
into a reactive way of livingour day-to-day lives.
Our agency, like you touched on,I would use the word freedom,
our freedom, our agencies hasbeen reduced The amount of
(09:34):
control that we have over ourlives has been limited in a lot
of ways too.
And so how do we reclaim some ofour own agency and control over
our destiny because we can onlyoperate in reactive mode for so
long before we find ourselvesburning out.
There's a strong synergy to someof the stuff that we've been
covering in our earlier podcastsabout the idea that one way to
(09:55):
get back a sense of control andagency is to create a long-term
vision for ourselves.
Where do we want to be in threeyears, five years, 10 years from
now, and we don't need to gettoo fixated on how we're going
to get there.
We can be flexible and agile inthat how, as we tackle the weeks
and months ahead, depending onhow they unfold.
It gives us an ability to putsome broad views around our
(10:18):
personal goals and our why's, itdoesn't have to be worked to the
nth degree.
We can do our shitty first draftand all that stuff that we've
spoken about in earlierpodcasts.
There is some sense ofempowerment that comes from
setting a broad stake in theground for our longer term
vision and that can help us ingetting a feeling of greater
agency and give us a context forhow to make decisions in tough
(10:38):
times like this.
Miranda (10:39):
I'll jump in there in there.
I found a really cool modelabout enhanced sense of agency
versus diminished agency andwhat steps were involved there.
So I'll chuck that in the shownotes cause you're tapping on a
very important point there aboutwhere we gain control back and
how we do that.
Claire (10:54):
I'll check out the show notes myself to, to check out
that article.
I also liked the conversation inthe HBR podcast where they talk
about cultivating patience andcoming from a background of
being quite an impatient person,that really resonated with me.
Clark used an analogy of lookingout for tiny raindrops to help
you stay on your course and notgive up about how long it takes
(11:17):
to get there.
Once you've got your long-termgoals set, it can take quite a
long time and to look for thoselittle tiny raindrops that are
giving you indication thatyou're on the right direction.
She also talks about a handstandcoach saying that if you ask the
average person how long it takesto master a handstand, they
would guesstimate two weeks.
But in actual fact, it textsabout six months of daily
(11:38):
practice to be able to master ahandstand.
And I think that's good forcertainly impatient people like
me that it can actually takesome time to work through this
stuff and get you in a positionthat you want to be for your
long-term self.
Miranda (11:51):
I really liked that example too.
I think we do, just assume thatthese things can happen.
Habits are another one, right.
The handstand yeah.
Would not have thought it wouldtake six months.
Good on those kids, if you thinkabout it, they try every day to
do a handstand or cartwheeluntil they do it.
We did it as kids and I neverthought about, how long it took?
You just you're going to masterit.
Claire (12:11):
Yep.
And the way my core muscles areworking after 18 months in
mostly hard lockdown, I thinkit's going to take me a lot, but
anyway, that's a good lesson forus all.
The other good part about it isthat the podcast hosts doesn't
shy away from pressing Clark onhow really quite difficult it is
for many of us to carve outspace and time to strategize on
(12:35):
what our long-term goals are.
Urgent tasks for our job and ourfamilies and ourselves each week
can be all consuming and it tiesinto what we're trying to do
with the Elevate with Gracepodcast, how to get little tiny
actions in each week.
And you just have to keepresetting and level-setting
like, things are gonna go out ofcontrol but each week you need
to try to find the time and makethe time and figure out how to
(12:58):
carve out time, to take yourhead up and look around and
think about some more of thoselong-term decisions and ideas
that you have for your futureself.
I flicked you the podcastMiranda.
I know you had a listen.
Was there anything else that youliked about it?
Miranda (13:13):
I thought it was a great session.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I think she was quite pragmaticwith that time.
And she really, like you said,she didn't shy away, but this
lady was talking about yournights and weekends, she was
going hard and going that 20%time that you time.
It's not to be squandered.
I think she probably didn't sayit, my example, but you know,
put away the Netflix and I don'tthink any of us need to hear
(13:35):
that we all need a bit ofdowntime.
But I guess it just makes a goodpoint for us.
I relate to building Elevatewith Grace with you and the
doing this really happens inthose hours and weekends, but
the energy and the grounding Igain from this is evidence to
that Simon Sinek sentiment thatwhen you're doing something you
love, working hard isn't hard.
And it's actually reallyenergizing.
(13:56):
Much like we discussed lastweek, with smart risk taking on
the continuum, you are notcowering in your home or leaping
off a ravine, but somewhere inthe middle.
And she talks about thiscontinuum of decision-making.
To explain this thought further,I found that, that piece in the
article about your life as aVenn diagram, very relatable.
So in your twenties, your workand your interests overlap
(14:17):
almost completely aseverything's new, you're
learning the industry, thecompany.
We were very willing to dedicateall of our hours at work as we
built our acumen in that space.
And then as you move into yourthirties and beyond that Venn
diagram has shifted to a pointmuch more like a normal Venn
diagram where there's only asmall overlap where your work
and the rest of your lifeintersects.
(14:39):
Which I can see how thathappens, but that can come with
its own challenges about findingthose areas where your work and
your interests overlap.
And also if they don't, maybe itis those weekends and those
mornings to make your magichappen.
Cause it's not comingnecessarily from the same place
it came from early in life.
You mentioned urgent andimportant, I looked it up and I
(15:01):
quite like the EisenhowerMatrix.
It gave a label and a frameworkto those discussions about the
urgent tasks versus theimportant tasks, really how to
prioritize, in that ilk of"TheOne Thing".
So don't if you've heard of theEisenhower matrix before, but
that was a good insight or atakeaway.
Claire (15:18):
I've used that a couple of times in the, in a work
context.
I liked your visualization aboutthe Venn diagram spreading out.
One of the terms in Vogue at themoment, and they do touch on it
a little bit in that podcast isthis idea of the great
resignation that's happening inthe U S and there's been some
media lately that it's coming,or it's starting to happen in
(15:39):
Australia, too.
And I wonder whether as youmentioned, because over time,
the connectivity of purpose thatwe have with our work and then
the connectivity around the restof our whole of life has got a
little bit displaced and it'snot as close knit as it was once
before.
In exploring this concept ofdecision-making it's not a
(16:00):
binary decision around resign ornot resign.
There's a whole range of optionsthat you could look at in
between them as how you'relooking to make decisions about
your career and your life goingforward after a heavy period for
us all.
And if you're forced to makesome time in your week to think
about these things, it can helpyou foster a different
(16:20):
conversation with your companyabout how you want it to work in
a post COVID world making surethat you're feeling aligned to
your purpose and you're feelingenergized in your day to day
after a lot of us have had a lotof agency come out of our lives,
who've been in lockdown andhomeschooling and generally
difficulties in navigating apost COVID life.
Miranda (16:41):
We've certainly been riffing a lot on how that
impacts decision-making and it'sbecause we're all making
collective change at the sametime.
So it is such a topical time tobe talking about smart risks and
big decisions
Claire (16:52):
I bought him up previously Dom Price from
Atlassian wrote a blog articlerecently called what is the
great resignation is entitledB.S.
Dom references some insightsfrom The Guardian where in a
four month period between Mayand August, 90,000 Australian
women left or lost their jobscompared to 25,000 Australian
men.
(17:12):
And he's talking about, is it aresignation problem?
Is it a retention problem?
What's happening with the peoplethat are moving out of the
workforce that really, we wantthem at the table from a
diversity perspective.
And in that article, he givessome really great suggestions
and some activities on whatleaders and employees
collectively, as you mentioned,it's a collective situation that
(17:33):
we're in and what they can do tohave a red hot go at fixing
where they are at the moment.
Now, both Dom and Dorie Clarksay, if you already knew pre
COVID that maybe your job wasn'tright for you, and you've
cemented a few things, or you'vealready had those conversations
by all means, if resigning isthe right thing to doing then
resigning is the right thing todo, but equally to really
(17:54):
explore and give yourself sometime to explore what other
options you could have And ifyou can find a tribe of your
work colleagues and work with atribe of managers to really work
and help your organizationthrive in a post COVID world and
in a more virtual working worldand enabling some of that
flexibility that we've had andpeople have enjoyed to continue.
(18:17):
What can you do in that spaceand what decisions can you make
and how can you map out yourdecisions and how you're going
to handle this over the short tolong-term.
And take some empowermentactions around that if you can.
It's nuanced, right?
It's not just this greatresignation, there's a lot of
stuff that's going on behindthat.
Have some time and space to, toask yourself what that means for
(18:37):
your future self.
Miranda (18:38):
I think employers would actually thank you for speaking
up and speaking your truth.
And then if it's not justyourself, but it's a collective,
they'd much prefer to hear thatthan lose you.
I would imagine most places I'mnot not going to say all.
You know, you work place betterthan me and I chuckled out
before cause I was imaginingthis like mutiny.
And that's not what it is thatall it's actually just being
really honest and really true.
(18:59):
Interesting that you mentionedtribe because that is coming up
a lot in all of decision-makingthought leaders consistently,
there's this message that,building a bit of a sounding
board of colleagues, associates,who are a tribe within your
expertise to support bigdecision-making ideas is one of
the most important things thatyou can do.
It was actually mentioned in theHBR podcast, but also in a great
(19:21):
book by Mike Bayer OneDecision", and quite a few
others.
He talks about the fact thatit's just not possible to make a
completely rational and informeddecision without this tribe.
It's essential to ensure thatyour decision grounded and less
based in emotion.
I reflecting on this and goingwell, yeah, talk to your mum,
she's going to be your championshe's in your corner.
(19:41):
However, it's one of thoseinstances when she's probably
going to build on your emotionas opposed to bring you down.
Whereas somebody in yourindustry or an associate that
kind of gets how your worldworks is going to have maybe a
more pragmatic balanced view ofthe problem, ask the right
questions, come up with someIntel, which is going to help
make your insights much moreuseful.
Particularly if you're thinkingyou want to change jobs, it
(20:02):
doesn't hurt to talk to otherpeople and they might be like,
well, sure.
But there might be this otheropportunity for you here.
Have you spoken about what youreally like, what's going to
really Set this for you.
But likewise, if you need tomake some meaningful change and
help your workplace move intothis new world then that's
really important too.
I'm always surprised when peopleshare that they're looking for a
job and they haven't had anyconversations with the
(20:24):
organization that this is whatwe could do.
Certainly there's an internalchange clock in all of this and
sometimes there's nothing withinyour organization that's going
to fill that need.
So by all means, but if it'sjust because the grass is
greener, I think we all knowthat that's not necessarily
true.
let's have some conversations,in many cases You might be
(20:45):
handed a cool project, or youmight be seen in a new light
because you're willing to stepup and have that difficult
conversation, and then there's abit more trust in you and how
you portray yourself to thebusiness that you're sharing
this pain point, or you'resharing this great idea that's
going to help improve your lifeat work, but also improve the
workplace in general.
And if you don't the change,well, at least, you know, that
(21:06):
you've given it a red hot crackwithin your organization and
you'll have some strong musthaves within you when you're
looking for that new role.
Either way, you're going to do alot more to put yourself on
equal a better footing.
Off the back of last week'ssurvey I do think it's super
important that you know yourselfas much as possible.
The research we did really talksabout how people make decisions
differently.
There's also the piece aroundyour own innate personality
(21:28):
type.
So if you're an introvert, youare going to do a internal
review, put up a lot ofprotections, you're not going to
be as comfortable to go and talkto other people.
And knowing that about yourself.
We'll provide some extra toolsnext week, to support that.
But at some point, this isconsistently shared across
thought-leaders that talking toother people is a big, big help.
As an extrovert, you're probablygoing to be doing gut based
(21:51):
decision-making.
You're going to leap and fill inthe blank as you go, I think
there's an analogy somewherewhere you jump off a cliff and
you build a parachute on the waydown.
Several years ago, my businesscoach suggested that I take a W
A M, WAM survey to understand mynatural strengths and a couple
of key takeaways that I stilltry to offset in my day to day
(22:12):
decision making or risk settingare around my natural instincts
to make decisions.
I am very, gut-based veryextroverted and a lot more
likely to jump without goinginto all of the facts or the
systems around me.
Interesting reading in my eyes,X book Winging It, which you've
spoken about a little bitbecause she encourages that.
And there's some really good inthat, but there's also, sort
(22:32):
downfalls.
There's these things calledcognitive biases and the idea
here is that these cognitivebiases set you up to feel like
you're making a really informeddecision when maybe you're just
taking your gut instinct andleaping.
Like confirmation bias, which iswhere you seek out information,
that's going to confirm that,yes, I'm right.
This is the right decision tomake, and you ignore all else.
There's a little bit of thatgoing on out there in the world
(22:53):
at the moment, but we'll leavethat alone.
Then there is anchoring bias,which is over-reliance on a
single piece of information orexperience, or you've heard
something you anchor to it andyou can't be swayed.
The halo effect bias, so it'syour gut feeling that you really
like the person or brand and anyinformation or experience it's
really hard to taint that withthat halo effect And
(23:14):
overconfidence bias, which isoverestimate your own abilities
to make decisions withoutseeking any data.
This WAM survey also shared thatthere is other decision-making
preferences out there.
And it's actually been a hugehelp in my work, as I seek to
understand the people that Iwork with for, and that they're
not all like me.
Right.
So we have to allow fordifferent people in different
(23:35):
decision making styles.
There is a data based decisionmaking style.
There is evidence-baseddecision-making styles.
There is time-based where theyjust need to sit on it and take
time and it doesn't matter whatyou do or what your gender is,
they just need whatever theirtime clock is to make that
decision.
And then there's ones that drawon past experience, whether
that's a good thing or a badthing to make that new decision.
(23:58):
I always encourage people tofind out as much as they can
about themselves and then theycan course correct from there.
Claire (24:03):
We've spoken about a couple of strength based surveys
in episodes previously.
I'm a fan of them, both forknowing yourself.
But as you said, Miranda, alsoknowing other people and how
they may make decisions, and thetypes of personalities that they
have, especially in this worldwhere we're now probably getting
new colleagues coming on boardand we're meeting them in a
(24:23):
virtual context and so havingthat knowledge and doing that
work to understand each othercan really help in an
environment.
Talking about biases they're soimportant in terms of how they
influence our decision-making.
Seth Goden, I noticed recentlyreleased a short LinkedIn
learning course ondecision-making where his view
is that there's one crucialthing that impacts our ability
(24:45):
to make great decisions.
And he terms it as being wherewe find it really difficult to
stop hoarding our chips and ouralternative term for this is a
sunk cost bias.
Basically the concept is thateven when there's a bunch of
warning signs that we should payattention to with respect to a
particular personal orprofessional endeavor in our
lives.
We unconsciously, or probablysometimes even consciously find
(25:08):
a reason, a bit like you'reanchoring bias Miranda it's a
similar type of concept, we finda reason to ignore those warning
signs because we think toourselves, I've invested years
and years of my time and energyblood, sweat, and tears into
this relationship or thiscompany or this work
specialization and I just keeppushing myself to persist with
(25:29):
it for a bit longer.
Seth urges people to reallyreflect on whether our decisions
are delivering the change thatwe're seeking to make right now.
Are the decisions that we'remaking, getting the results that
matter to us.
And are our decisions holding usback and fundamentally is our
attachment to the chips andhoarding the chips, i.e.
our sunk cost bias, holding usback from making the right
(25:52):
decisions for our future selves.
I think we can hugelyunderestimate how much we don't
want to admit to ourselves thatwe've made a bad decision in the
past.
He gives a good analogy aboutbuying a boat, there are so many
boats sitting unused inboatsheds and the owners
continue to pay to store theboats in the boat sheds, even
though they don't use themanymore.
How many unused boats are wecurrently holding on to in our
(26:15):
lives?
And we just keep paying the boatshed fees, because it's much
easier than admitting toourselves that we've made a bad
decision in buying the boat inthe first place.
We need to face into thatdecision and just let it go.
It talks about things that we'vemade decisions about and have
been part of our lives for solong, but we treat them as an
asset that's gifted fromourselves.
(26:36):
So if it's time to let go of theboat, then we need to face into
that decision and let go of theboat or that career or that
relationship or whatever.
It's really tough thing to dofor most of us.
Miranda (26:47):
Oh, gosh, absolutely.
And if any of my family happensto listen to this, I had nothing
to do with the boat example.
my dad has two boats and hewould absolutely relate, Anyway,
I think he hopes that he's goingto have time, at some point to
actually use them.
Other biases that we haven'tquite covered, they were
highlighted in Annie Duke'swork, which I was really
thrilled to see an interviewwith her at the end of Seth
(27:09):
Godin's.
I'm a big fan of both of herbooks,"How to Decide" and
"Thinking in Bets".
And I think she's got anotherone as well.
Others of that relating oroutcome bias.
This is where we judge thequality of our decisions based
on the outcome.
She gives the example of youchoose to take a job and the job
doesn't work out and sotherefore it was a bad decision
and she speaks to this as it'snot a bad decision.
(27:31):
You obviously you've got to doyour decision making process at
the front to make sure that youdon't fall into the trap of that
relating or outcome bias.
Relating bias is looking backand reflecting and saying that
was the wrong decision to make,and then not making that same
sort of decision in the future.
And Claire, you mentioned Ithink about how, when you pull
back from decisions if thingsdon't go your way but then
(27:53):
future decisions are a challengefor you.
This is where maybe somethinglike a decision tree would be
really helpful in making thatinitial decision.
So whatever the outcome mightbe, you've anticipated it, and
more on this next week.
Similar, but not the same ishindsight bias where we over
exaggerate or we misrememberfacts after the outcome.
I'll say to link one experienceto the others, hindsight's
(28:13):
fairly frustrating.
So hindsight bias is fairlyself-explanatory.
As you mentioned, just soimportant to understand that
these biases are in play ineveryday lives and if we're
aware of them and we can catchourselves going, oh no, that's
confirmation bias or hang on.
I'm thinking of it as sunk costbias here.
Sunk cost bias comes up so muchin negotiation, really
(28:34):
understanding what your sunkcosts and you want to go out and
not counting that sunk cost inyour decision-making process at
all.
Such a hard discipline to have,and we're going to summarize
these and put them in the shownotes.
We'll definitely put them on ablog on the website because I
think it's so important to keepreflecting back on those and
training that muscle to go hangon, is this a real decision that
I'm making or relating.
Claire (28:56):
I could talk about unconscious bias and
decision-making forever.
It really is a very behavioralkind of concept for us human
beings.
Like we're so impacted by ourlives to date and we could just
go on, about this forever.
But the interest in making thispodcast not go for a thousand
hours, one of the last thingsthat I wanted to talk about too,
(29:17):
in terms of qualitydecision-making and what can
impact our qualitydecision-making.
There's a book called"ThinkingFast and Slow" by Daniel
Kahneman.
It always comes up as highlyrated on the topic of
decision-making.
It's been in my Goodreads booklist for a long time, but I
haven't read it yet so inprepping for this podcast
(29:37):
episode, I listened to thesummary of"Thinking Fast and
Slow" on the"What You WillLearn" podcast, which is quite a
good podcast.
It's a bit like Blinkist.
The two co-hosts read a businessbook and then summarize it on
the podcast.
"Thinking Fast and Slow" talksabout we have two systems of
thinking.
We have system one, which isfast thinking where we make
(29:57):
quick, almost instantaneousjudgements and assumptions.
And there's system two thinking,which requires us to invest in
much more cognitive efforts indecision-making.
So for example, doing our taxreturns, parking in a tight
space versus system one thinkingwhich is what I'm going to have
for lunch and what do I thinkabout that person?
The biggest takeaway that I hadfrom this concept is that we
(30:21):
have a limited amount of systemtwo energy on any given day.
It's like having a tank of fuelin your car and it can be drawn
down pretty easily.
So it sits in the background.
It doesn't really work if itdoesn't have to, we ordinarily
go to our system one quick baseddecisions.
What I think is reallyimportant, and if I think about
women in general, that we oftenhave got a large mental load
(30:45):
that we're carrying every day.
So by the time it gets to theend of the day, we've used so
much of our cognitive load ondifferent things that makes it
tricky to leave any space in thetank to make strategic
decisions, and really thinkabout what we're doing with are
we addressing those unconsciousbiases?
Are we thinking about differentways to make decisions?
Not binary, I've got to quit ornot.
(31:06):
But by the time we get around toit, maybe we don't feel like
we've got that energy in thetank.
We'll talk more about this innext week's episode, around
tools and techniques, but one ofthe things we need to think
about is when are we carving outtime for ourselves and space in
our days?
Because really, if we canearlier in the day to use some
of those cognitive muscles tomake harder decisions is
(31:29):
something that we should beconscious of as well.
Miranda (31:31):
Well, I didn't completely love this book.
It was a couple of years agowhen I read it.
And when you mentioned that itwas like, oh yeah, I remember
that.
And it was frustrating, I thinkto read the book because maybe
don't necessarily want to hearit all.
but I do think that the majortakeaway was the need to do
that.
heavy cognitive lifting.
As you mentioned before, yourbrain was too tired.
I found probably a two hourbenefit in my day in terms of
(31:54):
how I use my day by stopping,trying to push myself late at
night when I was falling asleepand still trying to work and try
to push through those barriersAlso snacking you're doing a
little snacking and coffee atnight as opposed to getting up
that hour or two hours early inthe morning.
And even though it takes alittle bit to love a 5:00 AM.
But it's so much easier andquicker just to pump out some
(32:16):
work.
I was finding that yeah, threehours at night is equal to about
half an hour or one hour firstthing in the morning.
So while I didn't love the book,I really appreciated the
concepts and the benefits fromthe book.
And you're rating the wholething.
I think you'd find itfrustrating.
Claire (32:32):
Then with using my time effectively.
I just absolutely just listen tothe cheat sheet version on the
podcast.
Miranda (32:39):
You know, I'd tell you, I thought you'd love something,
I think that's definitely whatwe want to do is curate those
nice tight bites.
This is what we want you to takeaway from this.
And, um, Don't get frustratedwith all the other stuff that we
were being told we can't do.
Claire (32:50):
Well today, we've talked quite widely and broadly about
stuff that might be impactingthe quality of our
decision-making.
hopefully for our graciouslisteners, we've ignited a
curiosity for being more mindfulabout how we go about making
decisions.
A few things we've spoken aboutis having a stake in the ground
about your long-term goals andfuture vision for yourself can
(33:11):
help because it can be there asyour navigating the twists and
turns of life.
And you can think about howthat's impacting those longer
term aspirations you have foryourself.
A conversation that we could'vegone on for hours around our
unconscious and conscious biasesand our risk-taking personality
and archetypes and how having anawareness of those can really
(33:32):
impact on the quality of ourdecision-making.
And finally, knowing thatthere's different types of
decisions and being aware of thetime of when we're making
decisions and when we're usingour cognitive energy.
And, thinking about how weprioritize our day and our
workloads and our life aroundthat.
So we can really make the mostof our cognitive abilities.
I think all of that is, ishelpful.
(33:54):
There's a quote I liked fromTony Robbins, which is the
quality of your life is not yourconditions.
It's your decisions at anymoment in time, you can change
your whole life by making newdecisions.
Making decisions is far from aone size fits all concept.
We make tons and tons ofdecisions all the time, every
day.
And it would just be great.
(34:14):
If one takeaway that you'regetting, is it just to have that
thought bubble in your mind?
As to some things that willchange the way that you could
make better quality decisionsand help you take smarter risks
is really the context of what wewant to talk about.
In next week's podcast, we'regoing to be exploring some
different tools, techniques, andmethods that you can experiment
with when you're trying to makesome decisions.
(34:35):
And so our weekly actionchallenge is to identify a
decision that you need to makein any aspect of your life, that
you want to feel a greater levelof confidence around when you're
deciding what your decisionshould be.
If you can bring that with youto next week's episode, it will
help you bounce it off thedecision-making tools and
techniques we'll be covering tosee if one or more of them
resonate with you for helpingyou make that decision.
Miranda (34:57):
Very excited to bring you those all important tools
next week to build yourdecision-making muscles.
As always, we have put all ofthe curated content we've
mentioned today in the podcastepisode notes.
So check them out over the nextweek and dip into some of the
stuff that resonates with youand will inspire you to take
those small, actionable stepsfor your own success journey.
Please also check out ourwebsite,
(35:17):
elevatewithgrace.com.au, I thinkparticularly this week going to
be a whole lot of content inthere that's nice and juicy and
hop onto our Instagram for morecurated content and those daily
updates.
We would love, love, love tohear from you how you're going
so please drop us an email atelevatewithgrace@gmail.com.
And if you're interested in anyof the book titles that we've
discussed, we do have aBooktopia link in our show notes
(35:39):
and website, we would be sograteful if you use that.
And of course, please like shareand subscribe this podcast it's
such an important way to ensureother women find this podcast
and that we are collectivelylifting each other up.
We can't wait to chat to youagain next week.
Thank you so much, Claire.
And thank you everyone forlistening.
Thanks Miranda.
Thanks everyone.
Welcome to the Elevate with Grace podcast.
For women who were short on timeand long to take steps to create
success on their own terms.
Our aim is to curate and sharethe best tips, insights, and
knowledge from all of thecontent out there.
Then take the brain strain outof it by giving you the, so
what, and some immediate,actionable steps for you to
seamlessly slot into your lifeeach week that will help propel
(00:23):
you from where you are, to whereyou want to be.
In each episode, we take a lookinto one of the pillars of our
Elevate with Grace success onyour own terms" Model, where we
explore taking smart risks,cultivating our careers and
fueling our financial power.
These three elements worktogether even better when we
look at them within the broadercontext of the big picture
(00:43):
aspirations we have for what wewant our lives to be like for
our future selves, while alsopaying attention to not letting
stuff that might be holding usback, get in our way.
Miranda (00:53):
It's episode seven of our Elevate with Grace podcast.
I'm Miranda and joining me isthe exceptionally talented and
insightful Claire.
In this episode, we arefollowing up last week's
episode, where we discussed whysmart risk taking was important
to your future.
And this week we're talkingabout taking smart risks and
what superpowers you need totake on this feat, which takes
(01:14):
us swiftly to decision-making.
We are exploring the idea thatyour decision making approach
will ensure that you areconfident, do a whole lot less
second guessing and have apositive impact on inspiring you
to take braver, smarter risks onyour journey to living a life of
success as you define it on yourown terms.
To do this in this episode, weare going to be running through
quality decision-making, some ofthe current pressures that might
(01:36):
encourage you to build youracumen of quality decision
making quickly, decision-makingbiases, different types of
decisions, the limited fountainthat is your decision-making
muscle.
And this week's ElevateChallenge.
I've really enjoyedinvestigating smart risk taking
in deeper detail andinterrogating what
decision-making really is.
It's been quite interesting towatch my 2.5 year old leap,
(01:58):
climb or jump, heart and soulfully invested, and definitely a
little risk taker himself, butit doesn't work for the rest of
us.
So how do we ensure that we'vealways got somebody there to
catch us?
Or trust that the universe isgoing to make this happen.
And we all know that's somethingthat we have to take on
ourselves.
So with this smart risk takingand the benefits of
decision-making acumen, we canmake that leap without having
(02:21):
that very nervous parent, readyto catch us.
For much of my life, I've givenlittle thought to this area and
the leaps I've taken in thepast.
And I wonder whether this issomething that you guys also,
maybe haven't given a lot ofthought to.
And if an opportunity wasoverlooked or not as thoroughly
interrogated, as we probablyactively haven't been working
this muscle, so I'm excited thatwe start to bring this area to
(02:43):
life.
Before we leap in let's quicklycheck in on the Elevate
Challenge from last week.
Here, we provided an insightinto your risk taking profile.
This was a 10 question surveyfor you to take and learn more
about yourself and I hope youreally enjoyed the insights into
what your default risk responseis here.
With this awareness in hand, itopens you up to either
considering taking on morerisks, or if you are closer to a
(03:05):
five on the risk profile,ensuring the quality of your
decision-making process and yourrisk calculations are high.
And we'll talk more about thiswhen we talk about biases
shortly.
Wherever you are, there isalways more muscle to train here
and more tools.
Claire, how did you go with thechallenge and more importantly,
how have you been?
Claire (03:23):
I'm doing pretty well considering we're living in a
city that recently took thetitle of being the most lockdown
city in the world from COVID.
I came across a concept recentlycalled active hope, which I
found is quite helpful.
It's where you're acknowledgingand accepting the really tough
realities of our currentexistence.
And at the same time, balancingthat with focusing on the small
(03:44):
things that you can do each dayand each week to help you
facilitate outcomes that youwant for yourself and for your
community around you, so that'skept me up beat this week.
Learning about myself and how Ican actively work on being a
better, stronger version of meis one of those active hope
activities that I've been doing,and so doing our Elevate with
Grace risk-taker survey was agreat activity for that.
(04:06):
I found that I sit closer to therisk-taker end of the spectrum,
which wasn't surprising initself, that felt right to me
around about the three and ahalf to four spectrum.
Filling out the survey was agreat way for me to have an
opportunity to reflect on thelast five years.
It helped me recognize thatwhile I have taken some big
risks from time to time, it ishugely dependent on what's going
(04:28):
on in my whole of lifecircumstances at that time.
And also that my confidence doesebb and flow quite significantly
too.
If I take a risk and it doesn'twork out well for me, I become
quite risk averse after that andfor a long period of time from
then on in where I'm rebuildingmy own self-confidence.
Taking a leaf out of EmmaIsaacs' book,"Winging It", I
need to get much better atdusting myself off quicker after
(04:50):
a failure.
I go into risk averse mode forlong periods, and that is really
slowing down my progress ofgetting to the life I'm aspiring
to for my future self.
What about you?
What did you find out aboutyourself Miranda when you did
the exercise?
Miranda (05:03):
Oh look in the risk taking exercise.
I see just over a four, which onreflection, I think I'm probably
more risk adverse in my personallife.
Perhaps using that grounding toallow for more chances, maybe a
more professional life.
Which was interesting because Ihave worked for the same company
for a long time.
But there have been loads ofopportunities to take risks,
(05:24):
stick my neck out and changejobs within.
A lot of difficult conversationsor challenging conversations.
I've been lucky that I've beenable to do that I think it'd be
really interesting to hear frompeople that have changed
companies frequently, how theyscore with this, and I wonder if
that makes you more of a risktaker or less of a risk taker in
your activities within theworkplace.
So, yeah, just an interestingreflection.
(05:45):
Sure it's a personality thing,but after talking about the why
of smart, risk-taking, I am sokeen to jump into the so what.
This has really got me thinkingthat since we're living in this
COVID impacted world, is now areally great time to be talking
about smart risks and bigdecisions, I feel like we've
really played it safe in thelast two years, as much as
possible.
Claire (06:03):
Yeah, I know what you mean.
I think this is a complex thingto talk about, but I actually
think it's a very opportune timeto be talking about
decision-making and smart risktaking.
Almost every single one of ushas had our lives turned on its
head in some way, shape or formover the last 18 months, and
within that, each of us haveexperienced feelings of loss,
sadness, and even anger forelements of our life that
(06:25):
existed in the pre COVID world.
Loss is deeply personal andunique for all of us.
What I might find or feel as aloss, someone else might feel as
a bonus or win, in the contextof their lives and vice versa.
Working from home is a topicalexample from many.
The thing about loss is that itgives us a beautiful opportunity
to pause, reflect, and questionwhat truly matters to us.
(06:48):
And I think when we startquestioning, we start thinking
about whether we should bechanging anything in our lives
and that can get uncomfortablepretty quickly.
We often shy away from askingdeep questions of ourselves and
the world around us, but askingthe hard questions and using
that information when we'remaking decisions can help us
better steer ourselves towardstaking, considered and mindful
(07:08):
steps in the direction of a lifethat we want to create for
ourselves in the future.
It's actually not that easy tomake the right decisions, you've
touched on this earlier in theintro Miranda.
There's lots of stuff that's atplay if we want to make quality
decisions, but there's a bunchof helpful concepts and content
that we're bringing to the tablein today's episode that will
help us be more mindful aboutthe quality of our
(07:29):
decision-making.
What do you think aboutdecisions in lockdown?
Miranda (07:32):
I can definitely say that the point there, the
confinement of lockdown wasdefinitely unsettling and, it's
a roller coaster ride.
We've all just been on thiscrazy rollercoaster.
Some days we're up some dayswith down.
There's definitely that loss.
And also I guess that freedom,freedom is probably the wrong
word, but this idea that you dohave that time to reflect and to
(07:52):
just do what you're allowed todo in your four walls or within
your five k's.
as opposed to being on themachine.
I think we've come off thetreadmill a little bit.
I found it time to think aboutwhat I want for the future and
gain clarity around where I wantto be for the next five to 10
years.
Definitely a silver liningthere.
We had the opportunity to knowourselves better and there's
power in that.
To answer your question, I wouldsay, yes, let's do it and let's
(08:12):
make sure that we do so with areally clear intent of
decision-making that we focusand use those decision making
tools to ensure our leaps are ata time and the most advantageous
to our situation.
Claire (08:25):
A hundred percent.
Being mindful of situationalcontext and what's most
advantageous to us in aparticular timeframe right now.
And what that means in a yearfrom now, or three years from
now, or five years from now, isreally important, particularly
after the year that's been.
But anytime really, thesedecision-making tools and
techniques and this wholeconcept of exploring good
(08:46):
decision-making I think it'salways relevant.
There's always times in ourlives where we're wanting to
change jobs or move interstateor, a tree change, or looking at
our relationships and all thatsort of stuff.
There was a good episode on theHBR idea cast podcast recently
about how to make strategiccareer decisions, even in a
(09:06):
crisis.
The podcast hosts, Alison Beardchats with Dorie Clark, who has
written a book"The Long Game: how to be a long-term thinker in (09:11):
undefined
a short term world".
And there was a lot of goodadvice that Clark shared about
how to lift our heads up whenthe global pandemic has pushed
many of us even further intoheads-down mode and forced us
into a reactive way of livingour day-to-day lives.
Our agency, like you touched on,I would use the word freedom,
our freedom, our agencies hasbeen reduced The amount of
(09:34):
control that we have over ourlives has been limited in a lot
of ways too.
And so how do we reclaim some ofour own agency and control over
our destiny because we can onlyoperate in reactive mode for so
long before we find ourselvesburning out.
There's a strong synergy to someof the stuff that we've been
covering in our earlier podcastsabout the idea that one way to
(09:55):
get back a sense of control andagency is to create a long-term
vision for ourselves.
Where do we want to be in threeyears, five years, 10 years from
now, and we don't need to gettoo fixated on how we're going
to get there.
We can be flexible and agile inthat how, as we tackle the weeks
and months ahead, depending onhow they unfold.
It gives us an ability to putsome broad views around our
(10:18):
personal goals and our why's, itdoesn't have to be worked to the
nth degree.
We can do our shitty first draftand all that stuff that we've
spoken about in earlierpodcasts.
There is some sense ofempowerment that comes from
setting a broad stake in theground for our longer term
vision and that can help us ingetting a feeling of greater
agency and give us a context forhow to make decisions in tough
(10:38):
times like this.
Miranda (10:39):
I'll jump in there in there.
I found a really cool modelabout enhanced sense of agency
versus diminished agency andwhat steps were involved there.
So I'll chuck that in the shownotes cause you're tapping on a
very important point there aboutwhere we gain control back and
how we do that.
Claire (10:54):
I'll check out the show notes myself to, to check out
that article.
I also liked the conversation inthe HBR podcast where they talk
about cultivating patience andcoming from a background of
being quite an impatient person,that really resonated with me.
Clark used an analogy of lookingout for tiny raindrops to help
you stay on your course and notgive up about how long it takes
(11:17):
to get there.
Once you've got your long-termgoals set, it can take quite a
long time and to look for thoselittle tiny raindrops that are
giving you indication thatyou're on the right direction.
She also talks about a handstandcoach saying that if you ask the
average person how long it takesto master a handstand, they
would guesstimate two weeks.
But in actual fact, it textsabout six months of daily
(11:38):
practice to be able to master ahandstand.
And I think that's good forcertainly impatient people like
me that it can actually takesome time to work through this
stuff and get you in a positionthat you want to be for your
long-term self.
Miranda (11:51):
I really liked that example too.
I think we do, just assume thatthese things can happen.
Habits are another one, right.
The handstand yeah.
Would not have thought it wouldtake six months.
Good on those kids, if you thinkabout it, they try every day to
do a handstand or cartwheeluntil they do it.
We did it as kids and I neverthought about, how long it took?
You just you're going to masterit.
Claire (12:11):
Yep.
And the way my core muscles areworking after 18 months in
mostly hard lockdown, I thinkit's going to take me a lot, but
anyway, that's a good lesson forus all.
The other good part about it isthat the podcast hosts doesn't
shy away from pressing Clark onhow really quite difficult it is
for many of us to carve outspace and time to strategize on
(12:35):
what our long-term goals are.
Urgent tasks for our job and ourfamilies and ourselves each week
can be all consuming and it tiesinto what we're trying to do
with the Elevate with Gracepodcast, how to get little tiny
actions in each week.
And you just have to keepresetting and level-setting
like, things are gonna go out ofcontrol but each week you need
to try to find the time and makethe time and figure out how to
(12:58):
carve out time, to take yourhead up and look around and
think about some more of thoselong-term decisions and ideas
that you have for your futureself.
I flicked you the podcastMiranda.
I know you had a listen.
Was there anything else that youliked about it?
Miranda (13:13):
I thought it was a great session.
Thank you so much for sharing.
I think she was quite pragmaticwith that time.
And she really, like you said,she didn't shy away, but this
lady was talking about yournights and weekends, she was
going hard and going that 20%time that you time.
It's not to be squandered.
I think she probably didn't sayit, my example, but you know,
put away the Netflix and I don'tthink any of us need to hear
(13:35):
that we all need a bit ofdowntime.
But I guess it just makes a goodpoint for us.
I relate to building Elevatewith Grace with you and the
doing this really happens inthose hours and weekends, but
the energy and the grounding Igain from this is evidence to
that Simon Sinek sentiment thatwhen you're doing something you
love, working hard isn't hard.
And it's actually reallyenergizing.
(13:56):
Much like we discussed lastweek, with smart risk taking on
the continuum, you are notcowering in your home or leaping
off a ravine, but somewhere inthe middle.
And she talks about thiscontinuum of decision-making.
To explain this thought further,I found that, that piece in the
article about your life as aVenn diagram, very relatable.
So in your twenties, your workand your interests overlap
(14:17):
almost completely aseverything's new, you're
learning the industry, thecompany.
We were very willing to dedicateall of our hours at work as we
built our acumen in that space.
And then as you move into yourthirties and beyond that Venn
diagram has shifted to a pointmuch more like a normal Venn
diagram where there's only asmall overlap where your work
and the rest of your lifeintersects.
(14:39):
Which I can see how thathappens, but that can come with
its own challenges about findingthose areas where your work and
your interests overlap.
And also if they don't, maybe itis those weekends and those
mornings to make your magichappen.
Cause it's not comingnecessarily from the same place
it came from early in life.
You mentioned urgent andimportant, I looked it up and I
(15:01):
quite like the EisenhowerMatrix.
It gave a label and a frameworkto those discussions about the
urgent tasks versus theimportant tasks, really how to
prioritize, in that ilk of"TheOne Thing".
So don't if you've heard of theEisenhower matrix before, but
that was a good insight or atakeaway.
Claire (15:18):
I've used that a couple of times in the, in a work
context.
I liked your visualization aboutthe Venn diagram spreading out.
One of the terms in Vogue at themoment, and they do touch on it
a little bit in that podcast isthis idea of the great
resignation that's happening inthe U S and there's been some
media lately that it's coming,or it's starting to happen in
(15:39):
Australia, too.
And I wonder whether as youmentioned, because over time,
the connectivity of purpose thatwe have with our work and then
the connectivity around the restof our whole of life has got a
little bit displaced and it'snot as close knit as it was once
before.
In exploring this concept ofdecision-making it's not a
(16:00):
binary decision around resign ornot resign.
There's a whole range of optionsthat you could look at in
between them as how you'relooking to make decisions about
your career and your life goingforward after a heavy period for
us all.
And if you're forced to makesome time in your week to think
about these things, it can helpyou foster a different
(16:20):
conversation with your companyabout how you want it to work in
a post COVID world making surethat you're feeling aligned to
your purpose and you're feelingenergized in your day to day
after a lot of us have had a lotof agency come out of our lives,
who've been in lockdown andhomeschooling and generally
difficulties in navigating apost COVID life.
Miranda (16:41):
We've certainly been riffing a lot on how that
impacts decision-making and it'sbecause we're all making
collective change at the sametime.
So it is such a topical time tobe talking about smart risks and
big decisions
Claire (16:52):
I bought him up previously Dom Price from
Atlassian wrote a blog articlerecently called what is the
great resignation is entitledB.S.
Dom references some insightsfrom The Guardian where in a
four month period between Mayand August, 90,000 Australian
women left or lost their jobscompared to 25,000 Australian
men.
(17:12):
And he's talking about, is it aresignation problem?
Is it a retention problem?
What's happening with the peoplethat are moving out of the
workforce that really, we wantthem at the table from a
diversity perspective.
And in that article, he givessome really great suggestions
and some activities on whatleaders and employees
collectively, as you mentioned,it's a collective situation that
(17:33):
we're in and what they can do tohave a red hot go at fixing
where they are at the moment.
Now, both Dom and Dorie Clarksay, if you already knew pre
COVID that maybe your job wasn'tright for you, and you've
cemented a few things, or you'vealready had those conversations
by all means, if resigning isthe right thing to doing then
resigning is the right thing todo, but equally to really
(17:54):
explore and give yourself sometime to explore what other
options you could have And ifyou can find a tribe of your
work colleagues and work with atribe of managers to really work
and help your organizationthrive in a post COVID world and
in a more virtual working worldand enabling some of that
flexibility that we've had andpeople have enjoyed to continue.
(18:17):
What can you do in that spaceand what decisions can you make
and how can you map out yourdecisions and how you're going
to handle this over the short tolong-term.
And take some empowermentactions around that if you can.
It's nuanced, right?
It's not just this greatresignation, there's a lot of
stuff that's going on behindthat.
Have some time and space to, toask yourself what that means for
(18:37):
your future self.
Miranda (18:38):
I think employers would actually thank you for speaking
up and speaking your truth.
And then if it's not justyourself, but it's a collective,
they'd much prefer to hear thatthan lose you.
I would imagine most places I'mnot not going to say all.
You know, you work place betterthan me and I chuckled out
before cause I was imaginingthis like mutiny.
And that's not what it is thatall it's actually just being
really honest and really true.
(18:59):
Interesting that you mentionedtribe because that is coming up
a lot in all of decision-makingthought leaders consistently,
there's this message that,building a bit of a sounding
board of colleagues, associates,who are a tribe within your
expertise to support bigdecision-making ideas is one of
the most important things thatyou can do.
It was actually mentioned in theHBR podcast, but also in a great
(19:21):
book by Mike Bayer OneDecision", and quite a few
others.
He talks about the fact thatit's just not possible to make a
completely rational and informeddecision without this tribe.
It's essential to ensure thatyour decision grounded and less
based in emotion.
I reflecting on this and goingwell, yeah, talk to your mum,
she's going to be your championshe's in your corner.
(19:41):
However, it's one of thoseinstances when she's probably
going to build on your emotionas opposed to bring you down.
Whereas somebody in yourindustry or an associate that
kind of gets how your worldworks is going to have maybe a
more pragmatic balanced view ofthe problem, ask the right
questions, come up with someIntel, which is going to help
make your insights much moreuseful.
Particularly if you're thinkingyou want to change jobs, it
(20:02):
doesn't hurt to talk to otherpeople and they might be like,
well, sure.
But there might be this otheropportunity for you here.
Have you spoken about what youreally like, what's going to
really Set this for you.
But likewise, if you need tomake some meaningful change and
help your workplace move intothis new world then that's
really important too.
I'm always surprised when peopleshare that they're looking for a
job and they haven't had anyconversations with the
(20:24):
organization that this is whatwe could do.
Certainly there's an internalchange clock in all of this and
sometimes there's nothing withinyour organization that's going
to fill that need.
So by all means, but if it'sjust because the grass is
greener, I think we all knowthat that's not necessarily
true.
let's have some conversations,in many cases You might be
(20:45):
handed a cool project, or youmight be seen in a new light
because you're willing to stepup and have that difficult
conversation, and then there's abit more trust in you and how
you portray yourself to thebusiness that you're sharing
this pain point, or you'resharing this great idea that's
going to help improve your lifeat work, but also improve the
workplace in general.
And if you don't the change,well, at least, you know, that
(21:06):
you've given it a red hot crackwithin your organization and
you'll have some strong musthaves within you when you're
looking for that new role.
Either way, you're going to do alot more to put yourself on
equal a better footing.
Off the back of last week'ssurvey I do think it's super
important that you know yourselfas much as possible.
The research we did really talksabout how people make decisions
differently.
There's also the piece aroundyour own innate personality
(21:28):
type.
So if you're an introvert, youare going to do a internal
review, put up a lot ofprotections, you're not going to
be as comfortable to go and talkto other people.
And knowing that about yourself.
We'll provide some extra toolsnext week, to support that.
But at some point, this isconsistently shared across
thought-leaders that talking toother people is a big, big help.
As an extrovert, you're probablygoing to be doing gut based
(21:51):
decision-making.
You're going to leap and fill inthe blank as you go, I think
there's an analogy somewherewhere you jump off a cliff and
you build a parachute on the waydown.
Several years ago, my businesscoach suggested that I take a W
A M, WAM survey to understand mynatural strengths and a couple
of key takeaways that I stilltry to offset in my day to day
(22:12):
decision making or risk settingare around my natural instincts
to make decisions.
I am very, gut-based veryextroverted and a lot more
likely to jump without goinginto all of the facts or the
systems around me.
Interesting reading in my eyes,X book Winging It, which you've
spoken about a little bitbecause she encourages that.
And there's some really good inthat, but there's also, sort
(22:32):
downfalls.
There's these things calledcognitive biases and the idea
here is that these cognitivebiases set you up to feel like
you're making a really informeddecision when maybe you're just
taking your gut instinct andleaping.
Like confirmation bias, which iswhere you seek out information,
that's going to confirm that,yes, I'm right.
This is the right decision tomake, and you ignore all else.
There's a little bit of thatgoing on out there in the world
(22:53):
at the moment, but we'll leavethat alone.
Then there is anchoring bias,which is over-reliance on a
single piece of information orexperience, or you've heard
something you anchor to it andyou can't be swayed.
The halo effect bias, so it'syour gut feeling that you really
like the person or brand and anyinformation or experience it's
really hard to taint that withthat halo effect And
(23:14):
overconfidence bias, which isoverestimate your own abilities
to make decisions withoutseeking any data.
This WAM survey also shared thatthere is other decision-making
preferences out there.
And it's actually been a hugehelp in my work, as I seek to
understand the people that Iwork with for, and that they're
not all like me.
Right.
So we have to allow fordifferent people in different
(23:35):
decision making styles.
There is a data based decisionmaking style.
There is evidence-baseddecision-making styles.
There is time-based where theyjust need to sit on it and take
time and it doesn't matter whatyou do or what your gender is,
they just need whatever theirtime clock is to make that
decision.
And then there's ones that drawon past experience, whether
that's a good thing or a badthing to make that new decision.
(23:58):
I always encourage people tofind out as much as they can
about themselves and then theycan course correct from there.
Claire (24:03):
We've spoken about a couple of strength based surveys
in episodes previously.
I'm a fan of them, both forknowing yourself.
But as you said, Miranda, alsoknowing other people and how
they may make decisions, and thetypes of personalities that they
have, especially in this worldwhere we're now probably getting
new colleagues coming on boardand we're meeting them in a
(24:23):
virtual context and so havingthat knowledge and doing that
work to understand each othercan really help in an
environment.
Talking about biases they're soimportant in terms of how they
influence our decision-making.
Seth Goden, I noticed recentlyreleased a short LinkedIn
learning course ondecision-making where his view
is that there's one crucialthing that impacts our ability
(24:45):
to make great decisions.
And he terms it as being wherewe find it really difficult to
stop hoarding our chips and ouralternative term for this is a
sunk cost bias.
Basically the concept is thateven when there's a bunch of
warning signs that we should payattention to with respect to a
particular personal orprofessional endeavor in our
lives.
We unconsciously, or probablysometimes even consciously find
(25:08):
a reason, a bit like you'reanchoring bias Miranda it's a
similar type of concept, we finda reason to ignore those warning
signs because we think toourselves, I've invested years
and years of my time and energyblood, sweat, and tears into
this relationship or thiscompany or this work
specialization and I just keeppushing myself to persist with
(25:29):
it for a bit longer.
Seth urges people to reallyreflect on whether our decisions
are delivering the change thatwe're seeking to make right now.
Are the decisions that we'remaking, getting the results that
matter to us.
And are our decisions holding usback and fundamentally is our
attachment to the chips andhoarding the chips, i.e.
our sunk cost bias, holding usback from making the right
(25:52):
decisions for our future selves.
I think we can hugelyunderestimate how much we don't
want to admit to ourselves thatwe've made a bad decision in the
past.
He gives a good analogy aboutbuying a boat, there are so many
boats sitting unused inboatsheds and the owners
continue to pay to store theboats in the boat sheds, even
though they don't use themanymore.
How many unused boats are wecurrently holding on to in our
(26:15):
lives?
And we just keep paying the boatshed fees, because it's much
easier than admitting toourselves that we've made a bad
decision in buying the boat inthe first place.
We need to face into thatdecision and just let it go.
It talks about things that we'vemade decisions about and have
been part of our lives for solong, but we treat them as an
asset that's gifted fromourselves.
(26:36):
So if it's time to let go of theboat, then we need to face into
that decision and let go of theboat or that career or that
relationship or whatever.
It's really tough thing to dofor most of us.
Miranda (26:47):
Oh, gosh, absolutely.
And if any of my family happensto listen to this, I had nothing
to do with the boat example.
my dad has two boats and hewould absolutely relate, Anyway,
I think he hopes that he's goingto have time, at some point to
actually use them.
Other biases that we haven'tquite covered, they were
highlighted in Annie Duke'swork, which I was really
thrilled to see an interviewwith her at the end of Seth
(27:09):
Godin's.
I'm a big fan of both of herbooks,"How to Decide" and
"Thinking in Bets".
And I think she's got anotherone as well.
Others of that relating oroutcome bias.
This is where we judge thequality of our decisions based
on the outcome.
She gives the example of youchoose to take a job and the job
doesn't work out and sotherefore it was a bad decision
and she speaks to this as it'snot a bad decision.
(27:31):
You obviously you've got to doyour decision making process at
the front to make sure that youdon't fall into the trap of that
relating or outcome bias.
Relating bias is looking backand reflecting and saying that
was the wrong decision to make,and then not making that same
sort of decision in the future.
And Claire, you mentioned Ithink about how, when you pull
back from decisions if thingsdon't go your way but then
(27:53):
future decisions are a challengefor you.
This is where maybe somethinglike a decision tree would be
really helpful in making thatinitial decision.
So whatever the outcome mightbe, you've anticipated it, and
more on this next week.
Similar, but not the same ishindsight bias where we over
exaggerate or we misrememberfacts after the outcome.
I'll say to link one experienceto the others, hindsight's
(28:13):
fairly frustrating.
So hindsight bias is fairlyself-explanatory.
As you mentioned, just soimportant to understand that
these biases are in play ineveryday lives and if we're
aware of them and we can catchourselves going, oh no, that's
confirmation bias or hang on.
I'm thinking of it as sunk costbias here.
Sunk cost bias comes up so muchin negotiation, really
(28:34):
understanding what your sunkcosts and you want to go out and
not counting that sunk cost inyour decision-making process at
all.
Such a hard discipline to have,and we're going to summarize
these and put them in the shownotes.
We'll definitely put them on ablog on the website because I
think it's so important to keepreflecting back on those and
training that muscle to go hangon, is this a real decision that
I'm making or relating.
Claire (28:56):
I could talk about unconscious bias and
decision-making forever.
It really is a very behavioralkind of concept for us human
beings.
Like we're so impacted by ourlives to date and we could just
go on, about this forever.
But the interest in making thispodcast not go for a thousand
hours, one of the last thingsthat I wanted to talk about too,
(29:17):
in terms of qualitydecision-making and what can
impact our qualitydecision-making.
There's a book called"ThinkingFast and Slow" by Daniel
Kahneman.
It always comes up as highlyrated on the topic of
decision-making.
It's been in my Goodreads booklist for a long time, but I
haven't read it yet so inprepping for this podcast
(29:37):
episode, I listened to thesummary of"Thinking Fast and
Slow" on the"What You WillLearn" podcast, which is quite a
good podcast.
It's a bit like Blinkist.
The two co-hosts read a businessbook and then summarize it on
the podcast.
"Thinking Fast and Slow" talksabout we have two systems of
thinking.
We have system one, which isfast thinking where we make
(29:57):
quick, almost instantaneousjudgements and assumptions.
And there's system two thinking,which requires us to invest in
much more cognitive efforts indecision-making.
So for example, doing our taxreturns, parking in a tight
space versus system one thinkingwhich is what I'm going to have
for lunch and what do I thinkabout that person?
The biggest takeaway that I hadfrom this concept is that we
(30:21):
have a limited amount of systemtwo energy on any given day.
It's like having a tank of fuelin your car and it can be drawn
down pretty easily.
So it sits in the background.
It doesn't really work if itdoesn't have to, we ordinarily
go to our system one quick baseddecisions.
What I think is reallyimportant, and if I think about
women in general, that we oftenhave got a large mental load
(30:45):
that we're carrying every day.
So by the time it gets to theend of the day, we've used so
much of our cognitive load ondifferent things that makes it
tricky to leave any space in thetank to make strategic
decisions, and really thinkabout what we're doing with are
we addressing those unconsciousbiases?
Are we thinking about differentways to make decisions?
Not binary, I've got to quit ornot.
(31:06):
But by the time we get around toit, maybe we don't feel like
we've got that energy in thetank.
We'll talk more about this innext week's episode, around
tools and techniques, but one ofthe things we need to think
about is when are we carving outtime for ourselves and space in
our days?
Because really, if we canearlier in the day to use some
of those cognitive muscles tomake harder decisions is
(31:29):
something that we should beconscious of as well.
Miranda (31:31):
Well, I didn't completely love this book.
It was a couple of years agowhen I read it.
And when you mentioned that itwas like, oh yeah, I remember
that.
And it was frustrating, I thinkto read the book because maybe
don't necessarily want to hearit all.
but I do think that the majortakeaway was the need to do
that.
heavy cognitive lifting.
As you mentioned before, yourbrain was too tired.
I found probably a two hourbenefit in my day in terms of
(31:54):
how I use my day by stopping,trying to push myself late at
night when I was falling asleepand still trying to work and try
to push through those barriersAlso snacking you're doing a
little snacking and coffee atnight as opposed to getting up
that hour or two hours early inthe morning.
And even though it takes alittle bit to love a 5:00 AM.
But it's so much easier andquicker just to pump out some
(32:16):
work.
I was finding that yeah, threehours at night is equal to about
half an hour or one hour firstthing in the morning.
So while I didn't love the book,I really appreciated the
concepts and the benefits fromthe book.
And you're rating the wholething.
I think you'd find itfrustrating.
Claire (32:32):
Then with using my time effectively.
I just absolutely just listen tothe cheat sheet version on the
podcast.
Miranda (32:39):
You know, I'd tell you, I thought you'd love something,
I think that's definitely whatwe want to do is curate those
nice tight bites.
This is what we want you to takeaway from this.
And, um, Don't get frustratedwith all the other stuff that we
were being told we can't do.
Claire (32:50):
Well today, we've talked quite widely and broadly about
stuff that might be impactingthe quality of our
decision-making.
hopefully for our graciouslisteners, we've ignited a
curiosity for being more mindfulabout how we go about making
decisions.
A few things we've spoken aboutis having a stake in the ground
about your long-term goals andfuture vision for yourself can
(33:11):
help because it can be there asyour navigating the twists and
turns of life.
And you can think about howthat's impacting those longer
term aspirations you have foryourself.
A conversation that we could'vegone on for hours around our
unconscious and conscious biasesand our risk-taking personality
and archetypes and how having anawareness of those can really
(33:32):
impact on the quality of ourdecision-making.
And finally, knowing thatthere's different types of
decisions and being aware of thetime of when we're making
decisions and when we're usingour cognitive energy.
And, thinking about how weprioritize our day and our
workloads and our life aroundthat.
So we can really make the mostof our cognitive abilities.
I think all of that is, ishelpful.
(33:54):
There's a quote I liked fromTony Robbins, which is the
quality of your life is not yourconditions.
It's your decisions at anymoment in time, you can change
your whole life by making newdecisions.
Making decisions is far from aone size fits all concept.
We make tons and tons ofdecisions all the time, every
day.
And it would just be great.
(34:14):
If one takeaway that you'regetting, is it just to have that
thought bubble in your mind?
As to some things that willchange the way that you could
make better quality decisionsand help you take smarter risks
is really the context of what wewant to talk about.
In next week's podcast, we'regoing to be exploring some
different tools, techniques, andmethods that you can experiment
with when you're trying to makesome decisions.
(34:35):
And so our weekly actionchallenge is to identify a
decision that you need to makein any aspect of your life, that
you want to feel a greater levelof confidence around when you're
deciding what your decisionshould be.
If you can bring that with youto next week's episode, it will
help you bounce it off thedecision-making tools and
techniques we'll be covering tosee if one or more of them
resonate with you for helpingyou make that decision.
Miranda (34:57):
Very excited to bring you those all important tools
next week to build yourdecision-making muscles.
As always, we have put all ofthe curated content we've
mentioned today in the podcastepisode notes.
So check them out over the nextweek and dip into some of the
stuff that resonates with youand will inspire you to take
those small, actionable stepsfor your own success journey.
Please also check out ourwebsite,
(35:17):
elevatewithgrace.com.au, I thinkparticularly this week going to
be a whole lot of content inthere that's nice and juicy and
hop onto our Instagram for morecurated content and those daily
updates.
We would love, love, love tohear from you how you're going
so please drop us an email atelevatewithgrace@gmail.com.
And if you're interested in anyof the book titles that we've
discussed, we do have aBooktopia link in our show notes
(35:39):
and website, we would be sograteful if you use that.
And of course, please like shareand subscribe this podcast it's
such an important way to ensureother women find this podcast
and that we are collectivelylifting each other up.
We can't wait to chat to youagain next week.
Thank you so much, Claire.
And thank you everyone forlistening.
Thanks Miranda.
Thanks everyone.
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