‘How to decide’ with Jon Bircher

The Evolving Leader

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14d ago 58:48

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What does it really mean to be a great decision-maker, and why is this skill so often left to chance?

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender sit down in person with Jon Bircher, decision coach and former strategy consultant, to explore why decision-making is rarely taught, and how we can do it better. Jon shares insights from his coaching work with senior leaders who often feel confident in solo decisions, but struggle in collaborative settings. We talk about why so many decisions get stuck in ambiguity, how emotion and gut feeling play a role, and how leaders can build conditions for more thoughtful, inclusive, and reflective decision-making.

This is a conversation about slowing down to ask better questions, experimenting with new ways of thinking, and developing a decision-making practice that’s fit for the complexity of leadership today.

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Why did you become a decision coach? (00:03:34)

3. What was the number one motivator that made people come to you? (00:04:58)

4. Why do organisations not teach leaders how to make decisions? (00:07:01)

5. What’s your framework for thinking about how decisions work in the real world? (00:08:15)

6. What’s your definition of a decision? (00:09:43)

7. Have you experienced people who are chasing the certainty, others who bulldoze the decision and lastly those who are concerned with the optics of the decision, how it’s going to land politically etc? (00:11:27)

8. What recurring problems do you see when you’re coaching people in terms of being better at making decisions? (00:13:48)

9. What are you learning when it comes to leaders who say they are great decision makers except when they are with other people? (00:15:36)

10. Have you looked at the conditions that need to exist in those rooms to be able to solicit and listen to those diverse perspectives and experiences? (00:17:48)

11. Can we talk about learning from decisions? (00:22:27)

12. I love what Annie Dukes says in ‘Thinking In Bets’ about how we often confuse the result with the decision. (00:25:41)

13. When we’re young we’re taught to defend bad decisions. What’s the mindset shift that has to happen where we break through that natural emotional resistance to be honest with our poor decisions? (00:26:47)

14. What’s your favourite process, what’s most helpful? (00:29:06)

15. Can that process still be followed when decisions have to be made at pace? (00:31:59)

16. You said earlier that we’re making thousands of decisions each day and most of those are unconscious. How do we get better at being more conscious when we’re reacting to rather than deciding if things are really important? (00:33:43)

17. How do you reduce the emotions around that, because when we’ve got different views and it’s not explicit that’s going to generate a lot of heat in the conversation? (00:36:14)

18. So the emotions that you were both experiencing in that, did it reveal different frames about what you believe the coaching business should look like, how it should function etc? (00:38:48)

19. One of the themes that we’ve covered on the podcast is leaders not being sure where they are on that spectrum between certainty, risk and uncertainty and making decisions across that spectrum differently. What advice can you give us? (00:41:37)

20. How do you allow people to embrace their ignorance in a way that makes them feel ok about it? (00:45:08)

21. Can we talk about AI for a moment – how is Chat GPT and other agents changing how you think about decision making? (00:47:26)

22. What are your thoughts on the potential for AI to make us worse decision makers if we don’t use it well? (00:50:44)

23. This makes me think about the moral component of decision making. (00:53:08)

24. How do you think decision making is changing based on the conversations that you’re having with leaders and the way that you see decisions playing out? Do you see any changes? (00:55:31)

25. Is there a final thought that you’d like to leave our listeners? (00:57:11)

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