Ep 91 Why Decisive Leadership Demands Clarity, Not Speed

Decisiveness is not speed; it is clarity. We explore how top teams make better choices by slowing the front end of the process, framing the real problem, agreeing decision criteria, and then committing with pace. Joined by leadership coach Mark Herbert, we unpack the human side of decisions—how dopamine, mood and pressure change what feels obvious, how halo and horns biases skew judgment, and why similarity bias keeps boardrooms comfortable but wrong.

We get practical about building cognitive diversity you can actually use. Mark shares simple moves that shift thinking on demand: invite an external provoker, seat the newest voice next to the most senior, or create distance by asking be someone else, be somewhere else, be sometime else. We also dive into decision styles, moving beyond self-awareness to self-engagement—understanding how your pace, risk stance and intuition land on others, and how to turn friction into value. Visual team profiles, thinking hats, and clear contracting help teams replace circular debates with crisp outcomes.

The heart of our conversation is a meta-skill: decide how to decide. Before arguing options, align on reversibility, ownership, criteria and authority. Are we voting, seeking consensus, or does a single decision-maker hold the D? That simple ritual prevents flip-flopping, reduces rework, and boosts follow-through. We look at why extremes in style are potential superpowers when respected, how environment shapes attention and thought, and where AI fits—great for speed and options, but still not relational. Thoughtful leaders use AI as input and keep values, context and commitment firmly human.

Mark also lifts the lid on his seven-step decision masterclass, where leaders from different industries bring live dilemmas and practice better thinking in a calm, outdoor setting designed to reduce noise and increase attention. The result is a repeatable way to make choices under uncertainty without losing pace or people. If this conversation helped sharpen your approach, follow and subscribe for more human-centred leadership insights, share it with a colleague who shapes big calls, and leave a quick review to tell us what you’ll try first.

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Transcript

Kristian 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Chief Psychology Officer Podcast, the show where we dive deep into the psychology behind leadership, business, and success. I'm Kristian Lees Bell, and today we're joined by my very known Chief Psychology Officer, Dr. Amanda Potter, and our guest Mark Herbert from a partner consultancy of BTL and Consult Light. Previously, in episode 79, we interviewed Mark's business partner, John Bircher. Today we'll be discussing how to help organisations be more decisive from the top down. But before we jump in, make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you want to keep the conversation going, connect with us on LinkedIn. Just search Kristian Lees Bell, myself, or Dr. Amanda Potter. Plus, check out the Chief PsychologyOfficer Co.uk website for more resources. And if you like what you hear, please give us a rating so that more people can discover our trove of insight.

Dr Amanda Potter 0:56

Hi, Kristian.

Kristian 0:57

Hi Amanda. Great to have you on the pod, Mark. Thank you. Great to be here.

Mark 1:01

Looking forward to a really fruitful conversation.

Kristian 1:04

First of all, Mark, could you uh start off with introducing yourself and your role, please?

Mark 1:09

Yeah, thank you. Um so my name is Mark Herbert. I'm the co-founder of Sot and Light Coaching. Uh, we're based in the UK in the southeast of England, but work across the UK, across Europe and other parts of the world, uh, helping leaders think about and make better decisions.

Kristian 1:22

Can you tell us why you're prioritizing uh decision making in your work?

Mark 1:27

Yeah, I think we found largely through one-to-one coaching conversations and also team facilitation work that decision making and the dynamics within it kept being like the sticking point for a lot of the conversations. People were fascinated with it, but recognized many senior leaders been in their roles or in their industry 30 years, but never really stopped to think about how do I make decisions. A lot of it's just intuitive, built up over time with experience. But there was this disconnect between people's desire to become better at decision making and recognizing it's um a key leadership skill, but then also acknowledging, never really thought about it. So we're really just trying to help people in that space because better decisions will lead to better leadership.

Kristian 2:09

I don't remember learning about decision making or how to make good decisions at school. I don't know about you, Amanda, but if it was, it was very short.

Emotions, Dopamine And Bias

Dr Amanda Potter 2:17

It's so interesting, isn't it? Because Jess sent me an article this morning for a piece that I'm writing at the moment. I asked her for proof about the number of decisions that we make a day because it's so massive. And she found an article confirming that we make 35,000 conscious decisions a day, which just seems incredible. But then there's a paper from 2002 that she also found that said that 43% of the behaviors that we experience, live each day are on repeat. We repeat the same things almost daily, almost half of what we do, we repeat. I suppose cleaning your teeth, for example, preparing for bed, preparing breakfast. They're repeated behaviours. So they don't require as much conscious decision making. So we're not talking about those micro decisions here so much, are we, Mark? We're talking about those big macro decisions.

Mark 3:06

Yeah, and the thing I find so fascinating about decision making is it pulls on so many different facets. You know, you've got, say, a continuum between in guttural intuitive decision makers and the more objective, data-led decision makers. And we all sit on that continuum somewhere in our like happy place, but we also move along that continuum. But then you've got context, and then you've got your affections and emotions and motivations and energy levels on any given day, and a whole heap of other things all shape how we make decisions. And understanding some of that can help us hopefully make better decisions, and for those bigger, conscious decisions to have conversations about how we want to approach them before we get there. A lot of big decisions seem to be kind of we just make them, but we don't really know how. And I think that's where a lot of teams and senior leaders get stuck.

Dr Amanda Potter 3:52

It's such a good point because we know from the neuroscience research that dopamine plays a really big part with decision making. So people who are low on dopamine are more likely to procrastinate. They find it difficult to make decisions because they're low on that motivation and reward neurotransmitter. So it therefore makes sense that if we're having a good day and we're releasing dopamine, we're going to be in a position to be more decisive. We're going to commit to decisions and find decision making easier. If we're having a depleted tough day and we're low on dopamine, or we're naturally low on dopamine, then it's going to be harder to actually make those decisions. So I think your point, Mark, about the relationship between emotions and decision making is a really important one because emotions do have a significant and profound impact on one's ability to make decisions.

Mark 4:40

I mean, only yesterday we were running a decision-making masterclass for a group of leaders from a whole range of industries and we were talking a bit about biases in decision making, and we were discussing sort of what's often termed that the horns effect or the halo effect. So take halo effect. If I like you and I like your company and I find your conversation stimulating, I am more likely to be persuaded down a particular path of decision making because I of my preference to like you. If I find you irritating or you've done something recently that I've not been aligned with and I don't like you, or I've got a less positive emotion towards you, again, that will have a bearing on how I think and how I make decisions. And that's why I get fascinated in decision styles, because it's not just me understanding my decision style, it's how that then relates to someone whose style is different. And that in itself can change, simply as we've said, just on the basis of an emotional point in time.

Dr Amanda Potter 5:31

And that's opened a whole nother thought pattern for me, which is around that role of bias. Because if we think about similarity bias and like me, like you biases, all of those biases that are really on the basis of consistency and the brain's need to look for patterns for consistency, for tradition, predictability, and so on. We feel more comfortable, we feel safer when we're working with and we're aligned with people who think and make decisions similarly to ourselves. And then when we do that, we celebrate our consistency and our successes of how fabulous we are at making decisions because we came up with the same answer together. We don't challenge one another. And I think that's so important actually to remember the role of bias in decision making, because if we're not aware of it, we could very easily just be a sheep.

Cognitive Diversity Over Echo Chambers

Mark 6:22

Yeah, and there's there's clearly, you know, wisdom in crowds, as long as the crowd is not a homogenous group. Otherwise, we just exacerbate problems, we fuel bias. It's a bit of an echo chamber. So I talked to a senior leader recently who recognized that most of his decisions was made with the same group of people in a room. And we were talking about the role of advisors in decision making. And we observed that all of the advisors were people on the inner circle who were emotionally vested in every decision and was too close to every decision often. And the suggestion was why don't you bring someone into the room who's not from your team, even not from your organization, but just bring them in on the basis of being a great thinker or being a great provoker, asking those awkward questions. And that gives you true cognitive diversity rather than just ticking the box of we've got different people around the table. So by definition, we'll make better decisions. If they're all the same or all from the same function or even the same organization, you're going to limit that cognitive diversity and actually probably not make as good a decision as a result.

Dr Amanda Potter 7:25

And then if you bring into that longevity, because we have known from previous research and case study research and data, that the longer people stay in organizations, the more similar they become in their thinking patterns and styles. We also know from our women in the boardroom research that as women progress through their careers, they veer towards the male way of thinking and deciding because they gravitate towards the male acceptable profile of working and interacting. So therefore, that cognitive diversity, their heterogeneity starts to diminish. So I think that's a fantastic idea, actually, to have thinkers and provokers who are going to come from the outside and ask the tricky questions to challenge us. But unfortunately, that doesn't always happen like that. And it makes me think about a client I was talking to literally today, a piece of work we're doing with them to try to turn around their environment from one that is regarded to be bullying and harassing to one which is more inclusive and supportive. And what's really interesting about that piece of work is that the role of the exec in creating that environment and creating that culture, I'm going to use the word culture for now because it's not about psychological safety only this time. And actually how the actions and the behaviour of the exec within their own meeting room and the perception of how they interact, the impact it has on the rest of the organization, is really interesting. So, you know, as usual, I'm going off tangent, but all of this just goes to show how connected it is. And each of the topics we cover in this podcast have such a profound impact on success and performance of organizations. It's amazing.

Tools To Think Differently

Mark 9:04

And I think we've noticed with some teams I'm reflecting on in my mind that I've worked with recently, we can create true cognitive diversity by bringing a wider range of people around the table. So physically bringing other people in. So it might be let's bring in someone who's genuinely got experience, who's been around longer than I have, who'll have a perspective. But let's also bring in someone who's been with the organization one week, who brings fresh eyes and sees things that we won't see. Let's bring in that provoker who we know is a bit awkward and we might not be best mates with, but we'll ask those really tricky questions that we don't want to be asked, but will help us. So one way is clearly you bring the right people into the room, and they need to be people who will spark ideas. The other way is you can do this artificially. So if you haven't got the luxury of bringing these people in the room, or you're working remotely, or indeed maybe you're a single decision maker, you can still force yourself to think as if you were lots of different people. So you can use the sort of 40-year-old Ebert de Bono's thinking hats and put on different metaphorical hats. I know that I'll naturally make a lot of decisions with that red hat, the intuitive gut. So can I force myself for a moment to put on the white hat and think about the facts, which I don't naturally tend towards? Or could I put on that metaphorical green hat and be naturally more creative and ask those and what else questions? Or one final example, if any of the listeners have read anything by David Marquette, he wrote a great little book a few years ago called Turn the Ship Around. He's a former US naval officer. It was all about changing the culture on a nuclear sub. His more recent book is called Distancing, and he talks about ways in which an individual or a team can create distance between their here and now to help them think differently. So he says there are three ways to do it. You can be someone else. It's this classic empathy, stand in the shoes of imagine I was the CEO, imagine if I was this new employee, which I'm not, how might I think differently? You can be somewhere else, which is about creating physical distance and proximity. You know, people think differently in different environments. So has a team ever done some thinking on a walk? You're going to stimulate different pathways than being in a cold boardroom that you've always been in. And then be some time else. You know, the perspective of time. Imagine we're 10 years from now. How might we think about this issue differently? I can be someone else, be somewhere else, and be sometime else, but still be sitting in my garden office. And no one else needs to be around me, but it forces me to think differently. So I think that's a really interesting little uh idea from David Marquette.

Decisiveness Redefined As Clarity

Dr Amanda Potter 11:31

And what's the ultimate really? What are we talking about here? Because this podcast episode's all about being decisive, making decisions. In your mind, Mark, what is it about?

Mark 11:42

I think a lot of people confuse decisiveness with rushing. So people will, I think, rightly say a great skill of good leadership is being decisive in decisions. But I think a wrong assumption is to assume decisive means instinctive and quick. I think decisive means being really, really clear on what the core of the issue is and on what the criteria are that we're using to make the decision. And when we make it, we make it. And then we buy into it and we bring people on the journey. Indecision is the opposite of that. It's not having any clarity, it's flip-flopping around different ideas, it's being easily persuaded by false arguments or by power of personality. We need to be decisive because we have to operate a pace. And we all would say we probably have limited resource, time, money, bandwidth, headspace. We need to learn to be more decisive. And because things change so quickly, by the time we've discussed an issue, things have moved on. So I think that the skill is clarity, some of which comes quickly, and some of which is let's actually slow down our decision making to make it more rigorous. We'll probably then make a better decision.

Decide How To Decide

Dr Amanda Potter 12:46

And some of the exec teams that I've worked with, the ones that seem to be struggling at the moment, they're very good at debating. They're very good at raising issues, they're good at creating agendas, they're not necessarily good at sticking to the agendas and they go over time, but they're not always clear about what has been decided, what was the final decision and was it made? And for me, that's the gap because the clarity is often missing. And the person who owns the piece of work, so if you're responsible for something, how are you going to drive that decision-making process in the room? How are you going to create accountability and how are you going to get to at least an outcome for now? So that isn't just something that goes around and round is just a circular conversation that people get more and more confused and more and more demotivated from. So I think there's two bits to this. There's how should I make the tricky and difficult decisions personally that I face into in my life and at work? And how should we, as part of a team, how should we make those tricky and difficult decisions? What are the tools and techniques that we need to get there?

Mark 13:51

I think your experience working with teams, very similar to ours. We see a lot of similar challenges, pressures, behaviors. I think, you know, a starting point is do I understand my own decision style and in different contexts how that style might change in one direction or another? Have I given the space and time to understand the different styles of the people I work with? And is there a style in the sort of wider ecosystem of my organization that we either are needing to lean more towards? Example, we're all very intuitive in this innovative startup. We need to dial into more objective data and slow down, or something like that. So some of it's just about understanding and appreciating style and then the connections. But honestly, I think the mistake a lot of people make is because we're time poor and we need to make decisions quickly and we've been told be decisive, we rush the all-important first step, which in our training we call decide how to decide. I think in some of the readings and technical stuff, the meta decision. Let's contract and get clarity on how we're even going to approach this decision. So it's some simple things like what sort of decision is this? Do we all see this as high consequence and irreversible? Or do some of us actually see this as very reversible? Because how we see a decision has a profound impact on how we approach it. A second example is okay, we're going to debate some different options here and come up with a decision, but are we clear on the criteria we're going to use at the point of decision? Or even as something as simple as who is actually going to make this decision? Is this vote? Is this consensus? Is it going to be derived authority? Is it going to be the person at the top with the D? And again, I think too often we have assumptions that we're clear on these things. And so you hear in rooms questions like, are we all clear? And we're all really nice and we go, yeah, I'm crystal clear. But you drill down. Often people think they're clear and they're absolutely not. And that's where a lot of decision making, I think, breaks down.

Dr Amanda Potter 15:36

And interestingly, your decide on how to decide. A number of the elements there are actually covered in the Be Talent questionnaire, aren't they? Because you've just talked about whether it fits with open-minded, single-minded, for example, because I'm open-minded. So I don't ever believe that a decision made is the final decision. So I would go into that decision-making process with the assumption that because of my own profile, that a decision is never fully made, that there's always the opportunity to change your mind. I'm also someone who's quite interdependent. So I'm not independent nor am I fully dependent on others. So for me, it's fluid. Some situations I make decisions alone, some decisions I make with others. So again, I might go into a decision with an assumption that it depends because of my own profile. And as the CEO, I drive quite a lot of the ways of making decisions with Sarah, my co-director, because of our preferences, because of our approaches. So I suppose I'm saying that I agree with you, we should decide how to decide, but we should also be aware, as some of the more senior people in the room, that our preferences will impact how to decide because of the way we prefer to approach decisions. So, for example, mine is risk averse as well. So not only am I open-minded, I'm risk averse. Sarah's risk-seeking. So between us, we come at the problem very differently. We're truly cognitively diverse, the two of us. Even though we're similar in many other ways, we think very differently. Therefore, some of those assumptions are challenged, and we butt heads quite a lot about things because we just don't necessarily agree what even the question should be, let alone what should be the answer.

Styles, Self Awareness And Self Engagement

Mark 17:22

Yeah, and I think you you touch on something. Another coach I know of, and I've had a conversation with and read some of their things, talks about the difference between self-awareness, which we hear and read lots about, and self-engagement, which goes deeper. So for instance, you pick up a decision styles profile or something similar, and you become more self-aware of your predisposition in a general sense to how you make decisions, albeit the context might shape and change that. Okay, I have an awareness that I'm quite intuitive and I'm more intuitive than objective. But the self-engagement piece is am I aware in any given context or team how that preference and approach is impacting the people around me and how they then make decisions? Because it's not enough just to go, well, I know I'm intuitive and I know Susan is objective. Okay, we're different. Let's leverage that. When I say something from my gut, what impact does that have on Susan? Does that draw her into the conversation or does it push her away? Or take something like speed. If I'm intuitive and quite quick and I recognize that Susan's quite slow, it's not enough just to be self-aware of that. I need to engage with the reality that when I'm going quick, it doesn't feel quick to me, but to Susan, it feels really, really rushed. So am I aware of that and engaging with it? And I think that self-engagement piece that Lawrence Barrett talks about is really, really powerful because it takes us a step deeper than just knowing ourselves. It's actually how we're then going to show up. And that's the emotional intelligence piece that I don't think we go deep enough on in high-performing teams.

Dr Amanda Potter 18:46

No, it beautifully links with resilience, doesn't it? And the experience of affect. And when we're feeling positive and in control, then we're more open to reflecting on how we show up and the impact we have. But when we're not, we're more likely just to default to our typical profile and think, well, let's just get on with this, let's do it the way I'm the most comfortable, because we haven't got the bandwidth to think about anyone else other themselves. And that really links to the whole research around kindness as well, doesn't it? And the nerve of compassion. And the fact that when we activate the nerve of compassion, we're kinder to ourselves and others, and we're more aware of ourselves and others. But when we don't, we find it really difficult to activate that vagus nerve. And therefore, we don't open the door for people. We just walk straight through it and don't hold it for others. So it kind of really connects, it's really interesting.

Mark 19:42

And here's here's a thought as well. I've seen this a lot in teams, and I've even reflected it in my own engagement with people I work with or I live with, is that when I see decision style difference at worst, I want to compete against it. You're different to me, I need to compete.

Dr Amanda Potter 19:57

I need to prove self and prove that my approach.

Mark 20:00

Exactly. The next step down, if it's not competition, is accommodation. I'm just going to accommodate your style. You're faster than me. Okay, I'll accept that and I'll try and accommodate it. Even deeper and better, I'm not competing, I'm not even accommodating. I'm trying to bring out the best in your style because that will bring out the best in mine. Can I embrace your style rather than just accommodate it or worse still compete against it? That's when we get true cognitive diversity, which we can leverage. You could technically have brilliant cognitive diversity around the table and done all your homework on who are the right people to have there, but the self-awareness of my style and your styles, but if we don't engage with each other and actually try and bring out the best in each other, then we're ticking a box having the inverted commerce cognitive diversity around the table, but we're not actually leveraging it. The key is how do I help you to do your very best thinking? And much of that is about giving each other our very, very best attention. Because as Nancy Klein says, the quality of your attention will determine the quality of another person's thinking.

Dr Amanda Potter 20:57

I completely agree with that sentiment because it's the most powerful thing in the world, isn't it, to be listened to and understood. But the point you're making, I think, is a really tough one. I think it takes a huge amount of emotional maturity to not only listen, but to engage and embrace a different viewpoint than your own. It's taken Sarah and I years to walk into a conversation having completely the opposite approach or decision to each other. So literally a few weeks ago, we had making a decision about something. She said, I think it's yes, and I said, I think it's no. And we literally went, she said, but I still think it's yes, and I still think it's no. In the end, I agreed with Sarah. But we literally just disagreed with each other and we just kept reiterating the same point. So we're 20 years into business together, yet we still every now and then come across these dumbling blocks where it's really hard to engage with what the other person is thinking and saying. We both understand each other's viewpoints eventually. So I think that takes a huge amount because we Have to put our own biases, our own judgment to one side in order to do it well.

Leveraging Extremes And Team Dynamics

Mark 22:05

I agree that's the that's the challenge. And yes, it does take maturity. It also takes time. Like with people we're making decisions with a lot, it just takes time to understand each other and appreciate. But I think there are a few things we can do to help ourselves. You know, you've got really simple questions. I might say to John, my business partner, as I'm expressing an opinion or something, like, what are you seeing that I'm not seeing? Or what do you think I'm missing here? Or ask me some awkward questions to challenge my assumption. What I'm doing is I'm inviting his cognitive diversity in. If I just sit there with my hands folded going, well, I'll express what I think and I'll wait for you to reply. We're not actually collaborating. It's just two sets of opinions that collide or align or something in between. I think it's that spirit of curiosity and almost inviting other people to challenge through the power of questions is really, really powerful. That's an easy thing to do, but it's more a posture thing. I need to be curious and open to be corrected because it's not about being right, it's about making better decisions. And if we can get over ourselves, however we get there, the output has to be to make better decisions. Why? Because at the end of every decision is other people. And if we can learn to make better decisions, we are going to be serving and supporting other people. And it's got to be about them, not about us.

Dr Amanda Potter 23:16

And decision making, we know already, is one of the most important characteristics for leaders, managers, execs. For all of us, we need to know and understand how to make good and effective decisions at work.

Angela 23:31

Understanding how we make decisions can help us to avoid the pitfalls of sunk cost thinking. RBPS Verified Decision Styles Questionnaire is a great way to get leaders thinking about why they make the decisions they make and if there's anything they would like to do differently. Visit the CPO.co.uk to learn more about the BeTalent suite of psychometrics. I'd love to talk you through how we are constantly improving our norm groups, collecting data from all across the world to ensure our reporting is valid and reliable. We ensure our products are accessible for all users. Contact me on LinkedIn. That's Angela Malik, M-A-L-I-K.

Kristian 24:08

Mark, I'm curious how the BeTalent profiles have actually helped in the work that you've been talking about.

Teaching Decision Skills In Schools

Mark 24:15

Yeah, really interesting. We've used them quite a bit with a number of our clients. I think at a most simple level, they've really helped John, my business partner and I, just get better at decision-making ourselves because we clearly interact with all sorts of professionals all over the world. We have our reflections and experience of those interactions. And sometimes being able to look and talk about a person's profile and then almost map our observed behaviors in them to that or that to them has been really helpful. So it's really helped us become, I think, better coaches, particularly in the space of decision making. With regards to our coaching, I think it's also really helped other people because they're quite visual, particularly when you put a team profile together and are talking to a team about decision making. Because if you layer in different profiles and you've got a team of, say, 10 people, it's fascinating when you've got the majority of the team who all sit down one end on pace, and there's one individual who scores a one on pace. Rather than treating them like the black sheep, and how do we change them to bring them into the group so we all operate quite quickly, lovely alignment, they can potentially be a frustration to us, but how do we leverage them for good? And the visual nature of it, it's a brilliant stimulation. One way we actually do it practically in workshops is you create like a constellation. So we clear the chairs, we make a bit of space, and we hold up on a screen, you know, a continuum. So let's take pace. We'll take intuitive objective. And we get people to stand along this hypothetical line in the place that they feel most comfortable or where they've profiled. And it leads to just the most fascinating conversation where you talk about, well, let's start with very intuitive and very objective. How do you typically receive the other person? What are the frustrations? What are the opportunities? And we have a great conversation. Then you might bring in the majority that sit quite in the middle, those called agile styles, and talk about well, one of the benefits of having an agile style is flexibility. What's a disadvantage? Well, when you need to be much more intuitive, you often hold back from that. When you need to be really objective, it takes a lot of energy. So physically standing on a continuum and mapping that to an awareness, maybe of a conversation you already had about your profile, we find becomes the most rich conversation because people experience their decision styles, not just talk about them. Not just in this psychometric, in any psychometrics. We've got to not just understand them, we've got to experience and talk about them. Otherwise, they're theoretical tools, they don't actually become useful.

Dr Amanda Potter 26:32

That visual experience of where I stand is so helpful, isn't it? Because you can therefore see the impact that you're having on the rest of the room, and whether you're the outsider or whether you're part of the group, or whether it's just completely varied, which is what of course we really need.

Mark 26:47

And what that does, we talked earlier about almost like me, we and us. So me and my profile, my style, then there's we, me and you, and our respective styles. So we can see that when we physically stand perhaps in the same place or perhaps very different places. But then when you've had the bit of a conversation, to then lift it up another layer to us, to our business unit or our wider team, or indeed our global team or organization, to think through this team's quite unusual in this context, because maybe the context of our organization is really consensus-driven. But in our team, we have a real rigour and we're much more independent in our decision making. That's interesting. So we talk about me, we, and us at three levels, and that's where you can take a profile and go a little bit deeper. And we have the most fascinating conversations with clients using those sort of layers of decision-making style.

Dr Amanda Potter 27:36

And that's fundamentally what the tool's there to do, isn't it? I mean, we've gone through all the 20 years of building it, designing it, going through the BPS verification and getting it through that process successfully so that companies like yours can actually go out to organizations and challenge people and give them a framework. Because that's really what the tool does. It raises the self-awareness we were talking about earlier, Mark. But the work that you're doing raises that engagement, doesn't it? It creates the action from it, which is brilliant. Because all this tool can do is help people understand the role that they play or the approach that they typically take.

Mark 28:12

And I think the thing I love about uh psychometrics and decision styles are a good example of this, is for most people the decision styles really resonates because of his accuracy. For some, it almost all resonates and a little bit doesn't, but even that creates really interesting conversation. And then when you start layering in different contexts, these styles aren't fixed. This isn't how I will always show up. It's a predominant way of showing up. But actually, there are many times in teams where we have to flex our preferred style for the sake of the team or for the sake of the fact that I like to go slow, but I haven't got time, so I have to go quicker. I love it because it's a window to understand ourselves, but it's not telling us how we have to behave, or indeed how we will. It's just giving us an understanding of how we typically think, and then we adjust our behaviours. Because there's a difference, isn't there, between a style and then an actual lived-out behaviour.

Thinking Time, Critical Thinking And AI

Dr Amanda Potter 29:01

And it's a really good point you've made that some people completely align with their profiles and they have that complete, yep, that's me. That's how I answer the questionnaire, I completely see myself. Some see some of it and some see none of it. You do get the odd person who says, Look, I have no idea who this is, but this doesn't look like me at all. And one thing you have to learn as a psychologist or as a consultant is don't defend the profile and say, Well, that's how you answer the questionnaire. Clearly it's you. Because actually, it's of the curiosity angle is really important to understand why. Why did they answer it the way they've answered it and what does this mean? And actually, that, like you say, that conversation will be very helpful. But I know in my early days of being a psychologist, I felt like I had to defend the psychometrician and defend the product and the rigor and the robust nature of it. And well, you know, it's a good tool, it does it does the job it's supposed to be doing. This is what you said, but actually just go in with true open curiosity is definitely the way.

Mark 29:56

Just move away again from the decision style profile. Isn't that exactly the same principle for teams making good decisions? When I share a perspective on a decision and then it's challenged, my innate desire is to defend it. And there might be times where we have to justify an opinion and all that, and what's the evidence and rigor behind an opinion? But outside of that, can I just express what I think and then allow it to be tacked and I not feel threatened by the attack? Because it's not an attack, it's just different perspectives coming back. And how do those perspectives help take my thinking on? How do they actually challenge my perspective? Or at times, when you challenge my perspective, how does that actually deepen and affirm the perspective I do have? Because I become even more convinced of what I believe on the basis of how you challenge. There's lots of different ways it can play out, but it's posture and attitude. And I think the key with cognitive diversity, for it to work, there has to be an underlying attitude of a curiosity, B, I don't need to defend myself or this decision. And C, I want to be interested in what you think and why you think it, not just in broadcasting what I think. That's the best performing teams, is when I'm more interested in you than I am in myself.

Kristian 31:05

Yeah, my own opinions and beliefs. Mark, um, I've used the decision styles uh tool myself and coaching found it incredibly effective in not only sort of unearthing insights, but also creating some of those aha moments where people realize that they can start to transform or adapt their behaviors, their responses to work better with people, to collaborate. So I'm interested in what some of your insights in using the decision styles with coaching and with individuals.

The Seven Step Masterclass And Impact

Mark 31:35

Lots of it is some of the things we've talked about. I think most people, particularly people who are engaged in a coaching relationship, are naturally curious. Unless you're like a real voluntole who's been, you know, sent to be coached, which by the way, I don't think is very effective. It does happen. Most people want to explore and they are curious by nature. And because good coaches are by nature and trained to be curious, and good people working with a coach want to be curious. I think they lend themselves really well because at one level it adds a little bit of objectivity to otherwise quite subjective conversation. The fact that their visual allows you to refer to something. I've often said to people who've done the decision styles, even if your colleague hasn't done a style, but you could get them to do one if you want, you could just place them on this continuum. Where do you think they are, have a conversation with them and ask them where they think they are, even in itself, that could be really fascinating.

Dr Amanda Potter 32:25

Still helpful, isn't it?

Mark 32:26

But I think it's a really good profile to use to help people to think more deeply for themselves and particularly think about the impact of their behaviours and styles on the people around them, because most of us make most of our decisions in the context of other people, not on our own. And that's why I think it really matters.

Dr Amanda Potter 32:44

We worry more about how other people will think about us and how they will perceive us as a result of making that decision. So we don't necessarily think and make decisions objectively, which is an interesting one. So my question for you is around tricky profiles. Have you had any really tricky team or individual profiles that you've had to deal with when you've been using this process and approach?

Mark 33:07

I've probably I've probably had tricky people uh who ask very awkward or actually brilliant questions that I just haven't had enough time to think about. I think sometimes people profile and it doesn't quite make sense to them. Now, of course, sometimes we just don't know what we don't know, or I haven't spent enough time reflecting on what it must be like to be on the other side of me. And so it feels like a disconnect, but in reality, actually, how the decision star profiles me, it's probably how I show up. I mean, it really interesting thing is just to ask other people like my profile says this about me. Is this your experience of me? If it is, I need to do some deep reflection. If it's not, it still fuels a great conversation around, okay, it's not me, so what do you see in me? Because it's not ultimately about what the profile does or doesn't say, it's about my learning and engagement is provoked by it. A classic question I get a lot is sort of like, is this a good profile? Someone might say. Is it good to have a primary style? Or someone might say, surely it's really best to be agile across all the 10 continuums, because then there's a flexibility. And I get those sorts of questions which make for quite interesting conversations.

Dr Amanda Potter 34:10

And how do you answer it? Because just for the listener, what we do when we use this questionnaire, if you've got a really extreme score, either end of the scale, we call it a primary, because that's the style of decision making that you gravitate towards the most and are most likely to use, particularly when you're working in a fast way or under pressure. Then there's those secondary, if you don't have any primaries, you don't have any styles of decision making, which can be quite fixed because they're your go-to place, then you might have secondaries and then in the middle of the agile ones, which it really depends on the situation. So, Mark, how do you handle those questions?

Mark 34:45

Yeah, I mean, I usually dread them a little bit, but no, seriously, I think you enter into a curious conversation where you just explore that with people. So if you score a one and ten, am I right? It's like a one percent of the population you share that star with, if it's a very extreme score. So that for me is really interesting. I spoke to a lady last week who had done one of these and she scored a one on one of the continuums and had a real complex about it because it was around pace and she was super slow. So when I then said, so if you're scoring a one, that means 99% of other people intuitively or otherwise make decisions quicker than you. So you understand where their complex may have come from, almost like, gosh, I'm a bit of a black sheep. You think, well, at times, yes, a lot of people may get frustrated by it slow. But where could you leverage this as an amazing superpower? The fact that you have a style that isn't shared by 99% of other people means you potentially can bring a cognitive diversity, an insight, a way of thinking that 99% of other people can't. And that for me is the thing to really leverage because some people feel comfortable in a crowd. So if I'm agile and I'm sharing that style with a large proportion in a normal distribution curve, I kind of feel comfortable. A lot of other people are similar to me. That's fine. But actually, if I'm different and I play to that difference appropriately, I can add huge value to how other people think, or indeed they can to me. So it's less about where you profile primary, secondary, agile. For me, it's about what do you do with that? That's the key thing around self-engagement.

Environment, Attention And Better Thinking

Dr Amanda Potter 36:12

And the reality is with the extremes, we are more likely to be a little bit more rigid. When we're talking about coaching somebody and helping them understand their profile, with that example of the person who got a STEN one on pace, we know from the research that we've been doing is that when we have a primary style, we're more rigid. We are more likely to stick to that approach and way of thinking and deciding. It's therefore more difficult for us to be agile, which is in the middle. And agility is often really helpful. So the question that people are asking you, Mark, about isn't it better to be agile? is a really great question because there are times when it is better to be agile. But when we're in a heterogeneous team, it's just really good to have lots of differences because then we ask those difficult and challenging questions. And your colleague, your client who is slower, is going to hopefully challenge those people who are rushing headlong into decision making without fully thinking things through.

Mark 37:12

Yeah, and and look, if someone's really extreme, like a one out of ten, it's not going to be helpful for the rest of the team to try and, as it were, convert them to become an eight, nine, ten. It's gonna be so out of character, it's gonna be hugely stressful, it won't be genuine, but you could ask questions like, what could it look like for you to, in your behavior, move towards a three or a four? Or even ask them, if you were to move two or three spaces to the right, what would it take for you to be able to go a bit faster? And they might just go, I just need a little bit more information, or I just need this insight from X. That's really easy, low-hanging fruit. And so it's not then about dragging someone to a different place on the on the scale, but actually just understanding there's a reason why they're going very slowly. Often it's because there's a lack of understanding of something or they're seeing a threat and therefore they need to slow down to feel safe. It's what's below the behavior that drives the behavior that's more interesting, I think, to try and diagnose.

Kristian 38:05

Yeah, it really is. And I know I mentioned earlier, Mark, about the fact that we and especially myself didn't get training in how to make good decisions. And one of the reasons why I found your work really fascinating is that you've done work with younger people and in schools. Is that is that right? How is that different to the organizational and corporate work that we've been talking about?

Mark 38:26

Yeah, I mean, I started my career as a teacher and I've been in and around schools for a long time and still do work in schools. So I think it's really interesting when senior leaders today kind of looking at the upcoming generation and at times, not always, sort of slightly bemoaning the quality of people coming through. I think there's an onus on whether it's governments or businesses investing more in education in schools. Because let's be really blunt, the future decision makers for our country are currently sitting in schools right now. And if we're worried about the quality of decision making nationally or in our companies and organizations, we need to be doing something to be investing in the young people who are learning now how to make good decisions. I personally think it's utterly criminal that every young person in school isn't taught better how to think. Some schools do it brilliantly, but we need to think about our thinking. We need to think about how we make decisions because all of us cast our minds back to school and the business end of school. Maybe you're thinking about what am I going to do when I finish my exams? We're taught what we could do, but we're very rarely taught how to think about what we do. Or what does a good decision look like? Not just sort of technically in terms of a good output, but even bring in our morals, our character, our worldviews. What does a good decision look like? And I think it would be wonderful to see more investment in young people, whether it be through schools or other organizations, to help young people think about making better decisions. Because you talk to the average young person, you know, mid to late teens now, they're utterly paralyzed and terrified about the future. Some of that's because there's just too many options out there. Some of it's because the world is so volatile financially, economically, and everything else. I think this is the time more than ever to help young people think about their thinking and learn to make better decisions. And I really think that's a responsibility we should all take, even if it's something as much as drawing alongside the child of a good friend and just helping to model or have a conversation with them about how they approach decision making. It hasn't got to be a formal thing or an exam. We just need to be equipping people to make better decisions, and that can be socialized in informal conversation as much as informal training.

Dr Amanda Potter 40:28

Yes, and I completely agree because our experience of hiring psychologists from university is that they've been taught to learn, but they haven't been taught to think. And they've been taught to research, but they haven't necessarily been taught to decide on the best way forward or a solution. They literally learn to regurgitate information and structure it in a way that's going to pass exams. So the big thing we talk about in our business is helping people to think independently and apply the learning. But the decision-making point is truly very important, particularly for life decisions, for those big decisions that they have to make around apprenticeships versus university versus going to work and so on.

Mark 41:13

I'm convinced that this is like, in a sense, our philosophy of leadership. There's a really strong connection between our thinking, our decisions, and our leadership. So if we aspire to be better leaders or to be nurturing better leaders than others, at the heart of that, at least in part, has to be learning how to make better decisions. Okay, if we accept that, how do you make better decisions? Well, at least one way is we've got to learn to do better thinking. And our world is geared up to stop us thinking because we're very responsive, things have being fired at us too quickly, we're overstimulated and we're too committed, we're too back-to-back. How on earth can we make really big life or business decisions when we don't give ourselves space to think? And so working with teams and saying, how do you think best is often questions teams have never thought about. And then you say, But do you want to make great decisions and do you want to display great leadership and for your organization to have an impact in the world? And they all go, Of course I do. You go, well, work it backwards. If we haven't thought about our thinking, how are we expecting to make better decisions and display better leadership? So for me, this is absolutely crucial.

Kristian 42:12

It's critical thinking, isn't it? Which is the critical piece as well. And when you were just talking about that, I suddenly thought of um AI and the impact that that could have on critical thinking and being able to uh exercise our thinking muscles and uh decision making. So I don't know if you had any thoughts on the impact of AI and on the work that you do.

Mark 42:33

Yeah, I mean, this stuff's moving so quick, isn't it? And I confess I'm I'm definitely not an early adopter and I'm thinking this stuff through. But as a company, we are taking steps to engage more with AI. But I think what we're not doing is just jumping on the sort of bandwagon of it's all AI without any sort of checks and balances. AI, I think, will be really useful at some levels. It's definitely going to make certain things more efficient, it's gonna give us access to greater levels of intelligence quickly. But the key is decisions at the end of the day are relational, and AI is not relational. AI doesn't at the end of the day care about the decisions we make, whereas people we do. So it's a tool we need to use, but we don't want to use it blindly, and we still have to apply our own morals, our own worldview, our own desire for character to flow through our decisions. And so we need to hold AI and indeed any tool in tension with what it means to be human. But I think what's really interesting is as AI accelerates, increasingly I'm seeing people do good thinking about what does it mean to be human. And if we can leverage the best of both, then we're gonna get some really interesting relationship where we can get better at much of what we're trying to do. It's not about throwing one out in replacement of the other, but ultimately AI I don't think will replace and can't replace what it means to be human. And good decision making for me is very human because it's relational and people centered, or at least it it should be.

Kristian 43:54

The trainable skill, as well, isn't it? About not only our cognitive abilities but mindset. We talked about Emotional regulation, values and clarity of values and psychological safety. So having the confidence to take interpersonal risks as well. Mark, you run these amazing away days for senior leaders to be more effective in their decision making. Can you tell us a bit more about these and what they entail and some of the impact as well that you see?

Mark 44:22

Yeah, one of the ways we really try to help leaders to get better at decision making is we've we've developed a sort of seven-step framework which holds together best thought, best models, best practices in decision making. Trying to make visible, really, a lot of the process people will naturally go through in their decision making. But we package it up in a sort of one-day masterclass that we deliver in person to small cohorts. We do currently five of them a year. The thing I love about it is we intentionally mix people from different industries. So it's not 15 people all from education or all from biotech or all from healthcare. But you might have in the room a CEO of a new tech startup next to a lawyer, next to a head teacher, next to a CEO of a not-for-profit, next to a Vicar. There's an example of a reason we've had. It's wonderful. And people are like, I've never, A, sat next to someone like you. B, I've never thought professionally about this thing decision-making. A, either at all, or B, certainly not with people like you. And what people say is it proves to me why it's really healthy to get out of our bubbles more than we do, to get out of our lanes and mix with people who think differently, whose context is different. But essentially it's just a day where we explore together with a commitment to getting better. And it's wonderful because it's less about just download of information and models like a sort of fast accelerated training program. It's more space, deliberately delivered in the proximity of a river with the countryside in the backdrop. It deliberately just I think slows us down and helps us to think about our thinking. And we ask people to come with a real decision that they're wrestling with and then to use the training, the tools, the ideas as almost a filter for what they're currently wrestling with. I mean, Amanda, you you came on one of these. Would you like to share a couple of anecdotes of what you found helpful?

Dr Amanda Potter 46:03

What I really found helpful was the practical approach that you took throughout the day because there is some education in there, but actually it's all about application. It's using that decision all the way through the day and taking us through the stages and how do we actually get to the outcome. But I also like the fact that we get to work with different we got to work with different people. So I met loads of different people on the workshop. Like you say, some of them were professionals, some were consultants, some were senior leaders that weren't from HR. There was a real mix in the room, which was great. And we were lucky enough to be able to sit outside as a part of it as well. So we did lots of paired work and lots of opportunities to get challenged by someone who's very different to me and thinks very differently to me. And what was also interesting is because I brought quite a lot of neuroscience into the room, I bought one lens and other people would bring very different lenses. And also lunch was yum. It was really nice lunch.

Mark 46:56

So we we do end to please. Um, but yeah, you know, we've referred, I talked a bit about Nancy Klein earlier in uh work on time to think, but she also talks about the physical environment we're in will facilitate better thinking if it's right. I think one of her lines is it is the place where you're working or thinking or discussing, does it say back to you you matter? It's really deliberate. You know, we could be in a nice hotel in London or some nice other place in the countryside. We deliberately decided to be somewhere that's away from the hustle and bustle of most people's immediate context. The fact that it's by a river and certainly spring through summer, you can be outside. There's something calming about nature, but when you're trying to think about your thinking, you don't want to hear horns and sirens and see high rise. You want space. I think the point in it for all of us as we sort of reflect on this conversation is when we're trying to do good thinking or make good decisions or reflect on our decision styles, are we in a physical environment that enables us to do our best thinking around those things? If we're not, why don't we just change where we're doing this meeting and where we're talking? Because then we'll bring out much better thinking in each other. And it's an easy thing to do, right? But we just often don't even think about these things.

Dr Amanda Potter 48:03

Fabulous.

Closing And Upcoming AMA Invitation

Kristian 48:04

I suppose that brings the episode to an end. Thank you, Amanda. Thank you especially to Mark, and thank you to our listeners as well. If you like what you heard, then please feel free to give us a rating so that people can tune in to discover more fabulous insights.

Dr Amanda Potter 48:17

And thank you, Kristian, for hosting. Thank you, Mark, for being our guest. I know that we invited you because I felt that we could have another really good rich conversation, and I was right. I thought that was a great conversation. You challenged me, you challenged my thinking. That's exactly what I wanted.

Mark 48:30

Thank you for having me.

Kristian 48:30

If you've enjoyed our conversation with Mark and sparked your curiosity, why not join us for our next Ask Me Anything session? On Thursday, the 26th of March at 11am, Greenwich Meantime, the conversation will be focused on what really sits behind leadership decisions. It's an open session, so you can bring your own questions. Whether that's about bias, pressure, uncertainty, or how to build a more robust decision process and practice, this is Space to Explore it. If you'd like to join us, you can register at BeTalent.com. We'd be delighted to see you there.