Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:44: Idea for action 1: press pause

00:04:36: Idea for action 2: be aware of your biases

00:05:30: Useful resources

00:06:45: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Welcome back to the Squiggly Career Skills Sprint.  We are on day 8 of our sprint and today's topic is judgement.

Sarah Ellis: And judgement is one of those skills that I think can feel difficult to figure out, like how do I get better at this; how do I have better judgement?  And though it is definitely a learnable skill, it's one of those where I think we have to break it down a bit to think about, "Well, how do I improve?  What does getting better look like?"  But I think when you do have good judgement, the benefit for you in your career is that in return, you get really good trust from people.  I think people start to trust you to make decisions, they give you more space. 

I think you have more permission to play and to make things happen when people see, "Oh, well she or he, they've got smart judgement, they think things through, they see the shades of grey and they get to the right conclusion".

Helen Tupper: And we were having a chat about the difference between judgement and being judgemental.  I think it's a fine line but a really important one.  So, if we are chatting and I'm saying, "I don't think we should do that because I think that's rubbish and this is my opinion of what we should do", that's potentially quite judgemental because I've not really explained my thinking or how I've got to that idea in my head.  Whereas judgement, I would say, "As a result of these bits of information and what I've considered, this is what I think is the best way forward".  And when someone understands your thinking, they've got an insight into how you've got to that judgement, I think there's a bit more understanding for it, maybe a bit more buy-in.  So, just be aware and maybe spot other people at this difference between, are they being judgemental about something or are they demonstrating good judgement?

Sarah Ellis: And my idea for action here is, when you think judgement is important, so perhaps somebody's asked you to make a decision or you're making a recommendation, I often think your job to do is to try and see that recommendation or decision from lots of different angles to get to a judgement, to get to a point of view.  And to be able to do that well, I think you need to press pause. 

So, if you've got to make it, snap judgements are hard, and we know that often snap judgements are often not the right ones.  So, pressing pause can look like five minutes, it can look like sleeping on it, it can look like talking to somebody else before you get to a conclusion. So, I often think part of being good at judgement is noticing when you need to sometimes ask, or even just say or signal, "I'm just going to press pause on this", or, "I'm just going to take some time to think".  And I was once in some really interesting high-level negotiations, like people doing proper negotiation.

Helen Tupper: Sounds very important.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  I was the least important person in that room by really quite a long way.  And I think I really benefitted there from a leader who just let me be there.  And really, I mean I wasn't adding any value, I was just observing.  But what I noticed in there, where actually you've got different people all making judgements about what they needed to say, what they were trying to represent, their different kind of points of view, is they were very confident about saying, "I'm just going to take some time to think about that, so should we have a five minute break?" or, "I'm just going to sleep on that one and I'll come back to you tomorrow".  And then when they got to a judgement, they were very good at explaining the rationale, why they had got to that judgement. So to your point, it didn't just ever feel like a personal judgement. 

It felt like they'd done that consideration, "I've looked at it, I've looked at the upsides, I've looked at the downsides".  I think this is often about having agility in your thinking so you can see all those angles, and then you get to a conclusion, but you don't just present it as like a, "Oh, it's this".  You do take people with you on how they get to that judgement, and then I think you get all of this buy-in.  I've seen people be brilliant at this, they bring you with them on their thinking, "Well, I considered that, but this is why I don't think that's quite right.  But actually, when we look at it from this perspective, oh, I can see that this would be brilliant for our customers for these three reasons".  And you know when you just find yourself nodding, like you're like nodding along now?  I think they're the people, it's sort of a mixture, isn't it, of judgement and persuasion coming together, and then those people have real impact. I love watching it in action because I think it just makes a real difference.  You can just see the kind of clarity of thinking.  And then, those people just have so much power.

Helen Tupper: Yeah like, "Our judgement is…", is quite different to, "My judgement…

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's actually a really interesting phrase, isn't it?  It's like trying to not to make the judgement about you.  Where has that judgement come from?  It's a collective or there's a data point or you're thinking about your customers or your partners, or whatever it might be.

Helen Tupper: Mine is about being aware of your biases, in terms of my idea for action with judgement.  I think that we all have certain biases to how we might approach situations and how we kind of get to our judgement on things.  Biases are kind of hard to just get rid of, but I think being aware of your bias helps you to notice, "Okay, that is what I am bringing to this situation.  It is affecting my judgement.  What would Sarah do?  Okay, Sarah would approach this differently".  Or, "What if we went slower; we didn't speed up, we went slower?" 

So, I guess between us, Sarah would say stop, I would say go faster.  The bit in the middle is probably, what would a slower version of this look like?  And just being aware of, what bias am I bringing to this judgement, what would the alternative be, helps you to just balance it out a bit.  And it means that when you do get to a judgement, it's just a bit more informed and, to your point, I think you get more buy-in from other people because of that, your bias hasn't led that decision.

Sarah Ellis: And there's a really good HBR article you can read on judgement, which is by Sir Andrew Likierman, and I took a little phrase from this article that really stuck out to me.  He says, "Be sceptical of information that doesn't make sense", and I just thought, "Yes!" I think partly because I'm quite sceptical maybe naturally, so that really appealed to me as a phrase.  But I often think of it as the niggles, the niggles when something doesn't feel right.  And then I think that can be something you can communicate as a judgement, but I think you've got to go beyond the niggle. 

You can't just be like, "Oh, this doesn't feel right, so we shouldn't do it".  You've got to figure out from a judgement perspective, "Well, why doesn't this feel right?  What is telling me that this isn't the right thing to do?"  And combined with that article, I was listening to Daniel Kahneman on the Knowledge Project podcast again.  And I've listened to that episode a few times because I think Thinking Fast and Slow, one of his books, takes a bit of getting your head around.  You need to listen to it a few times to really understand actually that our instincts are not that good, that you shouldn't trust your gut a lot of the time.  You know everyone says, "Trust your gut"?  You definitely shouldn't trust your gut a lot of the time. So, if you're really interested in this and improving your judgement skill, and this feels important to you, I would dive into Sir Andrew Likierman's work because that's very specific on judgement, but I would also look at Thinking Fast and Slow.

Helen Tupper: So, that's the end of today's skills sprint.  We're back again tomorrow and the skill we're going to be focusing on is collaboration.