Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:52: The problems with problem-solving

00:04:41: Problem-solving profiles…

00:06:37: … adventurer

00:07:21: … detective

00:08:12: … listener

00:08:41: … thinker

00:09:13: … visionary

00:10:14: Profiling an ideal team

00:17:06: Using profiles to progress your career

00:25:49: Solving cross-functional conflicts

00:30:07: How different profiles make decisions

00:37:14: The power dynamic between different profiles

00:39:32: Cheryl's career advice

00:41:12: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This week is one of our Ask the Expert episodes and you're going to hear me in conversation with Cheryl Einhorn.  Together, we're going to be talking about problem-solving, and I asked Cheryl to join me on the podcast because we've done a bit of work together.  I then watched her give a talk, and what was really impressive for me and where she really stands out is that she's someone who listens and absolutely wants to be as useful as she can be in helping us all to get better at problem-solving.  And I just feel like it's one of those skills that we all have in common. 

So, whether it's smaller work problems that you're navigating every week or a bigger career dilemma that you're trying to figure out and problem-solve your way through, I hope everyone finds this episode really useful.  I'll be back at the end to say goodbye but in the meantime, I hope you really enjoy listening. Cheryl, thank you so much for joining us on the Squiggly Careers podcast.  I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

Cheryl Einhorn: Thank you so much for having me.  It's such a pleasure to be with you today.

Sarah Ellis: And so, we're going to dive deeply into this topic of decision-making and problem-solving.  And in our Squiggly Careers, I think we are solving problems every day, every week, all of the time.  There's always too many problems and not enough time, right?  I think that's how we probably all feel.  Some of these problems that you might be grappling with could be about your career, you're listening now and you've got some big problems that you're thinking around, "Where could my career take me?"  Or perhaps you feel like you're stalling or a bit stuck.  Or maybe you're just thinking, "Well, how do I get better at problem-solving in my day-to-day job with the problems that my manager sends my way, or the problem of prioritising?  So, it's certainly not a topic that will feel unfamiliar but I'm interested to start by hearing from you what gets in the way; why are we all not naturally brilliant at problem-solving; what are some of the barriers that perhaps we've got to overcome?

Cheryl Einhorn: What a terrific question to start with.  I think some of the things that get in the way is that, first, I think we're only beginning to realise that decision-making is a discipline unto itself.  Traditionally, we haven't been taught to think about decision-making, whether it's at home or in our schools, and we haven't really confronted how is it that we make decisions, we haven't really thought about what is our own process.  And it generally dawns on us over time that different people solve problems differently, and that's confusing as well.  So, I think one is the self-awareness and the general awareness of decision-making. I think the second thing is that there's a set of what I call decision-making myths that get in the way. 

And by this, I mean social norms that we don't realise tend to make problem-solving even more difficult, and I'll just give you two examples.  One is, we often tend to think that efficiency is very important when it comes to problem-solving, "Oh, I need to make this decision and I want to get it done".  But efficiency is about productivity and it's not about efficacy.  So, that is one thing that we confuse.  And then the other thing is, because we often want to tackle what's right in front of us because we're busy, we have a lot of things that we want to do, we may be only solving this problem in this moment, which misses out on the frame or the context or the larger problem that it is that we actually need to solve.  And so, for a couple of those reasons, we don't necessarily engage with our decisions in a way that makes us feel good about it, feel empowered, feel like we have agency and feel like we're moving forward well into our future.

Sarah Ellis: I think though it can be difficult, I think what's reassuring, certainly as we've got to know each other and I've become more familiar with your work, is my sense is this is definitely a learnable skill that we can all get better at, so there's hope for all of us.

Cheryl Einhorn: There's hope for all of us.  I think there's two kinds of learning: there's knowledge and there's skill, and I do think of decision-making as a set of skills.  And the reason why I think that's so hopeful for all of us is that means that I can teach those skills to you and they can be yours, and then you can feel better about how you engage with the data of your lives, which is really what our decisions are.

Sarah Ellis: And so you looked at decision-making and how we make decisions and thought individually about these problem-solver profiles that we're going to dive into, because we all love a profile because it gives us something to start with, and I think to your point earlier, to understand ourselves, because I think often perhaps we make the mistake of thinking, "I've got to find a formula. 

There's a formula I should be following, which means I should make better decisions".  Or perhaps we compare ourselves to others and think, "Why are they so much better at making decisions than I am or solving these problems?" almost there's something wrong with me or I'm not smart enough or not good enough.  And I think the more I've dived into these profiles, the more I feel they're a really important unlocker for us to make progress with getting better at making these decisions. So, perhaps you could just introduce these profiles to our listeners so that everyone can get a bit of a feel for them and then we'll talk about the so what, "So, what now?" when we know the profile.

Cheryl Einhorn: Absolutely.  So, a really simple thing that you can do right after this podcast, or even during the podcast, is you can learn your own problem-solver profile.  You can go to app.areamethod.com and you can sign up and you can learn your problem-solver profile, and this will immediately give you a little bit of information about you.  So, here are the five profiles, and I've given them fun names because we do think in language; and because we haven't had a language previously, it's been even more difficult to think about.  So, in my new book, Problem Solver, this is what I describe. 

There is the adventurer, the detective, the listener, the thinker, and the visionary.  And each of these profiles have some beautiful strengths, and then I've cross-referenced them with some of the mental mistakes, the key cognitive biases that are most closely associated with each. So, the adventurer is somebody who moves fast, who craves new experiences, who's got confidence, and who wants to be efficient.  And some of the blind spots associated with the adventurer are the optimism bias.  They tend to think, "Well, if I make a decision and it doesn't work out, guess what?  The next decision is always ahead".  And that's a beautiful optimism about how to move through the world that has a wonderful underlying confirmation to it.  And they also can get stuck therefore in a planning bias.  They can think that something is going to be easier to do than it is, it might take longer, it might be more complicated.

The detective is the next problem-solver profile.  This is somebody who loves having data and is willing to push back if you don't come with data.  This is somebody who's committed to facts, they think of themselves as realistic and as rational, and for some of the cognitive biases here, a confirmation bias could be very present.  Because the detective likes to be anchored in facts, she generally is quick to go find research and therefore she can find a piece of evidence that can favour a hypothesis that she is advocating for, which is very different than trying to disconfirm a favoured hypothesis, which actually has more rigour.  And she can also have a projection bias thinking, "Well, I see the facts this way, and therefore so must everybody else".

The listener is our next problem-solver profile.  This is a community, cooperative-oriented person.  They are trusting, they are supportive, and they tend therefore, as a cognitive bias, to have a liking bias.  They can overweight information from somebody who they have an affinity for and they can also have a social-proof bias where they may want to be able to really know what the wisdom of a group of people are thinking. The thinker is our slowest decision-maker.  They spend more time in problem-solving than decision-making, they like to understand the upside and the downside, they are slow, they are steady, they are cautious, and they like to feel like they are thorough.  And as a result, a cognitive bias for them could be loss aversion, where they tend to want to mitigate the downside risk more than either getting to the best outcome possible or the best possible outcome. Then our final of the problem-solver profiles is the visionary.  This is somebody who likes to think beyond the current decision, they are eager to build new things, they're imaginative and they're innovative.  And therefore, some of their cognitive biases could be something like a scarcity bias, where they overweight something that is rare when something that is workaday could be just as fine and solve the problem more easily. So, what you can see is that these different profiles are optimising for different things in their decision, they value different parts of the process.  And therefore, understanding these profiles can help you to work better with other people as you make decisions alone and in community.

Sarah Ellis: It's so fascinating because as you were describing them, you can't help but think about your team and yourself.  Now, I do know my own profile because I've gone through and profiled, and Cheryl already knows that I've described to her that I'm a visionary.  Helen, my co-founder, is an adventurer.  And so, with the work that you've done, do you ideally want a team with a bit of everything?  And also interestingly, are there any profiles where you're like, "Absolutely not?  When they get together, it goes all sorts of wrong", or can everyone make all of the different combinations work?

Cheryl Einhorn: So, it's such a good question I really appreciate it.  So, our former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, once said, "You go to war with the army that you have, not the army that you wish you had", and that's this idea that any combination can work well together.  But the magic is in knowing the five problem-solver profiles so that you can understand where are the ways that you can travel towards the strengths together, and what are some of the cognitive biases as these different profiles interact.  And when you are missing out on the intellectual diversity of the five, because you know all of them, you can bring in questions from the different vantage points which can better ensure that you have a more fulsome understanding of the decisions that you're making. That being said, there are some combinations that have more trouble travelling together, greater tension than others.  And again, understanding these profiles is really what becomes the grease that can unlock the possibility between the two and eradicate that tension.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think when I think back to maybe difficult relationships I've had at work in the past, I think our problem-solver profiles were probably very different, and so then you're already approaching that problem from a very different starting place.  And because you've not maybe got the self-awareness or you've not had the discussion to sort of say -- I was actually even thinking today, the conversation I had before this, which was a small conversation about our brand, and I was chatting to our designer about something, and I was thinking back to the questions that I asked her, and they were all questions beyond the immediate. 

So, I was thinking, "If we were thinking a bit further ahead, we're probably going to do that…" and that sometimes definitely slows me down, because you do actually need to make decisions today, because otherwise you're not going to make any progress, so I think I recognise that. I think the one that also really helps me is that when you know your biases, that point about scarcity, because to your point, I think I always have this sort of mindset of, "Oh, but is that rare?  There's only one of those, or there's only a couple of those", and I think I've worked in a couple of organisations that culturally also have that.  So, I also wonder whether culturally you end up sometimes with more of certain sorts of problem-solvers.  So, when I worked in a retail environment, operational, fast-paced, I'm trying to remember people who were thinkers.  I mean, I'm quite reflective and quite a thinker, but even then I don't come out as that profile.  But that idea of being slower, seeing the upsides and the downsides, in that kind of an environment, that just wasn't how we -- people moved so quick. So, I think it's also interesting sometimes to look culturally, depending on your industry and your sector, how can you make sure you attract more intellectual diversity, rather than recruiting more of the same, so you end up in that kind of echo chamber trap?  Have you seen any other organisations or teams who've been able to do that, who've been able to add that intellectual diversity intentionally, and what's helped them to do that?

Cheryl Einhorn: It's a great question.  I have so many different thoughts of things that are back based on what you said.  For organisations that are aware of the problem-solver profiles and have started using it in hiring in a very active way, when they think about building out their teams, I think it's really helped the organisation to think about where is the intellectual diversity, not only that we're missing, but when they are reporting to a specific person, what's going to feel good in a relationship?  Even if they were to know that it's a profile that might be one that has tension, if they want to specifically bring in somebody who is going to work well with that individual, those combinations have really given a certain comfort level to the person who's doing the hiring. We have one organisation, for instance, that is a global organisation that does eco tours, and they have instituted this where they have specifically thought about when hiring a CFO, what kind of profile do they want, and when hiring a Chief of Staff, what kind of profile do they want, because their CEO is an adventurer and she really knew that there were certain profiles that she felt like they were missing out on, and where she really wanted to be leaning in on skills. 

So, for the Chief of staff, since she's an adventurer and she feels very comfortable moving forward quickly with limited data, she wanted a listener who could think about the needs of her team.  And so that was a specific example, and I just want to speak to you and to Helen.  You're the visionary, she's the adventurer; that's a beautiful combination.  Both of them are thinking about possibility, but they're thinking about new and possible differently.  So, while you may be able to think as a visionary, Sarah, about something that is long-term, something that hasn't been on the table and is creative, you may not necessarily be focused on those individual details that get you there, but the adventurer can easily see what's the next step, what feels good to start laying down that pathway.  And you also look for different kinds of data. So, you can see why really being conscious of and thoughtful about how these different profiles fit together can make you feel better about how you're going to engage and how to use those strengths and mitigate the blind spots between the problem-solvers.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I was re-reading your book earlier and you bring together some of the profiles and I was thinking, "I wonder as I read this, what's going to happen?" because you've got a visionary and an adventurer together.  And I was thinking, "Oh, it's a bit late now if Helen and I are going to have to rethink!"  But I think your point around actually knowing this then means that you can do something about it. So, I wondered if we imagine now maybe somebody listening is thinking about their career.  So, let's take a specific example, and they maybe are feeling a bit stuck in their career. 

It happens to all of us and it happens to the best of us, maybe feeling like you're flatlining a little bit, you've maybe lost a bit of your career mojo, you want to make progress but you're not sure what it looks like.  So, that's the problem that you've got, is one of those knotty moments in your Squiggly Career.  How do you think using the problem-solver profiles could help people to make progress?  Let's imagine now you've got the awareness, so someone listening has figured out, "I'm a detective, I'm a listener, I'm a thinker", they kind of know where they are, great, and they also know what biases they've got, or they've at least started to understand what that looks like. 

What would you then recommend someone then goes away and -- where would I go next after that?

Cheryl Einhorn: It's a great question.  So, each of the profiles would naturally go someplace different.  A listener is probably going to go to their trusted group of advisors and say, "I really hit this wall.  What do you guys think?"  The detective is going to automatically look for data, "Other people like me in this particular position, what have they generally done next?" and then they'll think about maybe those different options; that's one way the detective might go.  The adventurer might basically say, "What sounds good?" or be observing what is in front of them and saying, "That seems more exciting.  Let's try that".  And then the visionary may be saying, "It could be time for something entirely new".  So, what you're realising is they're each going to attack the problem differently and there's not a right way, but by knowing all the profiles, you can identify that these different pathways are available and you don't have to always show up like you have. The problem-solver profile is not prescriptive.  It's not going to tell you what you're going to do next.  Think of it like right-handed and left-handed. 

Most of us feel more comfortable doing things with one dominant hand, but over time and with effort, we can be ambidextrous.  So, just because we have habits and patterns that are comfortable for us where we are a detective and we like to move through the world that way, by knowing these profiles, we can try them on for size.  We can get a sense of where that discomfort comes up, because that discomfort is realigning us back with where we have been comfortable in the past, and maybe also our values.  But it also may give us opportunities for growth.  And so any of the pathways forward is fine, but I highly recommend that you use these as a way to become more dynamic yourself because all of these pathways could lead you down out of the problem of feeling stuck and towards a better future.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think what you've just described there so brilliantly is what I love the most about the profiles, because as our regular listeners will know, I'm really not a fan of a prescriptive profile.  I think they can limit you and they can make you smaller.  So, often I'm quite sceptical about a profile, I'm like, "Oh, I'm never sure".  And I don't want people to feel like then that's me in a very fixed way.  But I think what you describe and the way you approach it is the exact opposite.  The point is, of course, understand yourself.  We all have preferences, we all have patterns, and I think that is helpful. 

So, thinking about it as a visionary, I know I'm curious, I'm likely to look far forward, and probably when you're very stuck in a problem, my hypothesis is often, "You have tried already what comes naturally to you". So when I think about, for example, back to when I've been most stuck in my career, I've often done the thing that I know that I can do well and that I've done before.  Actually what's really helpful for me is trying on some of these other methods and these other approaches for size and thinking, "Well, what would a detective do; what data would they go and seek?  Who would a listener go and talk to, to get some support; whose point of view would they want to understand?"  And I, knowing Helen very well as an adventurer, and she is a really brilliant prototyper, I often think when you know someone who is one of these profiles, you can even just put yourself in their shoes without even needing to talk to them. 

I can think, "What would Helen do?" We've done a little bit of work together and I could probably start to think, "Well, what would Cheryl do?" because you and I definitely approach things in a different way.  And you and I were starting to feel that out as we worked together.  So, you learn by observing the different profiles of people around you.  And then I think, to your point, we can back ourselves, that we can try to do something differently, because that's I think how we uncover new ideas, new options, new insights that help us to make progress on those problems rather than stay still.

Cheryl Einhorn: I think that's absolutely right.  You bring up two things that I really want to make sure that all the listeners take away.  Because we're stuck in ourselves, we tend to elevate our own problem-solver profile, and we can think that somebody else is hasty, or it's analysis paralysis.  And what the problem-solver profiles do is just what you were mentioning about your appreciation for Helen and the adventurer, which is you no longer have to elevate yourself, "Of course, my way is the right way".  But you instead can gain an appreciation that each of these profiles that are not yours bring something beautiful to problem-solving and decision-making, and that they're just available to you.  So, I think that that is a really important point. The other thing is this idea is that the knowledge really is power.  It is available for you to step into the footsteps of somebody else and not only for you to try it on, but now using the profiles, you can accelerate trust. 

Because if you've naturally had tension with somebody and maybe you think, "I'm not sure I care for that personality", personality is very difficult to enter into; which part of it are you actually going to find as a pathway?  But the problem-solver profiles give you the pathway in.  It doesn't matter if you like somebody or don't like somebody, approaching the way that they solve problems now has an entry point where you can speak to their incentives and their motives, what they care about in decision-making, and now you have a way to really unlock and take down tension to strengthen your relationships.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that can be really helpful for people who, when you're working with somebody and it's not just that it doesn't gel, you really feel like there's maybe high levels of conflict or difference, and to your description, you feel like, "I don't know how we're going to find a way through this, but we need to because we do work together and we do see each other frequently.  And maybe my objectives are very intertwined with your objectives, but there is something stopping us here.  There is something stopping us solving problems".  

And I also wonder whether this will be particularly useful as well because you get silos when it comes to problem-solving.  Certainly when I'm thinking now less about individuals, more about teams and organisations, if I solve my problem one way, that might create a problem for you.  And so, often with problems, you can't help but be quite blinkered and to look at, "Well, what matters for me and in my team", and maybe certain teams attract more of certain profiles, and then that might be really frustrating for another team. So, I'm thinking certainly a background in marketing, lots of marketeers will, I suspect, have more of the adventurer profile, you'll get the odd visionary, I think you would probably get some of the listeners, like the supportive community, because they're good at thinking about their customers, but you get a lot of adventurers, would be my hypothesis. 

And then, of course, you need to work with your finance team, who are the people who approve the budget that you need to spend the marketing money.  And I think, "Oh, I wonder how different the problem-solver profile would be in that team?" and I suspect, and also having a partner who's an accountant, I go, "Well, they're probably more likely to be detectives and thinkers, but particularly detectives".  So actually, even across teams, and you don't want to generalise, but probably more likely certain levels of expertise, certain disciplines probably attract more of a certain sort of profile.  So, I also like the idea of zooming out more and kind of going, "Well, across our organisation, how can we also use this to solve some of those cross-functional conflicts?"  Have you ever seen it applied in that way?

Cheryl Einhorn: I think it definitely helps in terms of cross-functional properties as well.  One of the organisations that we worked with had a visionary leader, and then all the teams underneath were a variety of profiles with only one visionary, and there was a lot of friction working for that particular CEO and across the organisation as different profiles tried to work together and tried to guess what the visionary meant, because the visionary often has the big North Star, but without the details and the logical progression pinned down, and also generally without a timeline, although there might be a deadline at the end of it. 

And so, once this organisation was able to understand these different profiles, they were also able to be better listeners when they were in conversation for further signs of confirmation for how somebody was thinking.  But they were also able to develop a set of questions that could fill in some of these gaps and a greater fulsome understanding of projects that they had to work on together that were missing pieces, because different pieces were owned by different profiles. So, I also really like how, especially if you're a fan of mysteries or thrillers, you can use the profiles, whether or not you can ask somebody to take the problem-solver profile, as a way to listen for clues in what other people say for what's going to be important to what they need in order to solve a complex problem.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think that description there of the skill that you're describing, which I would think of a sort of situational sensing, as you said, you don't need to say, "Hi, Cheryl, we just met, please complete this profile so I can understand you better".  We're probably not going to do that in our first conversation together.  But if I'm looking for signals, if I'm looking for clues, and again without wanting to label people, but you probably do get a sense of what's most important to that person, how is that person most likely to approach problems.  And I also think, certainly for myself and if I think about the leaders that I've worked for, as you said, people are quite consistent, they're quite predictable.  Even when I used to sit in board meetings, people would ask quite similar questions. 

The actual content of the question might be very different, but almost the lens that they were looking at a problem through that meant they were asking a question was often very, very similar because they were more of a visionary or because they were more of a listener. I think when you start to pick up those cues and clues, you can then just be so much smarter as well about how you adapt, but while still staying yourself.  So, we're not saying then I think you have to completely change who you are to respond to someone's problem-solving profile.  But I think you can think, "Okay, well this person is a real listener.  So, they are interested in what other people have got to say, they want to understand different people's perspectives, they probably want the time to do that, are probably very supportive, probably quite caring about how is this going to impact other people". I've had a team once, I think, with a lot of listeners.  And actually, when I think about that team, just giving them a bit of space to do that was really important.  Whereas actually, if I tried to rush them to go too fast, actually that felt disconcerting for them and actually demotivating more than disconcerting.  So I think, as you said, just watching out for those things as you're having conversations and meetings just helps you to get smarter, I think, in how you build relationships.

Cheryl Einhorn: And let's just sharpen that a bit, because what you're saying is so important.  So, another thing to take away from this is the different problem-solver profiles need a different amount of time to make a decision.  So if you are working, for example, to use what you just talked about, Sarah, about the listener, this is not somebody who is going to move quickly unless she feels like other people have been bought in.  If her trusted group of advisors, if her people are on board and you've come to her and said, "I've canvassed those important stakeholders", she can move quickly. 

If not, she's not ready to make a decision with comfort.  And so, thinking about also how much time each profile needs for his or her process is important, not only to show that you are helping to align and bring that person on board, but also so that you can be considerate and you can actually work to strengthen your relationships as you problem-solve together. I think it's been a huge disservice that we have really thought of decision-making as a solo activity.  Not; it's a community activity.  There's almost no decision that you're going to make that at some level wouldn't benefit from being able to know what the other stakeholders care about because now, instead of one of the key mistakes that people make of only solving this problem in this moment, now you're really working towards holistic problem-solving.  You do it once, and then you hopefully don't have to deal with that problem again.

Sarah Ellis: So, I'm thinking back to a meeting that I was in today with Helen and someone in our team, and I'm now just thinking, "I wonder if we should have approached that differently".  So, see what you think, and I know she won't mind me sharing this example, because basically with the podcast, we end up sharing how we run our company, so everyone's very used to it.  So, we were in a meeting, and I think -- so, Helen is an adventurer, and I'm going to guess, though I don't know, but I'm going to guess that the other person is maybe a thinker.  That's what my hypothesis is. 

And now, listening to what you said to me today, Helen was very keen for this person to make a decision and to solve a problem there and then, in that moment, kept coming back to it, was trying to get that clarity for very positive intent, was trying to be very supportive, but wanted the answer to that problem like now, "Let's decide, let's move forward. Then I think now, what I've observed is that other person gently trying to push back and say, "Oh, but I'm not quite ready.  I'm not quite ready to make that decision.  I can't solve that problem yet because actually I need to look at some stuff.  So, there might be a bit of data-detecting, being a bit of a detective in there, and I need to think about it a bit more".  I think that's probably what she was trying to tell us, and I think we just kept saying, "Please, can you make a decision?"

Cheryl Einhorn: This is an interesting combination.  The visionary and the adventurer both have this beautiful can-do attitude, but they show up differently, in part because, as I was saying, the adventurer favours forward momentum.  The adventurer is an excellent problem-solver from the vantage point that he or she is not anchored in her idea.  She can adopt any good idea that she hears, and that's beautifully supportive.  So, when she hears a good idea, she can move forward without all the data.  The visionary can get anchored on her idea.  And so now you have the thinker. 

With these two very expansive ways to think about, one is very directional and one is very expansive, the thinker really gets crowded out because none of you have addressed the downside.  And the thinker wants to prevent failure more than almost anything else.  This is somebody who wants to know that they have evaluated the pros and the cons and they also circumscribe the perimeter of the decision between the options.  So, breaking out of that to either move quickly or to see beyond the boundaries is very difficult.  And for a thinker to feel valued, she needs time. When I work with teams with a thinker, I often discuss the meeting before the meeting.  If you want to make a decision at a meeting, if you can send an email or talk to that thinker, "In a couple of days, we're going to have this meeting, or even in a couple hours.  These are the different options that we've been thinking about [or] here's a favourite outcome", and then give the thinker an opportunity to engage with his or her process, and let them know that then at the meeting, you want them to come armed and ready to discuss their conclusion.  And so, this idea that we move at different speeds really becomes an aspect of decision-making that we have not figured out a solution for until these problem-solver profiles have really alerted us, that because different people optimise for different things and because the thinker wants to be thorough and wants to be cautious, we can engage better across these pieces of intellectual difference if we can allow each person what they need to be able to arrive for decision-making.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I almost feel like that's a bit of team therapy there!  You're running it back through your head and thinking, "Hmm, I hope that Helen and I are a good combination".  But at times, with what you described there, I wonder what we feel like when we come together for people in our teams.  And I think that's something we're still figuring out, like when are we better together; sometimes is it better for only one of us to be there?  But as you just described, it can be quite overwhelming.  I think we sometimes get described as a bit relentless, because you can imagine if you get an adventurer and a visionary together, and then someone's like, "What we want to do is slow down and think something through", it takes a lot of bravery, I think, to be able to say that, particularly I think you do always have to recognise power dynamics in organisations and really think about, "Well, if you've got a dominant person in an organisation who also has a lot of power, whatever that might look like, then actually people might feel like that way is the right way".  And that's always the thing I get worried about, people thinking one is better than the other.

Cheryl Einhorn: So, the power dynamic is another interesting aspect of the problem-solver profiles.  Using the language of them gives us some cover and some distance to not make it personal.  You're able to say, "Because I'm a detective, I really want to go along with what you're saying, I hear you, but I really want to make sure that I can substantiate it with facts".  So, if you can use the language, you can take it away from a power dynamic, you can talk about the process, and I do think organisations want to make decisions that are going to succeed.  So, if you can use the language, you can build some space and some distance to explain what your needs are in a way that doesn't have to feel confrontational, and that can honour the boundaries of hierarchy and systems in a slightly different and hopefully more gratifying way.

Sarah Ellis: And one of the things I'm always really interested in, you've done a lot of work over the years in both problem-solving and decision-making, we've been talking about some of your most recent work today, what's the impact that you feel most proud of?  So, when people tell you perhaps about how they've used your work, or having read your book or listened to your podcast or seen you speak, what's the difference that you're hoping that you will be able to make when people use your work?

Cheryl Einhorn: Thank you for asking that.  I think that the biggest thing is that when people hear me talk about decision-making as a skill, and then I explain those skills to them in my AREA method, which is the acronym for my decision-making system, or in these problem-solver profiles, they feel like they can become better decision-makers, and that means that they can not only get closer to their goals, but they have a better chance at feeling like they have the agency to reach their dreams.

Sarah Ellis: That's so nice.  I think it's just always a nice question, because you're helping so many people in different ways.  It's always nice to go, "Oh, what's the difference that we're making?"  And as we come to the end of today's conversation, we ask all of our experts the same question to finish with which is, what's a piece of career advice that you would like to share with our listeners?  So, this might be just a bit of advice that's really helped you in your career, that someone else has shared with you, or just some words of wisdom that you've heard recently that have really stuck with you.  So, just finishing off with the best piece of career advice.

Cheryl Einhorn: Terrific, so I know you guys like to get quotes and at the end of one of your books, you have all these lovely quotes that you've collected from people.  So, I thought about that in anticipation of this.  And when I was a little girl struggling with something, my dad came in to my room and he told me a quote from Henry Ford which is, "If you think you can or you think you can't, you're absolutely right".  So, this idea of having a mindset where you can solve problems and you can move forward in the world well is this beautiful idea that you can move into your good future, you can have good relationships and that there is a lot out there for you to make of yourself in the world.

Sarah Ellis: I think that's a pretty good place to finish.  So, Cheryl, thank you so much for joining us today on the Squiggly Careers podcast. 

I've really enjoyed the opportunity to dive a bit deeper into the work that you've done and the difference that you're making. Thanks for listening to my conversation with Cheryl today.  I hope it lived up to my promise at the start of the episode of being useful, whatever kind of problem you might be solving at the moment.  If you have any experts you'd really like us to ask to come on the Squiggly Careers podcast, please let us know; we always love to hear your ideas and suggestions.  Our email is helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  Otherwise, that's everything for this week and back with you again soon.  Bye for now.