Eloquent Silence.
The power of preserving silence is the very first requisite to all who wish to shine, or even please in discourse; and those who cannot preserve it, have really no business to speak. … The silence that, without any deferential air, listens with polite attention, is more flattering than compliments, and more frequently broken for the purpose of encouraging others to speak, than to display the listener’s own powers. This is the really eloquent silence. It requires great genius—more perhaps than speaking—and few are gifted with the talent.
Arthur Martine
Monks observe two types of silences:
Day silence - between 8am and 8pm when they avoid frivolous conversation.
The Great Silence - between 8pm and 8am when they avoid all conversation.
Monks are listening to hear God.
Not because He rarely speaks - because He’s always speaking.
But we don’t hear because we’re not listening.
With all the training in leadership - who is teaching us the ‘gifted talent’ of silence?
Head Think to Gut Feel.
The key thing for young coaches is to work out what their decision-making process is, back it in, and probably have some guidelines in place around why they make the decisions.
As they progress through and see a lot of those situations unfold, decision-making will become a bit more instinctive for them. It becomes a lot more gut feel.
Expert coaches have seen so many things time and time again, they will instinctively react and say, 'I know this works; we can do this'.
An example might be a coach going into his first Grand Final not sure how to address the media and what to put out and what to hold back.
Mick Malthouse, meanwhile, knows clearly what he's going to say and how he's going to address all those press conferences he's going to face.
You can only gain that experience over time, so it's good to have some guidelines in place.
- John Worsfold, AFL Captain, Premiership Player and Coach
Good decision making is a deliberate process of inquiry that advances you towards where you want to be.
Over time, that deliberate process moves from your head think to your gut feel, freeing space in your head for more deliberation. And so on.
You can’t explain your gut decision but you can explain your process that formed it.
What Is This Post About?
Our ancestors who were not curious who did not go looking over the hill to see what was on the other side disappeared. They were not successful. Tribes that were curious out competed them.
Bill Nye
Good Decision Making in two words:
Is This Who
Sometimes it helps to ask, “Is this who I want to be?”
- Merlin Mann
A good decision is one that advances us to towards where we want to be.
A good decision, therefore, is a chance to change into who we want to be.
We Are All Alice.
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
We are all Alice.
No Personal Cause to Argue
It was my impression that O'Donnell had the greatest influence in shaping the President's most important decisions. He was able to set aside his own prejudices against individuals and his own ideological commitments …. and appraise the alternatives with total objectivity. It was impossible to categorize O'Donnell, as White House observers did with other staff members, as either a "hawk" or a "dove" on foreign policy …. JFK gave extra weight to O'Donnell's opinions because he knew he had no personal cause to argue. Ken had only one criterion: Will this action help or hurt the President? And that, for O'Donnell, was another way of asking: Will it help or hurt the country?
- Pierre Salinger, Press Secretary to President Kennedy on Kenny O’Donnell, assistant and friend to the President
Those of us who advise decision makers must know their Widget.
A Leader's Decision Making Says: Come With Me!
“ Many in the design community understand that design must convey the essence of a device’s operation; the way it works; the possible actions that can be taken; and, through feedback, just what it is doing at any particular moment. Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
Let’s substitute ‘decision’ for ‘design’ and ‘leader’ for ‘device’ and see what we get.
A decision must convey the essence of a leader’s intent; the way she works; the possible actions that can be taken; and, through feedback, just what the leader is wanting at any particular moment. Decision making is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the leader is communicating.
Let’s rewrite this further.
A leader’s decision making communicates what she knows we are capable of doing.
Indeed, what defines her as a Leader as distinct from a boss is because she knows we have the capacity to do, and be, and go - what, and who, and where, but for her - we would not.
A Conscious Reflection
Ethics is the explicit, philosophical reflection on moral beliefs and practices. The difference between ethics and morality is similar to the difference between musicology and music. Ethics is a conscious stepping back and reflecting on morality, just as musicology is a conscious reflection on music.
When we step back to allow ourselves to indulge and wallow in our reflexive, emotional response to events forcing a decision, we are at our most human.
We are not Boss or Manager or Decider. We are, by stepping away, stepping into our humanity. Which means we are at our most connected to our neighbour. We are We.
What better place to reflect on morality? Elbow to elbow with those who our decision may affect?
If we skip Step 1, we remain aloof, distant, disconnected, arrogant, selfish. Me.
If we are to decide and act ethically, we must Step Back.
Distance.
Psychologist Yaacov Trope argues that psychological distance may be one of the single most important steps you can take to improve thinking and decision-making.
Step 1: Step Back.
We step back each time we move to the next step in our decision making process.
Stepping back can be literal (pushing our chair back during a meeting, leaving the office, going for a walk) or temporal (pausing for one second, one hour, one day …).
It can be social (spending time alone).
It can be taking a different point of view.
Each tine we step back - we liberate ourselves from the limits of that moment.
Revealing previously hidden pathways.
The Secret
The secret to mastering your time is to systematically focus on importance and suppress urgency. Oliver Emberton
The Five Steps (or your preferred steps) to a good decision is a System.
Each step focusses us on one task.
Step 1: Step Back.
Step 2: Define the Issue.
Step 3: Assess the Information
Step 4: … what? … you’ve what? … oh.
Problem solved.
Amused
He finds that throughout history the cutting edge of innovation lies wherever people are working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.
Review of Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World, by Steven Johnson
Step Back.
Have a laugh. An ironic one. A dark one. A ‘woe is me!’ victim moan.
Give yourself time to see the joke. The absurdity. The farce. The humour.
Feel the seriousness lift from your shoulders.
Ring or email or text a mate. Share the mirth. Mock the thing. Mock yourself. Engage in some irreverent banter. Black humour. Amuse yourself. Feel the mischief.
Then, armed with an innovative mindset - Step 2.
We Can Be Heroes
Decision making wire diagrams and hierarchies have their place. They plot out the ‘if this, then that’ of decisions.
Our brains prefer stories. Preferably ones with us in them. Preferably ones with us as the main character. Preferably ones with us as the Hero.
The Five Steps to a Good Decision allow us to hear/tell a story.
Our brains love stories.
Peak Stupidity
'Attention and awareness are deep interior human capacities that never get any training or air time. What gets all the attention is thinking.
So when you begin to cultivate intimacy with these other capacities it actually balances out our remarkable capacity for thinking and also for imagination and creativity.
A lot of the creativity comes out of the stillness of awareness in not knowing.
So rather than just keeping tabs on what we know, it's really helpful to be aware of how much we don't know. And when we know what we don't know then that's the cutting edge upon which all science unfolds.'
John Cabot Zen
Step 1 to the Five Steps to Good Decision Making: Step Back.
At the moment we’re smacked in the face with information demanding a response. A Decision. We are at Peak Ignorance. We Don’t Know.
Yet what’s our usual response?
To respond. To Decide. To Act.
An Impulse, not a Decision.
Why would anyone make a decision at Peak Stupidity?
Pause.
The Science of Good Decision Making unfolds when we Step Back and allow ourselves to watch ourselves crumple into an emotional bean bag and be ourselves.
And mould the soft cushion into the Cutting Edge of a Good Decision.
Studies Have Shown That
Judges who take breaks are more likely to rule on the merits of a case, than maintain the status quo. The longer the judge sits, the less rulings they make in favour of an application by a defendant, until it falls to zero.
The theory is that the mental grind reduces the judge’s capacity for nuance. The break, mentally replenishes the judge. A snack may also have glucose benefits.
Zen Master of Optimism
When someone gives you an idea, try to wait just 24 seconds before criticizing it. If you can do that, wait 24 minutes. Then if you become a Zen master of optimism, you could wait a day, and spend that time thinking about why something actually might work.
If new information simply hammers in our bias - what’s the point of listening?
What’s the point of anyone giving it?
What’s the point of anything?
Pause and silently count 24 seconds.
That’s the sound of Optimism.
Of Life.
A Problem Not of His Making
Kevin gave frank, independent and impartial legal advice at the highest level. There were times when his advice was frozen out. If you’re going to do something that is questionable, the last thing you will do is ask someone who will tell you so. Kevin would always give that advice. In order to avoid that advice, his was not sought, or it was sought from people who will tell them what they wanted to hear.
Kevin didn’t complain. He was just there to pick up the pieces of a problem not of his making.
The Honourable Chief Justice of the WA Supreme Court Peter Quinlan eulogising His Honour Kevin Parker, AC RFD KC
Detach
One of the best skills a person can have to overcome these problems is to be able to detach. To take a step back.
Jocko Willink, former US Navy Seal
Would you expect the words ‘step back’ to come from the lips of an elite special forces operator trained to sprint into danger?
It’s not inconsistent.
Detaching. Stepping back. Thinking.
Often takes courage.
Generosity.
Intelligence.
Wisdom.
The anxious, frightened, selfish, simplistic, shallow positional power boss is often decisive. Bam, bam, bam. Dispose of that complex issue. Postpone the consequences. Deflect them and any fallout onto someone else. Days or years later. Or never.
All the while, the aspiring leaders look on. Learn that leadership is being decisive.
Listen
Vacuuming with noise cancelling earphones when a client rang.
I switched off the vacuum and took the call.
The client began explaining the background to her question. After a minute with vacuum in one hand and phone in the other, I muted my microphone, pocketed my phone, and resumed vacuuming; client-focussed with a muffled whine background.
The client talked without pause for about five minutes. Floorboards grew cleaner.
She finished. I paused, waited a few seconds to be sure she was done, took a second or two to reach into my pocket, pull out my phone and unmute my microphone.
I was about to begin my advice when she said:
‘You are such an attentive listener.’
Subsidiarity
"It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and/or industry."
Pope Pius XI
Subsidiarity is the social justice principle that presumes each of us is capable of making decisions that stretch us towards our potential.
A ‘higher authority’ may only intervene to assist us to overcome an obstacle that prevents them from advancing towards their potential.
The ‘higher authority’ must then withdraw.
Parent to child. Family to parent. Community to family. Society to community. Government to society.
The elegance of Subsidiarity and its application towards personal growth depends on two things:
Each person taking responsibility for advancing towards where we want to be, and
The higher authority only intervening when lower entity capabity is exhausted AND withdrawing afterwards.
The more we fail to take personal responsibility for our decisions and their consequences, the more higher authorities will intrude into our lives.
Once they have intruded, higher authorities almost always weaken our personal agency, meaning the higher authority has an excuse for remaining, and eventually becoming permanent and relied upon.
Each time I look to ‘the boss’ or ‘the government’ to address my personal, family, community, or society deficits, I invite the boss and the government into my decision making, and the more my decision making muscles atrophy.
We only identify our need for the help from a higher authority if we attempt to lift the weight of a decision. With each decision rep, we increase our decision muscle.
The stronger we are at making decisions, the more capacity we build to look outwards for opportunities to serve others.
By advancing towards where we want to be - we invite others to accompany us on the journey.