Ep50 The Value of Diversity in Decision Making

The ability for senior leaders and C-Suite leaders to make decisions has been reported to be the single most important characteristic of success for those leaders. As a result, for the past 20 years the Zircon Psychologists have been researching decision making behaviours to understand how leaders make decisions and how leaders, teams and businesses can capitalise on the cognitive diversity of the team to be more innovative, efficient and decisive. In this episode Caitlin Cooper interviews Dr Amanda Potter to understand this research and draws out the topics of resilience, psychological safety, bias and belief when discussing decisiveness in leaders.

The Chief Psychology Officer episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/
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To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://zircon-mc.co.uk/zircon-white-papers.php
For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform as mentioned in this podcast please contact Hello@BeTalent.com

Timestamps

The Value of Diversity in Decision Making

·       00:00 – Introduction to Decision Making

·       01:04 – I definitely like Italian food.

·       01:45 – Don’t leave work without making a decision…

·       02:53 – The 90’s were pretty wild

·       04:09 – Leaders know what they want

·       05:08 – Cognitive Diversity revisited

·       06:30 – Right or wrong are just words; what matters is what you do.

I just can’t decide!

·       07:47 – We have form

·       08:28 – The seeds of our work

·       09:53 – The 10 commandments (of decision making)

·       11:31 – It really depends…

·       12:09 – Showing real style

·       13:03 – Personal reference

·       14:52 – Thinking first, deciding later

·       16:26 – Belief Scale

Sorry what was that again?

·       17:07 – What can teams do to better their decision making?

·       19:50 – Learning from failure and recognising our flaws

·       21:26 – It’s a cultural thing…

·       23:38 – Psychological Safety revisited

·       24:19 – I’m a bit biased, but my decision to include this is final!

·       25:37 – Fundamental Attribution Error

·       26:41 – The effect of Diversity

·       28:22 – Reverse mentorship: the rise of the Shadow Boards

Solidification

·       29:56 – Neuroscience!

·       31:58 – You’re not delaying on purpose, are you?

·       33:38 – A bit of fresh air helps clear the head

·       34:49 – Let them eat… chicken & bananas?...

·       35:51 – The Mozart effect

·       36:24 – I’ve made my decision.

·       36:55 – The end.

Episodes are available here https://www.thecpo.co.uk/

To follow Zircon on LinkedIn and to be first to hear about podcasts, publications and news, please like and follow us: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betalent-by-zircon/

To access the research white papers mentioned in this and other podcasts, please go to: https://www.betalent.com/research

For more information about the BeTalent suite of tools and platform please contact: Hello@BeTalent.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Good morning or afternoon, and welcome to this episode of the Chief Psychology Officer with Dr. Amanda Potter, chartered psychologist, and I'm Caitlin. Hello, Amanda.

Dr Amanda Potter: 0:15

Hi, Caitlin. Nice to speak to you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Nice to speak to you too, and welcome to this episode. I'm actually really curious about this one because it's all about decision making. For anyone who knows me, both inside work and outside of work, decision making hasn't always been my strength, let's just say. It's been a bit of a pain point. The best example to sum that up, really, is if you ever go out for a meal with me out for dinner, then I do really struggle to choose what I want from the menu. So naturally, anything I can learn today that can help me overcome that, then that would be very appreciated.

Dr Amanda Potter: 0:44

Well, that's great. Funny enough, I do think you're good at choosing Italian food because you actually introduced me to a pasta that I'd never had before. Which one is Cachio Pepe? Caccio. Caccio Pepe. Cachio. Oh, don't you make me hungry? Which is delicious. Well, we do. But anyway, yes, so you can be decisive sometimes, apparently, in a restaurant, but maybe not others. Yeah, I'm someone who is quite decisive, so quite different to you, almost to the other end of the scale, almost impulsive. So I'm a really quick decision maker and I have to rein it in quite a lot. I almost make decisions before I've even thought about it. I know what the answer's going to be. So really understanding the process of decision making is incredibly helpful in order to understand that not everybody's like me and highly decisive, and that actually different people have different paces and ways to approach decision making. So I hope the listeners like and enjoy and find this podcast useful.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38

Yeah, I think it'd be very nice to explore kind of the differences around decision making. But before we kind of dive a bit more into that, how did it all start? Why the focus on decision making? We obviously do a lot within our business.

Dr Amanda Potter: 1:49

It started nearly two decades ago. How crazy is that? And we were working with one of our big global clients at the time, American Express, and they invited us through our partnership with Rachel Richardson and Craig Wyman and Sarah Barrick Associate. Shout out to three long-term friends and colleagues who I've worked with since that time. They invited us to work with them in their call center operations around the world. So literally in the most extreme locations of the world, how fantastic it was. And the reason they wanted us to work with them is they wanted us to help them understand how their call center operatives, who look after their centurion black card customers, make decisions and how the centurion card call center operatives actually make decisions themselves. So we embarked in a big piece of research back then, I think it was about 2003, so literally two decades ago, looking at how people make decisions and the process of decision making. And that really started the journey of looking at and fully understanding the decision-making process.

SPEAKER_01: 2:53

So it sounded like American Express started that curiosity to understand potentially how people make decisions, but also whether or not there's a right or wrong way to make and to influence other people to make decisions. Does that sound familiar?

Dr Amanda Potter: 3:06

Yeah, that's exactly it. I suppose my interest in it goes even further back, goes back to there was a company called Whitehead Man that was acquired by Cornferry, and Dr. Rob Irving was the chief assessment psychologist in that organization. And that was my first ever consulting gig, which was back in the mid-90s. I was doing my degree at university and doing my master's, and it was my first ever contract work as an associate working for them doing assessment work. And they used to use the Sweeney decision profiler as part of their assessment toolkit, all of those sort of 25, nearly 30 years ago. I've never seen anything else like it. I don't know if that product even exists now. But that was when it was really interesting to me because they used personality questionnaires back then as well. But the Sweeney decision profiler was specifically looking at how people make decisions. And that's really where I've spent my time over the last couple of decades, really trying to understand how people make decisions, why they make decisions, and how they can improve that decision-making process.

SPEAKER_01: 4:08

I feel like I need to brush up now on the history of these decision-making tools. But what I guess I find interesting is how decisiveness can impact someone's career. And actually, we were discussing before around there's research from HBR which suggests that decisive people are 12 times more likely to be described as effective CEOs.

Dr Amanda Potter: 4:28

I know that's incredible, isn't it? And I've read that research too. And we also talk about the fact that decisiveness is the most important characteristic for senior leaders and C-suite leaders. It's so much more engaging to work with a leader who is decisive than a leader who is a procrastinator. So I agree that it's so interesting to try and understand why some people err on the side of caution and hold back from making the decision. And other people like myself jump in feet first without necessarily even thinking about the decision or the implications. Cognitive diversity really comes into play here. We talk about cognitive diversity on our strengths podcasts and on our inclusion podcasts. But actually, within a leadership team, what we want is a cognitively diverse team of people who make decisions in different ways so that there isn't any homogeneity or any risk in that team, and so that they challenge each other and they approach that decision in different ways. That's what I'd really like us to cover in this podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 5:28

Yeah, I think the cognitive diversity is definitely interesting because from personal experience of being a non-decisive, I really appreciate working with someone who is decisive, like yourself. But at the same time, I can also relate to working with or for leaders, let's say, who maybe are not so decisive and can see what implications that has.

Dr Amanda Potter: 5:47

Well, I'm glad you like working with me. Thank goodness, Caitlin. That's great news because otherwise that would be really upsetting. But I can be almost too decisive to the point of being impulsive because it is an overused strength. In fact, decisive is my number one strength. And I'm shocked to say that number two is competitive. So if you put those two strengths together, it's really gives you an idea of how I approach problems and how I approach situations, both in my personal and in my professional life. But I do agree, working with a decisive leader or colleague is much better than an indecisive one, even if the decision isn't the right one. At least you know what you're doing, at least you know what you're progressing or moving towards, and at least they're prepared to make a decision.

SPEAKER_01: 6:29

I guess it's probably important to point out as well that maybe there isn't necessarily the just the right or wrong way to make decisions, but it's about keeping in check with how you make your decision and whether you underuse or overuse it, and I guess the impact that has in your role. And so decision making and decisiveness is one part of it. So we need to understand each of the facets within decision making, maybe not just whether someone is completely prepared to or not prepared to make that decision.

Dr Amanda Potter: 6:57

That's a really good point because you would expect, with my decision profile being very fast and being very decisive, that I'd also be someone who is risk taking or somebody who moves towards risky gains. But actually the opposite is true. I move away from risky gains, I'm risk averse. So I'm fast but risk averse. So my decision making is often very swift and impulsive, but it's to avoid risk and to make sure that we don't put our business in any position or threat. And so where Sarah is the risk taker and she's the one who is courageous and brave, I'm the scared cat. And so it's much more complex than it potentially appears on the surface. And that's one of the things that really surprised me getting into the research around decision making is that it isn't a linear concept or a singular concept. There's many facets to it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:47

And also sounds complementary as well in terms of you there talking about your approach to risk taking or non-risk taking, and then Sarah's and how different approaches can complement each other. But I guess to summarize, it's a super important topic. And I think we could argue that everyone on the planet can relate to. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel as though everyone on the planet needs to take or make some sort of decisions in life. But you've mentioned over the last couple of decades, we've really been thinking about this topic. And as a company, for 20 years, we've published a product, e-talent decision, which was actually BPS verified in 2022, so last year. We've also published white papers on the topic of effective decision making. And of course, we're talking about it right now on this podcast. So let's go back to the model of decision making. Could you please talk us through what was the thinking behind it and how was it created?

Dr Amanda Potter: 8:37

When we looked at the research, the goal was really trying to identify a simple way of assessing people's decision-making preferences. So not their skill or their ability or even the quality of the decision making, but very much how they approach that decision making. So our B Talent decision model is a result of all of that research over those decades. And in fact, whilst the product is a result of 20 years worth of research, actually it's been around for the last 10, hasn't it? And been verified for the last one. So it took a huge amount of work to get it across the line with the BPS. So one of the things I'm being the most proud of, to be honest. And as a result, we identified 10 core styles of decision making. And as you said earlier, it's good to note that there's no right or wrong way of making decisions. You and I approach decisions completely differently. And again, we completely make decisions differently to Sarah, but that's really helpful because we work on projects together and manage clients together, and therefore we challenge each other's thinking. So that cognitive diversity around decision making is really helpful because we balance out each other's speed, our need for evidence, our risk appetite, and hopefully we provide a better service as a result to our customers.

SPEAKER_01: 9:53

You mentioned there that there are 10 facets or we call 10 scales. Could you please walk us through, well, I guess briefly what those 10 are?

Dr Amanda Potter: 10:01

I won't go through them all in detail because nobody really wants a list, but the ten really focus on how you make decisions, not whether they are the right ones. So they're all about how you approach decisions, the extent to which you deliberate, how much accountability you take, whether you're fact or intuition based, and whether you feel like you're in control of the outcomes. They also look at the speed, they look at the extent to which you consult with others or work independently, your thought process. So do you do the thinking before or after the decision's made? Do you believe in your decision and how risky are you? Do you move towards or move away from risk? I move away, for example. I get a score of one on the risk scale. You can relate. I'm the same. So we're similar on that one. Yeah. Hence the same pastor, which I now order as well. Making me hungry again. So is there anything else you can tell us about how the model works? So each of those 10 are scored on a 10-point scale, so a standard 10 scale for those of you who understand psychometrics. The scales are independent of each other because we did an orthogonal rotation on factor analysis. What will happen is in reality, if you complete one of our questionnaires, what you might find is you get high and low scores on each of the different scales. And that then starts to build a picture of how you might approach decision making, depending on how those high scores and those low scores come together and tell the story about your style and your preference for decision making. But what's interesting is very often, because we've used this so often with senior leaders, someone will say to me, but it really depends on the situation. It really varies. Some days I could be impulsive, other days I'm really calculated, or some days I'm really evidence-based and objective, and other days I'm really intuitive and I use my gut. It depends on the situation. That could be the case for some people, because Caitlin, what we find with this is that people are very different. Some people are agile and some people have a very fixed style of decision making. And the questionnaire helps us to understand how agile somebody is and how fixed they are.

SPEAKER_01: 12:08

Yeah. So to build on your point there around the high and the low scores and how agile one may be, when someone receives their report, I think the really insightful thing that someone will first go to and be drawn to is looking at their chart and seeing what we call do they have primary styles? So those are the scores of one and two or nine and ten. So those are kind of the clear, distinct and even unwavering styles. You then have secondary styles. So those would be scores of three and four and seven and eight. They're more situational and context dependent. And then lastly, going back to what you said about the agile styles. So that's where you're kind of down the middle and showing someone would show an ability potentially to adapt to different contexts and situations with different styles that suit that given challenge. Or alternatively, maybe they're a bit indecisive and they couldn't quite decide where they were or how they respond when they were completing the questionnaire.

Dr Amanda Potter: 13:03

So let's just put this into an example for people, shall we? I've mentioned that I'm a one on risk, I'm also a one on planned, and I'm also someone who is quite open-minded and I'm also a high score on pace. So I have four primary decision styles because they're on the outskirts of the normal distribution. So they're either one and two or nine and ten. So I'm risk avoidant, I'm planned, I'm a fast decision maker, but I'm open-minded, so I'm prepared to change my mind once the decision's made. So that means I've got clear style decision making because of those extreme scores, which also means that I'm probably quite fixed in that style of decision making. I'm unlikely to change my style of decision making in those four aspects. Whereas somebody who gets scores that are more towards the center of the decision profile, in other words, the five and six, which is agile or even closer to that, which are the four and the seven, what that means is it's much more situational for them when they make their decisions. So it could be in one situation they could be open-minded, and in another situation closed. In some situations, they might feel like they've got internal locus of control and they can control outcomes. In other situations, they might think that they've got external locus of control and they can't control outcomes. And we often find that people who answer the questionnaire who really struggle and don't enjoy the process of answering it, who get frustrated with it, often come out with quite average scores. And that's because they spent their whole time flipping and flapping from one situation to another, thinking, well, and sometimes I do it like this and sometimes I do it like that. So they can really struggle answering the questionnaire. Just how they've answered it gives us such a great insight into their decision preference. It's a really great starting point for discussion.

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

That starting point for discussion bit is probably what I would echo in terms of people who really do like having the language to start exploring the situations where they have made a decision or not made a decision in a certain way. In terms of profiles, I'd say yours was quite different to mine, although we're both risk averse. Mine would be again, I've got quite a few primaries. So I'm on the cautious side. I am more measured in my pace and questioning. And again, the other one was risk averse. So I don't know what that tells you about me, Amanda.

Dr Amanda Potter: 15:22

It does suggest that you're someone who prefers to do the thinking before the decision's made. Whereas for me, I do the thinking after the decision's made. I can feel very uncomfortable with a decision unmade. Whereas your profile suggests that you're much more comfortable sitting in that situation of having not made a decision. And what's really interesting about the neuroscience is that our brains are looking for simplicity. They look for patterns and routine and look to avoid any risk or uncertainty. So I'm very much motivated to remove that risk and uncertainty. Whereas you're much more comfortable to sit in that incomplete situation whilst you're risk avoidant, you're more prepared to sit with the discomfort of having not made the decision. I'm very uncomfortable with not having made the decision. So that's the real difference I see between the two of us.

SPEAKER_01: 16:10

Yeah, I definitely feel like if I've rushed too quickly to make the decision, I feel much more uncomfortable afterwards thinking, oh my gosh, was that the right one? Have I done the right thing? So I'd much prefer to take time to kind of seek out reassurance for the decision that's potentially going to be made.

Dr Amanda Potter: 16:25

And that's down to the belief scale. So people who are high on belief don't need that reassurance. They believed in their decision, they believe in their ability to make good decisions. Ironically, my belief is reasonably high, whereas your belief is quite a lot lower than mine. That's why I don't feel like I need to question or worry about it. That's why you do your thinking ahead of time because you don't want to be in that position questioning or seeking reassurance after the decision has been made.

SPEAKER_01: 16:50

And you know what? It goes again back to that cognitive diversity piece and how everyone's different and how important it is because every team needs a variety of decision profiles in order to create conversation, as you said earlier, create debate, and to help with psychological safety. So, what's your advice around how our listeners can enhance their ability to make decisions, both personally for themselves, but also when working in a team?

Dr Amanda Potter: 17:16

I think both leaders, individuals, and also teams could do a number of things. They could start by increasing their awareness. So, what is my preferred style of decision making, for example? You can look up our research on decision styles. You can go to our white paper research, which is on our zirconmc.co.uk website on decision making, or you could even complete the questionnaire. Just come to us and ask for us and we can set you up. So, what is my preferred style of decision making? And how does that style differ from that of my colleagues? We've been talking quite a lot already about the difference between me, you, and Sarah, but then if we brought Andrea, our B Talent administrator and designer into the loop, then he's got a completely different style of decision making again, having worked with him for the last 10 years. The next question I would ask is how safe do I feel making decisions? Do I feel that I am psychologically safe? Can I make decisions independently? Do I feel like if I make a decision and it's the wrong decision that I will be victimized or told off in any way, do I own the outcome and am I encouraged to contribute to any outcome? And the last one, which really does link to psychological safety, is am I prepared to fail? Is it okay to get it wrong? Or does it have to be 100% right? So there's so many questions that we could ask ourselves to really start to uncover decision making. And whilst it feels like we're going down a bit of a rabbit hole here, Caitlin, just talking about decision making, we make hundreds of decisions every day, as we said in our previous podcast, which was one of our earliest ones. And it's one of the most important things that we can do in our life is to make good, effective decisions. We're just researching sunk costs, aren't we, for a new podcast that we're going to be recording in a couple of months. And that's all about throwing good money after bad and making bad decisions. And if I look at my friends from school, my friends from university over the years and look at their incredible careers and incredible lives that they've built for themselves, that's all down to good decision making. And I think that if we were a bit more conscious about our decision making, then we're going to put ourselves in a much better position for success for the future. However, most of the time we make decisions quite subconsciously. We don't realise that there's a process for making them, and therefore we don't necessarily put ourselves in the best position for that decision-making process. It's not until we make life decisions around our career or our family, those significant ones, that we start to really apply ourselves and think about the decision. Most of the time we do it quite instinctively.

SPEAKER_01: 19:50

I agree, you know, it's really important to make those effective decisions. And in a moment we can look into what are the things that come to mind in terms of what inhibits effective. Decision making within organizations. But I just wanted to touch upon the point that actually it might be the case that throughout our life and throughout our career that we don't necessarily end up making the best decision. And actually, what's the best approach, in your opinion, for organizations in terms of creating a climate around preparing to fail and being okay, maybe when it wasn't the best decision?

Dr Amanda Potter: 20:23

I think you've answered the question yourself, actually. Psychological safety, yes. Inclusion, yes. Cognitive diversity, absolutely. It's also about acknowledging and recognizing bias. Because if you think about the biases of sunk cost fallacy, cognitive dissonance, and all the things that drive us towards making quite bad decisions. I think if we were more knowledgeable and aware of these biases in the workplace, we would be more prepared to challenge our own thinking and our own decision making. But very often we don't realize we are falling into a bias of dissonance. And when there's a bias of dissonance, what happens is we try to go with the safer bet or the most consistent bet, or if there's sunk cost, we prefer to go with the past rather than the future. We stick with what we know rather than going with a new idea. Each of these different biases inhibit our ability to make good, objective, rational, logical decisions, but we don't talk enough about bias in a workplace.

SPEAKER_01: 21:22

Yeah.

Dr Amanda Potter: 21:23

And we don't think about the implications of it enough.

SPEAKER_01: 21:25

Obviously, that's one thing that you've mentioned around inhibiting effective decision making. What are the other things that come to mind when we think about this topic?

Dr Amanda Potter: 21:33

I would really reflect on that in terms of culture. There's three cultures that I've seen from client organizations that have been real inhibitors or detractors from decision making. And given the fact that decisiveness is one of the most important things for senior leaders, we want to be clear about the cultures that inhibit and identify how we can create much more enabling decisive cultures. So the three cultures that are the most inhibiting are consensus-driven culture, which is pretty obvious. So reluctance to openly disagree can really inhibit decision making. And it's often a result of fear and avoidance and risk avoidance. Often when our clients have a really strong purpose or a real need to please, means that people are less likely or less comfortable to speak up. Another one is a top-down tell culture, which is quite autocratic, quite parent-child. These environments can work very well, of course, in a crisis situation because it's all about command and control, but it can lead to disengagement, lower levels of motivation, lower levels of accountability and ownership down the path of the organization, and it can result in highly impaired decision-making and a lack of collaboration. And then the last one is a very stressed or anxious culture where an individual is constantly in that fight or flight loop, their amygdala is on high alert, the prefrontal cortex is inhibited, and this has a significant impact on a person's decision-making capability because of the inhibition of the prefrontal cortex. And our research has found that people who are feeling confident and self-assured are much more likely to make decisions in a much more reflective, objective, assured way. So they're more confident in their ability to make decisions. They're also more likely to have internal locus of control. So, in other words, we need to avoid creating environments that are very consensus-driven, very top-down, tell autocratic, or stressed, anxious, demanding cultures so that people feel like they can take accountability and ownership for their decision making.

SPEAKER_01: 23:38

All of that, again, it comes back to psychological safety, really, doesn't it? And how psychological safety really can impact decisiveness.

Dr Amanda Potter: 23:46

Completely, because bold, open-minded decision makers contribute to an environment where people feel confident to be courageous. And then people who approach decisions with an internal locus of control and feel they can control their environment and speak up creates an environment where people will speak up and share ideas, and there's real clarity of purpose. There's so many links between decision making and actual psychological safety. From a scientific perspective, we've actually looked at the data and looked at the links, and there's some great data and great links between the two.

SPEAKER_01: 24:20

And actually, you've just made me think back to a couple of minutes ago when you were talking all about biases. And I thought it might be nice to just pick back up on that and actually explain some of the biases that you believe inhibit decision making.

Dr Amanda Potter: 24:32

That's really interesting because I was talking about cognitive dissonance and sunk cost, and I think they're actually decision-making biases, but actually, even before we get to the position where biases have a direct impact on decision making, and like sunk cost and cognitive dissonance. Actually, there's other biases that impact our belief and our ability to even approach decision making in a rational and logical way. And some of those could be imposter syndrome, perfectionism bias, status quo bias, functional stupidity, fundamental attribution error, or bystander effect. So there's loads that potentially have a negative impact on the quality of our decisions and our outcomes. And we can go through a few of those if you think that's a good thing to do, Caitlin.

SPEAKER_01: 25:17

Well, I think some of those words people are probably quite familiar with around imposter syndrome or imposter moments. I think probably quite a few people can relate to that. Also the perfectionism bias, again, I think that's probably one that a lot of people can relate to. And again, that also goes back to the topic of procrastination, which is a whole topic in itself when it comes to decision making. I wonder if maybe you could explain a little bit more around the fundamental attribution error.

Dr Amanda Potter: 25:42

So a fundamental attribution error is the tendency to attribute another person's behavior to their internal qualities rather than the situation. This can lead to negative decisions about an individual because you might make a judgment about a situation or an individual on the basis of an observation about them and think that that's totally down to them and not take into account the context that they're in at all. So, this environment, for example, selling a house, it's incredibly hard to sell a house at the moment. So we might make a judgment about the ability of an estate agent to actually support somebody with the sale of that house, or if you're selling a car, the sale of a car, but actually you're not taking into context at all the environment and the situation, the economy in which that person's working. And so it's an overjudgment, if you like, of that individual and that situation and context.

SPEAKER_01: 26:35

It's almost about taking that step back and looking at the bigger picture rather than kind of honing in. Absolutely. So there are lots of different ones then, again, that I think a lot of people can relate to. But going back to the idea of diversity, what is the research saying in terms of the effect diversity can have on decision making?

Dr Amanda Potter: 26:53

We have looked at different diversity characteristics. So we've looked at age, gender, longevity, ethnic origin, and the impact on decision making. And the interesting thing is that whilst there are gender differences, women are more likely to be questioning, spontaneous, cautious, risk-averse, and men are more likely to be assured, bold, risk-seeking, and open-minded. The majority of the differences actually are around age. There are more significant differences in people who come from older and younger generations. So under 45 and over 45 was our cutoff. And what we found is that the older generations are more likely to be assured, believe in their ability to influence outcomes, so internal leckers of control, they're more planned, they're bold, and they're interestingly more intuitive. So they believe in their gut much more than people who are younger. Whereas the younger generations are much more cautious, objective, reflective, wanting to try and get the right answer. Whereas the older generations believe that they are able to identify that right answer more readily. So cognitive diversity comes from bringing people who are demographically diverse together and making sure that population includes people who are truly different from one another, both in terms of their identity, so their age, gender, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, et cetera, and also how they approach their decisions.

SPEAKER_01: 28:22

You've actually made me think with that age differences example about the uptake in organizations around reverse mentorship and how historically in organizations, mentorship you might be led to believe would come from someone more senior and potentially older would be mentoring someone who is newest and younger within the business. But actually nowadays, the research out there saying that reverse mentorship and actually there's a lot to learn the other way around. And I've actually worked with organizations with senior leaders who have actually overtly told me their experience of reverse mentorship and how they love how their younger colleague has come in and really challenges their thinking. And this is a high potential employee who is telling me this. Yeah, I think great.

Dr Amanda Potter: 29:08

It's a really good point, actually. And the other one is shadow boards too. Shadow boards are when you bring a population of more junior colleagues who are often younger and haven't got as many years experience together to solve or to debate a problem that the existing board, who are often older, have greater years of longevity in the organization, are trying to solve so that you can compare the two solutions. And I think that's a really good point, actually, around cognitive diversity, and particularly within decision making, that we really do need to make sure that we bring together a very inclusive population of people who are prepared to ask questions and listen to one another, but who come from very different walks of life. And so therefore we'll have a very different perspective on the problem.

SPEAKER_01: 29:56

I am now really interested actually to hear a little bit more around what is actually going on inside us, inside our brains, with our chemicals when it comes to decision making. So could you please talk us through the neuroscience?

Dr Amanda Potter: 30:10

It's quite simple actually. Most people want to be more decisive, and most of us want to avoid being a procrastinator. So we need to have more self-control and we need to be motivated and we need to make sure that there's a clear reward mechanism for decision making from a neuroscientific perspective. And how we do this is through our dopamine system because high levels of dopamine can increase our goal focus and can reduce our levels of procrastination. Dopamine is the reward chemical, and problems can arise when we do not have enough dopamine and therefore procrastination can actually happen. Because low dopamine can be a real issue. The research has shown that we release a little bit of dopamine before making a decision, and it's the signal that we are going to get some pleasure from completing a task, and it impacts our ability to make that decision. So by increasing our dopamine levels, it can impact our decision making. But we don't want too much of it because otherwise it can reduce our levels of sensitivity. But we need enough that actually we're motivated and we're going to get that sense of reward. So people who are too low in terms of their dopamine and they don't necessarily write lists or think about the expected outcomes enough or think about the opportunity and what the reward might be, are not going to be signalling to the brain to be releasing that dopamine. So in other words, we need to get excited about the outcome in order to be motivated to make the decision. And if we do that, then we're going to release a bit of dopamine that really motivates us to do so. The other one, because there is another reason why people might hold back from making decisions, and that's something called epinephrine, which comes from the fight or flight response. And some people will procrastinate on purpose. They will hold back from making decisions so that they can perform better when they approach a deadline. And I worked with somebody back in my Towers Perrin days, Towers Perrin is now Willis Towers Watson. And she and I could not have been more different because I'm risk averse and planned. I used to finish my work two weeks before the deadline. And then literally the day before, the night before, overnight, she would stay in the building rewriting everything that I would have done and completed and I was quite happy with two weeks before. And she used to really enjoy the pressure. She used to say it made it more focused, more creative. And that was because she was tapping into her epinephrine system, which sets her up for fight or flight. And this translates into a desire for action. And the effect for her was incredibly strong. And it did actually create incredible outcomes, but it created so much pain for everybody around her. And she would be stuck and would find it really difficult to get started until the epinephrine system kicked in. For me, I was done and dusted two weeks before. The irritating thing is that she always improved everything that I built. Of course, she did, otherwise it wouldn't have happened. And she was an incredible consultant, an incredible thinker, but it took the epinephrine system to kick in for it to really work for her.

SPEAKER_01: 33:19

Yeah, I definitely can identify a few people that take that approach. And you know, when we speak about resilience, we talk about how a certain amount of pressure can really put your brain into that sweet spot. And actually, that pressure for some people happens very last minute. Isn't it interesting?

Dr Amanda Potter: 33:33

It's like the JP scale of the Myers Briggs, isn't it? So I'm very J and she was very P.

SPEAKER_01: 33:38

What are some of the tips and activities that people can do to overcome procrastination and some of the things that you were just mentioning?

Dr Amanda Potter: 33:45

So, as you know, Caitlin, being a Zircombi talent colleague, we love everything neuroscience. So if we take a neuroscientific perspective and look at how we can be more decisive and less procrastinating, some of the things we need to do is to improve our dopamine system so that we have the ability to access dopamine. And we can do that through an early morning walk because this can really unlock healthy habits throughout the day and it places you in a really good starting position and enables really good positive decision making. The other one could be super oxygenated breathing, which can help create adrenaline, which is often very good for focus. And unless of course you're prone to panic attacks, don't do super oxygenated breathing, but in order to get that adrenaline system running, you could do the breathing combined with the walking. That will really help with both the dopamine and the adrenaline system in order to get you both alert and also for the motivational reward transmitter around focus and attention. The other one is eating foods that are high in something called tyrosine. Tyrosine assists with releasing dopamine, and foods such as chicken, avocados, dairy, and bananas are very helpful. And caffeine can help if it's in small doses too. Some people can find caffeine triggers agitation and can interfere with sleep. Me personally, I can drink 12 cups of tea a day and I'm very happy, but I don't drink coffee, so I don't have that challenge. Sarah can drink Diet Coke all day. Oh my gosh, she's completely immune to caffeine. Whereas other people are very, very responsive to caffeine and the impact it has. And this links with the third one, which is getting a good night's sleep. If we get a good sleep, if we have sleep that's less broken, we're more alert and more focused the next day. And that means we're more likely to be able to be decisive because we can access the adrenaline again and the energy that we need in order to be decisive. So early morning walk, eating foods high into high resine and getting a good night's sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 35:51

Well, I think I particularly love the sleep one. I do think sleep is honestly the best medicine for everything. I also heard that listening to instrumental music releases dopamine, which I thought was quite interesting because I know quite a lot of people like to have music on in the background when they're working. Personally, I can't play any music that has lyrics because I get too distracted and just want to sing to it. So instrumental music is good to know that that actually has another benefit to it because it's releasing dopamine as I work. So that's probably a good one to try if anyone's interested. But yeah, thank you, Amanda. Unfortunately, that draws us to the end of the podcast. What I can say for sure is next time I'm struggling to make a decision, which will probably be in the next hour, I will make sure to go for a walk, have a banana, and I was gonna say go to sleep, but that's not the best idea because I've got lots of work to do. So I will make sure I have a good night's sleep. So then the next day I'm feeling ready and decisive.

Dr Amanda Potter: 36:47

Sounds great. Go for a walk, listen to music, have a banana, and then maybe a nap in the sun, because it is actually sunny today, which would be lovely. Thank you, Caitlin. Thank you for being the host. And thank you for everyone for listening. And if you find these podcasts useful, I'd love to ask a favor. Would you mind sharing it with one person who you think might be interested in the podcast? Because we get real joy from recording them and we get amazing feedback from our listeners. But we would love to share the research and share the thinking beyond our current listener group. So if you know someone who might be interested, please share. That would be amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 37:27

Thank you. And if you are interested in receiving any more information about our Decision Stars product, then do have a look onto our website at booking onto our accreditation training. Feel free to contact us at hello at vtalent.com or go to our website to book a place in the course.

Dr Amanda Potter: 37:44

Thank you very much, and thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a very successful, decisive, and productive day.