Transforming Work with Sophie Wade
109: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky — Making Good Decisions At and About Work
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts, a consulting, coaching, and training firm. Gleb is a behavioral scientist and best-selling author of seven books, including “Never Go With Your Gut” and “Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams”. He shares his interest in human behaviors focused on decision-making and cognitive biases. Gleb explains his passion to help people make good decisions, discussing the role of emotions, and why to try to prove yourself wrong. He emphasizes how to optimize work-related decisions to improve working environments, experiences, policies, and outcomes.
TAKEAWAYS
[02:59] Interested in human behaviors, Gleb studies history--people in their historical contexts.
[03:53] Gleb narrows his research to behavioral science decision-making in historical and contemporary contexts.
[04:53] Gleb’s interest focuses on motivations and historical archives reveal what people were saying behind the scenes.
[05:39] We’re not very good at making decisions. We often follow our intuition or go with our gut.
[06:32] How a client’s early experiences affect how he handles conflict as a business leader.
[07:41] How do individuals and groups make decisions? What motivations cause what effects?
[08:12] How to have healthy conflicts with people.
[09:32] How do you make good decisions, proofing yourself against future disruptions?
[10:50] Decision hygiene—identify biases including not what you don’t do, that's a decision too!
[13:55] How you can misperceive yourself, your skills.
[15:04] Blind spots and how humans are full of contradictions.
[16:42] Gleb’s early books about different aspects of decision making.
[17:29] Before making a decision ask: Q1 - What information haven't I fully understood yet?
[19:28] Q2: What judgment errors haven't I fully considered?
[20:30] The need to be introspective about our emotions so they don't dictate our decisions.
[21:50] Gleb starts his own company, Disaster Avoidance Experts, in 2018.
[22:30] Gleb’s targets people whose possible bad decisions could have disastrous consequences.
[23:35] Paying attention to leading indicators to make informed decisions early in the pandemic.
[24:49] The challenges belief bias and confirmation bias can cause.
[26:30] What comparable data is relevant to ensure you are making good decisions?
[29:40] Looking at the data and challenging the motivation to be back in the office—for what?
[31:10] Managers weren't comfortable that they could control their teams working remotely.
[31:56] Combining training and techniques to not manage by walking around the office.
[33:04] Switching to weekly performance evaluations with three to five goals per week.
[35:27] Coaching style leadership was gaining ground long before the pandemic.
[38:32] College educated males choose to work fewer hours, valuing well-being and leisure more than before the pandemic.
[40:02] Research and resignations show willingness to take a 10% pay cut to keep flexibility.
[40:38] The impact of not being empathetic about your employees.
[42:37] What is best for knowledge workers? Not sitting in factory style offices.
[43:22] For knowledge work: creativity and collaboration of the human mind determine any company’s value add.
[44:33] The four principles of knowledge work to set up workplaces of the future.
[45:44] To establish trust, new systems and processes are needed including regular performance evaluations.
[47:20] Don't let one bad apple spoil it for others.
[49:35] Finding truth through content curation versus creation in an AI-powered world.
[51:40] IMMEDIATE ACTION TIP: To adapt to modern work, survey employees about they feel about hybrid work, best practices, problems, and opportunities for improvement. Focus conversations on trust, autonomy, support, and collaboration.
RESOURCES
Dr Gleb Tsipursky on Instagram
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky speaker video
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky’s books include:
The Truth-Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide.
Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters
QUOTES
“People often don't know what their own motivations are. They don't know how they interact, and they don't understand why they make the decisions they do. We're not very good at making decisions. We often just follow our intuition; we go with our gut.”
“There was research showing that in order to have healthy conflicts with people, you should follow a 5:1 ratio. For each one conflictual thing you do at least five equivalently positive things.”
“Taking all the social intelligence, emotional intelligence, and cognitive biases. If you can identify those in yourself right now, you can really set up set yourself up for a lot of success down the line.”
“We are human beings, we are full of contradictions.”
“Seeing the truth is very important to make a good decision, but that's not the same thing as making a good decision.”
“If you actually want to make a good decision what you want to do is try to prove yourself wrong. Try to prove that your decision is incorrect. Try to disconfirm your decision.”
“One issue is the empathy gap. We might underestimate the emotions that other people are experiencing. One of the biggest challenges in business decision making is failure to think sufficiently about emotions, our own emotions and other people's emotions. We don't realize how important emotions are.”
“Not being empathetic and understanding emotions matters. The emotions of your employees matter. How they feel matters. And they're actually taking steps based on their feelings around retention, engagement, productivity, morale.”
“Knowledge workers function best as a combination of providing them with trust, trusting them to work in the way that they know how; providing with autonomy, having control over their time and location of work; providing them with necessary and appropriate support, giving them knowledge, information, tools: and facilitating their collaboration with others.”
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