My Favorite Mistake: Learning Without Blame in Business and Leadership When “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Safe: Nika Kabiri on Psychological Safety and Speaking Up
Co-author of the book Money off the Table: Decision Science and the Secret to Smarter Investing.
Show notes: https://www.markgraban.com/mistake67 (go there to enter to win a free signed copy of her book)
My guest for Episode #67 is Nika Kabiri, who describes herself as a “forward thinking, science-loving entrepreneur, author, public speaker, teacher, and researcher.” She's a decision scientist, who has her firm Kabiri Consulting, is on the faculty at the University of Washington Department of Communication, and is co-author of the book Money off the Table: Decision Science and the Secret to Smarter Investing.
Nika has a PhD in sociology and, while she earned the JD degree, she's not an “attorney” (that was my mistake in the episode — oops!!). She has over twenty years of experience studying how people make decisions in a variety of contexts, from business to politics to relationships, and she's an active writer with a lot of great insights to share. You can also find her at YourNextDecision.com.
Questions and topics include:
- What do mistakes even mean?
- Was law school a mistake?
- What’s your favorite mistake?
- Was it a mistake in thinking that the “Safe space” at work was really safe? But she was TOLD it was!
- How does a decision scientist decide whether she should speak up or not?
- Minimizing regret vs. maximizing possibility of good outcomes
- Helpful to delay a decision when you can?
- Forecasting the probability of outcome.. can’t predict the future… but we're craving certainty
- Broader themes on misinformation… what do you trust? Stories? Data?
As people decide should they wear masks? Should they get vaccinated?
- You’ve written about solutions to conspiracy theories… what can individuals do, what must society do?