Dr Constance Dierickx on Meta Leadership

Why can senior leaders — usually in post as a result of experience and expertise — often make mistakes? The answer might seem counterintuitive; it’s precisely because of their experience and expertise that this can happen. How that happens and what we can do to mitigate it, the subject of this epsiode.

My guest is Dr Constance Dierickx, who is also known as the Decision Doctor. She’s also the authr of a new book called ‘Meta Leadership: How To See What Others Don’t And Make Great Decisions’. In her book and her work, Constance explores how congitive biases can impact sneior leader decision-making and what they can do to mitigate this.

What applies to senior leaders also applies to the trest of us..

Discussion topics

In our discussion, we explore:

• Constance’s career and interest in the field of decision-making, including how she became known as The Decision Doctor and the work that she does with Senior Leaders;
  
  
• How meta-analysis and metacognition and how they can be used to help leaders make better decisions;
  
  
• The role of our default thinking patterns and instincts in making decisions and how our past experience shapes how we perceive the importance of new information;
  
  
• The significance of empathy in shaping decision-making skills; and
• How tensions and differences in perspective between senior management and boards can impact decision-making

Resources
For more information on Constance, her work and books, visit https://constancedierickx.com/. There you’ll also find a free meta-leadership self-assessment.

To read her HBR article entitled ‘What-senior-executives-can-do-when-the-board-meddles’: https://hbr.org/2019/07/what-senior-executives-can-do-when-the-board-meddles