Avoid Disaster in the Workplace with Effective Decision Making, Gleb Tsipursky

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch. The Bitch, or share your stories on our website at settingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone! How are you? I'm So excited you're with us today because guess what? It's the second day of spring. We are already deep into spring. At least we have been here anyway in Atlanta, Georgia, and hopefully it's as beautiful wherever you are, morning, noon, or night, because I love my international audience, and Deborah and I take great pleasure in hearing from you all over the world. But It is the first day of spring. We got to put our clocks forward. There's more daylight throughout the day, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And it's just now time to start popping the Claritin or the Zyrtec. Even my dog, you know, Charlie, he needs to be taking it because of all the pollen and all the blossoms out there. But I'm not going to complain. And if I do, call me out on it. All right, everybody. Um, let's see, other rich news. You know, I'm kind of happy and content with the fact that there isn't much, uh, which is actually a good thing. Too, too many times there's too many things to send out prayers for or to send out well wishes for, or to— or, or good news. We all love good news. Um, this week kind of quiet, so I'll be good with that. So I'll just let you know that our upcoming shows, we've been promising you a fabulous month, as we always do, but a fabulous month of really key business and personal skills that as women, especially ladies, if we could even just kind of carve out and we don't have to master it, but if we can feel confident about these skills, if we can feel sure of ourselves, if we can be daring to really put these skills to work that we're talking about all month. We've been talking selling, we've been talking negotiation. Today we're going to be talking about decision-making, and trust me when I say if you can really kind of hone these skills, whether it's in the workplace or bring it home it will help you so much more to minimize your stress, feel confident in any situation that might pop up. So Ed Burdough is going to be our guest next week to talk to us about negotiation. And trust me, I was just at a car dealer for a friend. I was just at, you know, working with some clients and working with some strategic partners, and it's all about negotiation. So that'll be a great conversation with Ed. And then, gosh, can you believe it, we're going to be in April, and the first Tuesday of every month is our Ask Bernadette episode, which means you get an opportunity all month long actually on Facebook, on Twitter, you can email me directly and post your question, story, or challenge as it pertains to maybe your career, maybe a family situation or a friend, maybe a business ownership or entrepreneurial type of situation. It doesn't matter. Post your question, and whether it's me or one of my amazing guest experts like who I have today, then I'll be sure to reach out to them and get them to contribute their tips, advice, and sometimes tough love. And then what we do with Ask Bernadette on on Shedding the Bitch Radio that first Tuesday of every month is we get to drill down into them even further than what we can do in maybe 140 characters on a tweet or on a reasonable length of a Facebook post. So be sure to do that. I will respond immediately on Facebook or Twitter or email, however you decide to reach out. Um, however, you can always come and join me on the program that Tuesday of the month in order to even get more detail, more tips, more advice. All right, so that'll be the first Tuesday of April. And then April is all about gutsy, and, uh, I'll be introducing Sylvia Lafair, who is the gutsy leadership coach, and Kathy Bass and Abby Vega. And we have a whole lineup of great guests throughout the month of April. So this month And today you're learning some key business skills that translate over into your personal life, and then we'll finish off the month with additional, uh, skills that will sharpen your ability to go out fearlessly and pursue and achieve those goals that you want. All right, okay, so what are we going to be talking about today? Because we're going to dive right into it. We're going to be talking about avoiding disasters in the workplace, and it's all through being able to make really viable, critical decisions. Now, according to our guest, no one wants to make decisions that lead to disasters, and I don't know about you, but I have. And yet, when the— when was the last time you regretted a decision you made at work? One that cost you money and time, maybe brought about unnecessary stress and conflict, hurt your reputation, or even the morale of your team. Perhaps you underestimated the time required for a project, or you made a bad call on hiring an employee, or invested into a business collaboration that didn't work. Can you relate to any of those situations? Fortunately, you can learn how to minimize everyday mishaps and major disasters through applying decision-making science. And studies show that training in decision-making, especially ones that integrate both intuitive and analytical thinking, substantially improves the quality and effectiveness of decision-making in the workplace, and I'll say at home, by individuals and teams. So what I want you to really be paying attention to and listen for is to how to use science-based strategies for avoiding disasters in the business environment. How to appeal to the emotions of internal and external stakeholders in your business or in your career or even at home to maximize success. How to manage your own emotions to make wise decisions, neither taking undue risks nor failing to seize promising opportunities. And then Lastly, how women make decisions in ways that are similar to yet different from men. All right, so key, key, key skill. So your rich question, and we give a rich question out for those of you joining us for the first time. We propose a rich question that we want you to think about throughout our conversation with the expert, and we're going to pretty much guarantee that your question will be answered, and if not, then you always have an opportunity to go out to Facebook or Twitter ask your question, try to get your, your story or challenge or question answered. And yet, you know, we'll hope that it gets answered throughout our discussion. You also have an opportunity to call and even talk with our guest expert, 1-818-572-2910. So your rich question around this whole decision-making conversation is what is the one thing about making decisions that gets you stressed, gets you frustrated, or even gets you insecure. Think about that as we take a brief break, and when we get back, we're going to introduce you to our guest and dive into this. And be tweeting or Facebooking with us, and you can use hashtag decision-making, hashtag shift, because that's what you do when you kind of make a decision, and then hashtag, of course, shed the bitch. All right, so when we get back, we'll introduce you to our guests and dive into this great conversation so you can be making much more, uh, or much more effective decisions in your life. We will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity. So they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. I'm so excited about this topic and about our guests. Decision-making. How to avoid disasters. Who wouldn't want to be able to do that? All right, so our guest, Dr. Gleb Sapirsky, helps leaders and organizations avoid disasters through science-based strategies for effective decision-making and emotional and social intelligence. He is a well-known scholar, entrepreneur, author, speaker, consultant, coach, and activist in these areas. He researches effective decision-making, goal achievement, emotional social intelligence, meaning and purpose, mental health and emotional well-being, and altruism as a professor at Ohio State University and runs a nonprofit that populizes, populizes such topics, Intentional Insights. And I want you to go to Intentional Insights as we go through this conversation. He publishes books and articles on these topics in prominent venues and appears regularly as a guest on TV, radio, podcasts, and videocasts. His personal website— make a note— Gleb Tsipursky.com, and I want to spell that G-L-E-B-T-S-I-P-U-R-S-K-Y.

.com.

You can always email him as well as gleb@intentionalinsights.org. Welcome to the show, Gleb.

Thank you so much for the generous introduction, Bernadette. It's a pleasure to be on the show.

Oh, you're so welcome. I was looking forward to this topic of conversation because I do believe, especially for our female audience, whether they're corporate, entrepreneurial, or stay-at-home, decision-making is such a, it plays such a vital role in our everyday 24/7 lives that if we can make it less stressful and less disastrous, that's a beautiful, beautiful thing. So before I dive into these, dive into some questions I have for you, I do want to remind everybody, please go to intentionalinsights.org. You can also find him on Facebook under Intentional Insights as well. And make note of his Twitter handle. It's simply Gleb_Sapersky, but if you Google him, you find him very easily. Intentional Insights. All right. So Gleb, you know, I've always wondered about— I've never really had a challenge with decision-making. I kind of keep it very logical, but how did— how does one gain the awareness and escape the cycle of making decisions that people regret at some point. And therefore they can lessen their stress by not getting so emotional about it. How can folks gain awareness of that cycle they're in?

Sure. So that's a really important question, Bernadette. And I want to say that emotions are not necessarily a bad thing at all in decision-making. Right, right. It's more— actually, research shows that we as human beings have two systems of thinking, and one is called the autopilot system of thinking, and one is called the intentional system of thinking. The autopilot system is our intuitive system. It's our intuitions, it's our emotions, it's our gut reactions. And the intentional system is the more logical system of thinking. Now, what the research shows is that the intuitive system of thinking, the autopilot system, is much more powerful than the intentional system, than the logical and rational, reasonable system. That's the system that causes us to, you know, when we hear our boss criticize us, that's the system that causes us to want to put our fingers in our ears and yell, "La la la, I can't hear you." That's kind of the flight response. If you think of the fight or flight response, that's the flight response. Now other people tend to have the fight response, which is the desire to punch our boss in the face. Now those are intuitions, those are emotions, but they don't necessarily align with our goals. And that's when the intentional system, the reasonable system comes into play. And that's when we decide no, we want to take what our boss says, incorporate it into our work performance and do better in the future. Now that's pretty hard to do. It's not easy to listen to constructive criticism, but we have to make an intentional decision to do so. Now, so in some cases the autopilot system is simply, you know, leads us in the wrong direction in those sorts of cases to make— in making a bad decision. In other cases, it may well be aligned with our decision-making. So if we are If we know somebody and we've collaborated with that person for a long time, but that person makes a proposition for a new project and then you feel something is off with that person, something is wrong with the project, that may be your intuitive system picking up on certain signals that the person is sending that this may not be a good project to get involved in. So sometimes your intuitions, the autopilot system, is on track and sometimes it's off track. And the key in decision-making is to figure out when our autopilot system is leading us in the right direction and when it's leading us in the wrong direction.

Well, I guess that's the key, right? I mean, because as women, as women we're always told, and I have to admit, you know, I follow my gut. I listen to my intuition. Sometimes I ignore it and that's when I get really, you know, in a lot of trouble is when I, ignore it. But a lot of times people don't understand, um, or maybe haven't interpreted what their gut— what am I trying to say— like, as if they, they don't know when their gut or intuition is speaking to them. Um, is there a way for people to kind of, kind of learn how to tune into that into it, intuitive side of themselves?

So there is a way of doing that, but I would question whether it's always best to go with your intuition, because intuitions, what they are is essentially a combination of instinctive patterns and learned patterns in our childhood. And something that a lot of women are taught, as an example, is to be subdued and quiet. And so that's the intuition for a lot of women, and as a result of that, they make decisions that are not aligned with their goals. For example, women are not nearly as aggressive at negotiating as research shows they should be. So women, when they negotiate for higher pay or when they negotiate in business collaborations, they need to understand that they have been taught the wrong things and their intuition will lead them astray. So they need to push against their intuition and use their intentional system to be more aggressive in their negotiations and being advocates for themselves than they intuitively feel they should be. So that's an example, uh, we talked about one of the questions of where do women make decisions that are different from men. That's an area where women make decisions in a way that's different from men in a way that actually hurts women. So that's when intuition is not helpful. So that's— this is a subset of decision-making that's called thinking errors or cognitive biases in the scholarship. So your listeners can go and check out intentionalinsights.org for a list for a number of cognitive biases. They can also just Google cognitive biases and there's a list of over 100 on Wikipedia. If they kind of prefer to read Wikipedia and the definitions of them on Wikipedia. Now, one of the things—

Now, did you say, well, Gleb, before you move on, did you say cognitive biases? Is that what you just said?

Yes, right, cognitive bias. Like bias, gender, ethnicity bias, but this is not about gender, it's not about ethnicity, it's not about sex, it's about cognition. So cognitive bias. So women suffer from, cognitive bias that has to do with being not sufficiently confident in themselves, being pessimistic. So there's a bias called pessimism bias, where women tend to be more pessimistic about what would happen if they push harder, if they're more aggressive. And most women, now this is not all women, but most women would benefit from being more aggressive in their negotiations. With stakeholders in order to get themselves what they actually deserve.

Right. Well, and they would do that, I mean, I would think that that's also beneficial to do that even in their decision-making because a lot of times their decision-making is also not as risk-taking, not as strategic, not as kind of big. Because of the fact that they're holding back. Is that what you would find?

Absolutely. So one of the things that I find when I do consulting for organizations, when there are team decision-making, is that men tend to be more aggressive and women tend to be less aggressive. And in both cases, this may be problematic. So men sometimes take too many risks. Men tend to be more optimistic than is warranted. And women tend to be more pessimistic than is warranted. So I'll give you an example from my life. My wife and I, we were married for 17 years, and we never had as many fights as we had about 3 years ago when we started IntentionalInsights.org. So she's a co-founder. We work on it together. She has an MBA in nonprofit management. Her name is Agnes Sushnievkin. She has an MBA in nonprofit management, a long experience in this field. And when we started the nonprofit, we started having a number of conflicts over how to plan the policy, the strategy of this organization, and so on, because she was pessimistic and I was optimistic. So she thought that, well, people wouldn't— because these are thinking errors that people don't really know about, they would be really reluctant to learn about them because they would be reluctant to know about how their brains are messed up, essentially, in colloquial language. It's about how our brains are screwed up and how we can fix them. And I was optimistic that people would want to know this stuff. They would want to avoid disaster. And so this is— so we had a process of negotiation where we eventually realized that what was the thing that was holding us back and that was causing these conflicts was her pessimism and my optimism. And we actually learned to collaborate together. So this is a strategy to address cognitive biases is to provide— get an external perspective from someone who is from a different perspective than you are and respect their take even though it doesn't feel intuitive. So it's really challenging because you have to go against your intuition. You have to go against what your gut tells you. My gut tells me that everything will be fine, everyone will want to learn about how to avoid disastrous decisions. And her gut tells her that, well, people just don't want to know that because they don't want to acknowledge to themselves that they make bad decisions. And so there's this tension, and the way to get at this is for me to listen to her more and say, you know, I tend to be too optimistic, I should update my beliefs, my estimates into her direction. And for her to say, well, I tend to be too pessimistic, I should go against my intuition and orient toward better decision-making. And this is something I've seen not only in my relationship with her, but in corporations where I do consulting all the time, that women tend to be too pessimistic and men tend to be too optimistic. And they have such conflict, such fights because of this. You know, in corpora—

Well, let me ask you a question though. I need to break that down a little bit because you've just given me some really kind of aha moments that I want to make sure the listeners are even sitting on, and that is the first one was the whole thing around when, you know, into— when we are intuitively as women, we are, we are, and that's— I'll agree to that— we're intuitively taught to not be aggressive. So should we use our intuition in decision-making? We will oftentimes be holding ourselves back because intuitively our gut's saying you're not supposed to get aggressive or go after something so assertively because that's what you were intuitively taught. That is just a mind blower to me, uh, that I agree with, and I— yet I've never really thought about it in that way. But the real question then is this whole pessimistic and optimistic, is it really pessimism and optimism, or is it men are more confident, even kind of arrogant, in, in, in some ways, and women are timid and insecure in some ways? Because I see that differently than optimistic and pessimistic. Does that make sense?

I hear what you're saying, and it's actually not different. I hear what you're saying, but it tends to cash out to in reality to the same thing. Optimism is strongly associated with aggression and confidence.

Okay.

And pessimism is strongly associated with lack of confidence and being subdued. So when people are pessimistic, they don't feel confident, they don't act confident, and they tend to be, you know, there's, you can even know, learn, think about the prominent colloquial expression, like everyday expression, of a Debbie Downer. You know, "Oh, she's just a Debbie Downer." You know, you don't have an equivalent for men. There's no, you know, "John Downer." Right, right.

Well, there is a D-word, but I, you know—

Sure, of course, of course. That's about being aggressive, right?

Yeah, exactly.

So that's where men tend to be when they go too much into that direction, aggressive and overconfident, they make bad decisions. And they make bad decisions and there's a lot of negative consequences. So we can talk more about how to hold back, how women can work to hold back the bad decisions of men, and that's really helpful. But I want to make sure to talk through this kind of issue of what is confidence. Confidence is strongly associated with optimism. Optimism. And you know, when it gets too much, that's when it gets arrogant. So you want to be confident without getting too much into arrogant. And so women need to push against their intuitions, which society tells them to be subdued. And it's not only society, it's their genes. Women compared to— what causes us, so if we go into the research on this, testosterone is strongly associated with aggression and confidence. Women have less testosterone than men. So their natural intuition— natural intuition is essentially our gut feelings— come from our chemicals in our brains. They come from two sources. They come from the chemicals in our brains, and they come from our pattern of learned development, learned behavior. The chemicals in women's brains— they have less testosterone— that causes them naturally to be less aggressive. And their social environment— in our culture, unfortunately, teaches women to be more subdued and quiet than men. And that also feeds into the intuition to be less aggressive. And these are harmful, these have harmful effects for women.

Right. Well, and more importantly, Gleb, you know, especially because I am like one of those non, let's see, non, no, non-pessimistic persons, and I tend to be on the aggressive side. But it's also a hindrance because aggression in men is perceived as strong while aggression in a woman is perceived as, you know, the B-word. Right. Which I don't hesitate saying bitch, but I don't like to use it in the way that people use it because it's different in our world here, in our community.

Shady bitch, right?

What other biases or what other patterns are especially women, are they demonstrating that they need to pay attention to and change if they want to become better decision makers?

Sure. So one of the things that women demonstrate often is something not fully but somewhat influenced by pessimism is called status quo bias. So status quo bias is a cognitive bias that folks can look up at intentionalinsights.org or Wikipedia, and it's about wanting to stay where they are and not change things. They tend to— women have a greater tendency, you know, men have a greater tendency to want to change things. They think that, you know, the future is bright, you know, the grass is greener on the other side. Women have a lesser desire to change things. They think that the future is not going to be as bright. They tend to think that the grass is more yellow on the other side. So status quo bias basically discourages women from making changes that would in the long run be really helpful is not healthy for them. And would really, that causes women in personal life to stay in bad relationships beyond what the benefit is for them. So stay in those relationships for much longer than they quote unquote should. Stay in careers more longer than they should, stay in jobs, workplaces that aren't a good fit, not start their own businesses when they would be better off starting their own businesses.

Right.

And so on. So this is another bias. That harms women in a particular way.

Right, right. No, absolutely. And oh geez, that is such a loaded question. I started scribbling because I was like, you know, oh, I, you know, it is like, when will these things ever change? And when will these things ever go away? And, you know, and you realize that there is just not enough day— minutes in the day, days in the year to to help every woman out there. Okay, so we've got status quo bias, the pessimistic bias. Before I move on to really talk about kind of more of the research, are there other key biases we need to know about?

For women in particular? So let me think of what's— oh, a bias that affects both women and men that I want to make sure everyone is aware of is attentional bias. So attentional bias is the bias that causes us to remember things that are emotionally salient and not things that are frequent. So for example, women would tend to remember a bad breakup, and that would influence all of their future relationships in a harmful way, that they would be afraid of this bad breakup and so on, and not pay attention to other aspects of the relationship that can be healthy and positive. In businesses, in the business world, let's say a woman suffers harassment and she would then be afraid of this sort of harassment in the future and let it color all of her future interactions. And anything like this, or someone can be fired and this can color all of their future interactions and all of their future thinking. So having negative past events be attached to oneself and have that allow those events to color all of the one's future interactions in business, in personal relationships, in financial decision-making. You know, let's say someone buys— doesn't buy insurance and then something breaks and then they are like, "Well, I should have bought insurance," and they keep buying insurance even though it's not worthwhile to buy insurance. So that's attentional bias.

Right.

And are you saying that—

No, really, folks, folks, I do have to say insurance on things that are like household appliances, that's a bad idea. Just the statistics don't bear it out. Don't get it.

No, don't. Now, is that attentional or intentional?

Attentional. A? So about, yep, attentional. So about the word attention. So attentional bias.

Okay, all right. I wrote intentional and I knew you were saying— I sensed that you were saying attentional. Um, okay, so how do we kind of take advantage of the research and all this information? And now we're all educated on 3 of the biases, especially women, that we hang on to. Because I'll be honest with you, this attentional bias I am guilty of all over the place. Not as much anymore, but especially when it comes to relationships. So what, you know, what can we kind of glean out of, you know, just kind of what they have found? And then I'm assuming there's some preventative measures one would take. But what, what should we be listening for?

Yes.

So there are a couple of things. First, as a present for all the listeners to the show, if they email me at Gleb@IntentionalInsights.org, I can send them a tip sheet which is longer than I can describe on this show that helps them address various biases in decision-making.

Great, great.

So if you email me, you tell me you heard me on Shutting the Bitch, I will send you a free tip sheet.

Fabulous.

Now, so let's talk about how you can battle these biases. One easy way— is to think about where you want to be a year from now. So envision with the pessimism bias. Where do you want to be a year from now? It takes emotional effort to overcome the intuition of not negotiating and not pushing and not being an advocate for yourself. But if you put yourself into a year from now, think about what would happen if you did get that 20% raise, or if you did get that 20%. Now think about 5 years from now. What would happen if you consistently don't get that 20% raise? That accumulates over time quite a lot. So you will have a constant— situation where you will have much less money if you don't advocate for yourself. For yourself, let's say you're getting $50,000. With a 20% raise, you're going to be getting— you're going to be getting $60,000, right? And then next year, if you don't push for another raise, you'll be getting $72,000, as opposed to not pushing for a raise. How much lower will your income be How much, uh, think, how many things will you miss out on if you don't think long-term, if you don't think about where you want to be a year from now or 5 years from now. So that's a, a really good way of addressing a lot of these biases, a number of biases across the road, thinking about the long-term.

Okay, great. Okay, so when we get back from a short break, and I'm just going to take this all in. I really want to see what, what Gleb has for us as far as how do we now adopt this understanding and actually it's really awareness, ladies and gents, but ladies, as to these biases that maybe you weren't aware of within yourself in the past. Now you are and now we are going to be able to see what and how making a few shifts will help our decision-making, will help your decision-making in, you know, at work, at home. All right, so when we get back, we'll be continuing our conversation with Gleb Sapirsky. Please go to intentionalinsights.org and look him up also on Facebook and Twitter, and also make sure you go and sign up and get that free list. That he was talking about, and you'll be able to be on your way to making better decisions. So we will be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, TSR Consulting, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to TSRConsulting.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker78@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitchradio and follow the program for all the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Bernadette's choking at the moment, but welcome back everybody. We are talking decision-making with Gleb Tsipursky, and I want you to go to intentionalinsights.org and learn all about him. And what he does, and also grab that list, that free list of just all kinds of tips around the subject we're talking about, which are these biases that kind of get us and keep us stuck in being ineffective in our decision-making. So, Gleb, I wanted to kind of ask you, from all the work that you do, especially in organizations, so those you know, we'll all put our work hat on. What are the big decisions or types of decisions that you see women falter on in the workplace so we can just make sure that, you know, we all are thinking about, you know, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's me type of aha moment. Is there a particular pattern in those type of decisions?

Yes, so when I see women faltering in the workplace, I see a couple of things. One is that women aren't advocating enough for their point of view in meetings. Research shows that in meetings when women— so we talked about how men and women can interact in a healthy way in meetings— women tend to not be forceful enough about their points of view, and as a result, companies make bad decisions. Bad decisions because men tend to be more aggressive and more optimistic and more confident than is warranted. And so you have companies that fail, that go bankrupt because they make unwise investments, they expand too quickly, they're too optimistic about their revenue. Women tend to be more pessimistic than is warranted, but they really need to push forward that pessimism in order to control the inappropriate aggression and overconfidence of men. So that is where I see one area that women can become much better at, is being more strong advocates of their perspectives in decision-making meetings, especially in leadership positions.

Right, right, right. Any other big one before we move on to get into the nitty-gritty of what it is that they could be doing to improve their effectiveness. Is there any big one that they also need to kind of recognize or acknowledge?

Another big one in more individual roles is women aren't taking enough advantages of opportunities. So when there are opportunities, women tend to think that, well, you know, that's too much, or that's too much effort, or they're not confident enough in themselves. And then they don't move up the career ladder quickly enough, or women-owned businesses don't succeed as much as they should because they don't take advantage of opportunities. They don't explore. They don't experiment. They think that they need to get all their ducks lined up in a row before they shoot, before they start something. Well, you know, you don't, folks. You don't need to get all your ducks lined up in a row. You need to push for it, and then as you're doing it, you can get your things figured out. You take more risks and having more opportunities, taking advantage of more risks, people fail more, but they also succeed more. And that's what the research shows. That's— I think one of the things that, one of the things that I see women as being really harmed by is fear of failure. And fear of failure is nothing— failure is not necessarily a bad thing if you frame it as an opportunity to learn. And if you don't see it as such a big harmful thing, it's just failure. It's okay. And then you get to learn and you move on. And the more things you try at, the more things you are likely to succeed at. And this is one of the other big things that women aren't successful at is actually failing often enough and learning often enough from their failures.

And I always talk about failing fast. I tend to be one who has never considered failure in my vocabulary. I just do something, and if I— if it doesn't work out, I just move on as quickly as possible and try the next thing. And if I mess up on that too— and Gleb, you point out something that I really want the women to hear. You know, that's— you know, you can summarize that last point of Gleb's by this fact. Women, you're waiting until you have 100% of your skill, the talent, what you feel is needed in order to take on a new opportunity, whereas men only feel they need about 60% of that skill or that expertise or that, you know, value. So ladies, you know, at least do the 80/20 and you'll be improving yourself greatly. You know, if you instead of 100%, try for 80% readiness and then work yourself down to 60% with the men. And you'll be advancing yourself that much quicker and that much more effectively. I love that. That is awesome, Gleb. Okay, so what— you know, because you do a lot of consulting and a lot of work around this in the organizations, you know, how do you go about— what's your process for going about helping them to shift their decision-making skill? What strategies do you provide them?

Sure. One of the really important strategies that I provide is getting people to be in touch with their intuitions and emotions, and seeing where they are caused, where they are pushed by their intuitions and emotions. You know, most women, and men as well, but focusing on women, aren't aware of when they are being influenced by their gut reactions to go in the right direction, or in the wrong direction. And this lack of awareness is very dangerous. It leads to really disastrous decisions, things that would really mess up the lives of women and the work professions of women in the long run. They tend to be not competitive enough. They tend to not advocate for themselves enough, which leads in the long term and even in the short term sometimes to disasters. And they don't realize that They don't advocate for themselves enough because they are not aware that this feeling, their feelings of fear, are coming from their gut, from their intuition. They feel afraid and therefore they don't act. So getting, being aware that decision-making, according to research, is about 80% emotional and only 20% rational. You need to go and figure out where your emotions are what you're feeling and whether your feelings align with your goals. So that's the logical part. You need to first be aware of your feelings, then you need to logically evaluate whether your feelings are aligned with your goals. You know, if you go to your boss and ask for a raise, what's the worst thing that can happen? What is really the worst thing that can happen? She or he can tell you no, and that will be okay. Whereas many people are afraid that that it will really ruin their reputation in the boss's eyes. No, you will feel yourself, you will be a valuable, you are a valuable employee, otherwise you wouldn't stay on. And you need to act in such a way that your pay represents your value. The same thing in consulting. If women own a business or are consultants, they don't take enough advantage of opportunities. They don't go to the big cats and say, "Hey, let's collaborate together," or, "Hey, can I do a speech for you?" or, "Hey, how about you getting some of the whatever product or service I'm selling?" They don't tend to be confident enough, and that leads to bad decisions where they harm themselves. So getting awareness of your emotions and then logically evaluating whether they are aligned with your goals or not is fundamentally important. So it's kind of the first step that I teach to people. We can talk about this, or I can talk about the second step, right?

Um, well, let's, um, I— well, I think that we talk a lot about that in this community, about awareness, and I love the fact that you're, you're kind of supporting that because, you know, because it is getting them to be, you know, kind of in their head and out of their head. Let's be logical and get that. And I always talk of Gleb, about putting it even on paper in black and white, because it takes the emotion out of it as well. They just tend to purge it, you know, into black and white. So what would another step be?

Sure. So the next step is actually related to the black and white, but a little bit more complex. It's putting numbers on it. So putting numbers on your estimates of what will happen in the future and putting values on it. So the tip sheet that I mentioned that I'll email to anyone for free if they email me at gleb@intentionalinsights.org and tell me that they heard me on shedding the bitch helps you do that, helps you put numbers on your estimates of future events. So decisions are essentially about, at essence, they're about estimating the likelihood of future events and how good they are for you. And women tend to systematically underestimate how good their decisions would be, or kind of the positive options. So what people need to do, what women especially need to do, is evaluate what is going to be the value of the decision of asking for a raise, or working with a new collaborator, or starting up a new business. What is going to be the value of it? How much do they care about it? What is going to be the cost of it? How much would it cost for them to ask? To make this request. Often the cost will just be emotional, will just be, and it's not a small cost, but it's kind of, you know, have to realize that you have to overcome your gut intuitions, that it takes some effort. But the cost is much smaller than most women tend to think it is. So putting numbers on the value, the benefits, and putting numbers on the costs, and then looking at the options you have. Let's say if you're looking for, if you're considering between hiring 3 people, and one of them is kind of a safe conservative choice, and one of them is kind of more risky, and so on. Women would tend to hire the more safe conservative choice, but that may not be the best option for them in the long run. So then you can consider, well, here's the value of hiring the more risky choice, and here's the benefit of hiring the more risky choice. What is the— What is the overall value of this? And then you make a decision that goes along with that value in the long run. So putting numbers on values, on costs and benefits, and picking the decision that has the biggest difference between costs and benefits is a really important strategy. And that's a great strategy for a team effort, because if you are making a decision as a team, which in most corporate settings you are, you can get the members of the team to go through and each individual person would sum up their values. And therefore you would get a total value summary and the whole team can make an informed and very transparent decision about what would be the best choice based on the combined value summary of everyone in the group.

That's sweet. That's sweet. Sweet. So individually you could do it personal or from a business perspective, but then you can get your team involved from a business perspective when it comes to, um, you know, kind of team decisions or things that are going to affect the entire team, right?

Exactly. And that really helps women because women don't have to be as forceful in advocating for themselves in a meeting, you know. One of the things that's— I've seen this so often— where men tend to speak over women in meetings, and it takes women more effort to speak up and advocate for themselves. If you have this mathematically based approach where you simply put numbers and values and everyone's evaluations are summarized, then women get to have an equal voice without needing to put in more emotional resources in standing up for themselves at team meetings.

Yeah, because what you're saying, you know, bottom line is you're building a business case for a decision that you are making. And business cases typically have what the problem is, what is the solution, what is the impact of us not doing it, what's the cost to doing it, and what's the value we're going to receive from it, right? So that's basically what you just described.

Yes, absolutely. So this is what businesses use in making these sorts of decisions. So when I go to a business, I often talk about this being a really helpful strategy that will help all members of the team have an effective case, and where what doesn't happen is that the loudest person wins, which often I've seen some— often kind of the loudest, most aggressive male win, and that just does not lead to good decisions.

No, no, not a good time for the squeaky wheel to get the oil, that's for sure, right?

Exactly.

So one question that I really wanted to also— because you know how decision-making can really affect the collaboration, the trust, the engagement of a team— so how can one kind of exert influence effectively on that decision-making in, in a team situation? In order to help maintain that level of engagement and commitment from all team members so it doesn't seem as if it's self-serving to one person, but it's actually kind of gluing the team together.

Sure. Great. One of the really important things to do is to convey fairness, and fairness has been shown by research. The perception that a decision is reached fairly is fundamentally important to the buy-in of all stakeholders. If people feel that the decision is reached fairly and that their voice was heard and considered, even if the decision goes against their interests, that will still maintain the trust and their commitment to the decision if they feel that it was reached fairly. So whatever you need to do to convey the perception communicate fairness and to communicate consideration of everyone's voices is going to be fundamental to maintaining that trust. So the tip sheet that I mentioned allows you to do that through having a great deal of transparency. You know, here everyone gives their values, everyone gives their costs, and everyone's values and costs are summarized, and then a decision is made by that. If that's not something that you're in a position to do, then just communicating to all members of their team that their opinions are considered, and especially that their emotions are considered, kind of validating their emotions, saying that, yes, we heard you, this is important, thank you for sharing your perspective, and then making the decision in consideration of their perspective. That doesn't mean doing what they want, but that means making them feel heard, making them feel heard and validated, and that their opinions and takes on things are important.

Okay. There's one last question, and that's awesome. I love this conversation, and I can't believe I just looked at the time and it goes so darn fast. But I do want to ask, I do want to ask so you can provide a tip on how do women, you know, men too, because we have men that listen, but how can they do a better job at really identifying kind of the competing interests of like multiple team members or stakeholders, especially in the context of decision-making when they're uncertain about those decisions?

Definitely. So one of the important things is to see where people's incentives lie. So if someone, let's say, is in the finances department, they will be really concerned about costs and revenue. So kind of thinking about trying to put yourself in the other person's shoes and modeling where they want, what they are concerned about from their perspective. It's so easy to forget that what our perspective is, is not the perspective that's shared by other members of the team. The team is a group of individuals and they have certain incentives. Now that's one, so looking at their incentives. The other thing is looking at their personalities and remembering that, you know, If you don't know anything about their personalities, you can assume that men will likely be more aggressive and confident and optimistic, and women more likely to be pessimistic and less aggressive. If you know, the more you know about their personalities, the better off you are, because then you'll know, let's say Bob is someone who doesn't like, I don't know, Floor, this company, and then he won't want to work with this company, then you have to consider, well, do you want to push for this company if Bob is going to oppose it? So the more you know about someone and that person's personality and preferences, the better you can model them. So having a combination of understanding their incentives from their position in the organization and understanding their personality and then seeing what they will likely push for because of these things is going to be crucial.

Abso— oh my gosh, I love that. This has been an unbelievably value-packed and mind-blowing conversation, Gleb, I will tell you. Because I just—

thank you—

these are things that we take for granted and we just don't think about. And I think if we can just learn to lean on what you shared with us today about biases and how we respond, especially as women. Although I would love you back so we can get all in the head of the men.

Sure.

So we can also understand that difference. And I can't believe we're already out of time. What is one last thing you can summarize quickly that you would just tell the women of our community?

I would say that it's one thing that women are really definitely tend to be better at than men is sensing other people's emotions. And so that's a skill that women can hone and build and sense other women's emotions and other men's emotions in a way that they can be the emotionally mature and wise person in the room. And then they can influence others in the room because they know about where their emotional states are in a much more effective way if they know about their emotions. So honing your skill at sensing other people's emotions and using that to your advantage. Is going to be very important in anyone's success.

Absolutely. Oh, love it, love it, love it. So everybody, you need to go to intentionalinsights.com— or I'm sorry, .org— and get those, um, and get those tips. But also, you know, check out his coaching and his speaking, because I'm telling you, I can— I know I'd even be able to learn a lot from just what his expertise is. So go to glebzipersky.com, and you can go forward slash coaching or forward slash speaking and learn more about his services and how you might benefit from engaging with him. So intentionalinsights.org as well as glebzipersky.com, and learn all about our guests. Thank you so much, Gleb, for being part of the program. It was awesome.

It truly was. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I greatly enjoyed it.

You're very welcome. And everybody remember, Ed Bordeaux is going to kind of expand on these conversations of not decision-making. He's going to be talking to us about negotiation, but even Gleb mentioned how important just all of this information is when it comes to these key business and personal skills. So tune in next Tuesday at noon Eastern time, and I'll look forward to having you right back here as well. Have a prosperous and rich week, everybody. I will talk with you then.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. See you next week.