Good judgment – using relevant knowledge and experience to form opinions and make decisions – is the core of great leadership.
Good judgment is often attributed to gut feeling or acquired instinct, combined with analytic skills that produce an insight or recognition of patterns.
Sir Andrew Likierman is a professor at London Business School and has identified the six basic components of good judgment: learn, trust, experience, detachment, options, and delivery. Here’s how to development these components:
Learn – listen actively, read critically. Listening intently is a hallmark of good judgment. But being skeptical of information that doesn’t make sense is just as important. Make sure the metrics are sound; look for discrepancies and try to understand them.
Trust – seek diversity of opinions. Dissenting opinions yield better, more well-rounded answers. Find people who will tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear.
Experience – make it relevant and broad. Narrow experiences breed complacency and overconfidence. The more reps the better – with different products, services, markets and people.
Detachment – recognize and challenge biases. To overcome bias, you need to detach emotionally and intellectually. Cultivate different viewpoints, play devil’s advocate, and experiment with extreme ideas.
Options – question the solution set. The key is to ask if this is the right set of solutions? Step back, assess your choices, and don’t be oversold on a particular outcome.
Delivery – factor in execution. Surface the causes of what might cause a solution to fail. Ensure relevant experience matches the recommended investment.
Good judgment is the difference between the right way vs. wrong way; growth vs. contraction; and success vs. failure.
All success has some factor of luck and circumstances, but good judgment will make sure you’re ready when these factors converge.
Have a great week.
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