Wise Judgement: You Can Only Choose One

1. Your house is on fire.
2. You have a spouse (in their 20s like you) and three children. John is five and in perfect health. Susan is one and in perfect health. JoAnn is three and has a rare blood disease that prevents her from walking.
3. You can only save yourself and one person.
4. Who do you save?

This extreme dilemma is tragic, no matter the outcome. It also serves to highlight five decision-making elements high-level leaders must understand how to deal with.

1. The facts can't be changed.
Reality is the home field of leaders great at making critical decisions. Things are complicated enough: creating a reality-distortion field isn't prudent. This requires facing the hard truths head-on, being disciplined to gather facts from all necessary input streams and not using assumptions or (even experienced) opinions to fill in too many gaps.

2. Every decision has a downside.
Decisions create tension and silos. High-level leaders are naturally equipped, trained and/or emotionally prepared to deal with both the upsides and the downsides of decisions. Be ready to handle them by expecting the downsides, preparing accordingly and not letting fear sway the decisions that must be made.

3. Some people will benefit from your decision and some won't.
Trying to keep everyone happy will not fully satisfy anyone. Many times tough decisions involve picking sides. Success in this area requires being diplomatic with both. Don't get too cozy with the winning side and talk openly and directly with the other side. You can't expect to have the losing side to like you right then, but you should strive to demonstrate your logic and reasons to earn (or rebuild) respect, trust and credibility.

4. Your beliefs/values will guide you.
One of the most important benefits of being clear, resolute and convicted of your beliefs and values is they provide a firm guide for critical decisions. Of course, the secret is to be disciplined to follow your beliefs and values, but you must have them first. Set beliefs and values that you firmly believe in and that can serve as an inspiration for those around you. High-level leaders don't have the luxury of following mediocre beliefs and values.

5. As the leader, you carry the burden of making the decisions.
True leadership is not easy.  It is demanding, challenging and weighs heavy.  Accept this burden and take it for those who can not.  Never use the high-pressure as an excuse for poor decisions and never hold others ransom with it. Carry it freely as the price you pay for stepping up and arming yourself with the traits, skills and expertise necessary to make the tough decisions for those around you.


(What decision would you make in the situation above and why?  Comment below.)

General: Activities for your Leadership Class Series (Part 3)

This is the third post in a new series sharing many of our favorite leadership activities we do with our audience members across the nation. Each activity has a proven track record since we actually present at over 300 conferences, retreats, school assemblies and corporate events every year and have for the past 20 years.  Enjoy and feel free to share via Facebook, Twitter or email with your network of friends, teachers, trainers, speakers or absolute complete strangers!  (We are @pli_leadership on Twitter.)


Balloon Toss

PLI Essential – Fostering Relationships, Wise Judgment, Goal Processing

Objective – For each team to keep as many balloons off the ground as possible

Time Needed – From 45 - 60 minutes

Material Needed – 12” round Balloons, Trash Sacks

Best Case Scenario – At least a few teams of 8 people and room to play

When not to do it – If there isn’t any floor space to work with

Debrief Possibilities – This activity teaches how to work with others, how to overcome challenges, how to recognize and work with human behavior patterns, how to communicate, how to plan strategically, and to not be satisfied with status quo

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Each team of 8 gets 1 sack of balloons (3 more balloons than people in the group, i.e. if there are 8 people in the group they will need 11 balloons) and 1 trash sack.

2. Each person must put their strongest hand behind their back and they cannot use it at any time during the activity (except for the feeder).

3. Each team selects a feeder.  The feeder holds the trash sack.

4.Blow up all the balloons and put them in the trash sack.

5.The team needs to figure out how they are going to keep the balloons off the ground by only tapping or nudging them.

6.The feeder will take a balloon out of the sack and feed it to the team at 10-second intervals.

7.Once a balloon touches the ground, the team must sit down and try again after all teams have been seated and the activity leader re-starts everyone. 

8.This process can continue as long as time allows or until the teams have completed the task.

One of our most popular curriculum pieces is The Activator.  It contains this activity, as well as 49 other effective leadership activities!

Purchase Activator Here

Wise Judgment: How Are You Doing With Decisions?

Decisions rule our lives.  Every action started with a decision.  Some are simple - What should I have for breakfast? - and some are complex - How can we get more members for our organization?  Our ability to make the best choice consistently drives our quality of life and our ability to gain and keep trust from those we are charged with leading. 

So, how are you doing?  Spend some time reflecting on your answers to the following questions.  Your answers will reveal where you are today with the PLI Essential of Wise Judgment...

1.  How do you respond when you make a bad choice?
2.  How do you respond when you see someone you love make a bad choice?  What about a stranger?
3.  What good choice do you make consistently?
4.  Why are you continuing to make a bad choice in a certain area of your life?
5.  Who do you seek advice from?
6.  What is a bad choice in your past that you haven't found peace with yet?
7.  Are you making choices on a daily basis for the sole purpose of lifting up and helping others?
8.  If you could teach others how to make better choices in one area of their lives, what would you teach?
9.  Do you think you are making certain choices that are wrong, but you have chosen to justify, validate or ignore?
10.  Are you patting yourself on the back enough for the good choices you are making today?  Are you doing this for your close friend and family members?
11.  What is one choice you know you need to make today to improve your quality of life?
12.  What values/beliefs serve as a guide for your decisions?

Teaching PLI: PLI Required Reading List

There is a great new book titled "The 100 Best Business Books of All Time." The authors have put together a fabulous collection and did a great job in the book of summarizing the main points of these classics and new-classics. I personally have my reading to-do list done for the year, as I have only read 31 of the 100.

The other great benefit of this book to our PLI teachers and trainers is that it inspired a "PLI Required Reading List." This list certainly isn't all-inclusive, but it is a great place to start to get your students doing some out-of-class, non-curriculum PLI reading.

Again, the following books are all in Jack and Todd's new book. So, you can get a quick synopsis of each by reading their new book. Click on the ^ after each to go directly to that book's 800CEOREAD page, where you can read about the book and/or buy it. If there is more than one book listed in an Essential, I put an * to donate the one I would recommend most.

Vision
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will^
What Should I Do With My Life?*^

Integrity
Questions of Character^

Innovativeness
The Art of Innovation^
The Innovator's Dilemma^
Orbiting the Giant Hairball*^
The Creative Habit^

Wise Judgement
Influence*^
The Power of Intuition^

Service Mindedness
(This being a business book list, there isn't a book about service leadership. All the service books listed are about customer service.)

Goal Processing
Getting Things Done^

Skill Assessment
Now, Discover Your Strengths^

Emotional Maturity
Emotional Intelligence^

Fostering Relationships
How to Win Friends and Influence People*^
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team^
The Team Handbook^

Masterful Communication
Made to Stick*^
The Story Factor^
Never Give In!^

Following is a list of the books that I would recommend you have your students read, but they just don't fit nicely into one of the Ten Essentials:

General
The Leadership Challenge^
Leadership Is An Art*^
The Leadership Moment^
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People^

Wise Judgment: How a Millionaire Makes Decisions

A man walked into a bank in New York City and asked for the loan officer.

He told the loan officer that he was going to the Philippines on business for two weeks and needed to borrow $5,000. The bank officer told him that the bank would need some form of security for the loan.

Then the man handed over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produced the title and everything checked out. The loan officer agreed to accept the car as collateral for the loan. The bank’s president and its officers all enjoyed a good laugh at the guy for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan.

An employee of the bank then drove the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parked it there. Two weeks later, the guy returned, repaid the $5,000 and the interest, which came to $15.41.

The loan officer said, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is why you would bother to borrow $5,000. The millionaire replied, “Where else in New York City can I park my Ferrari for $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return?”

That's how the majority of the wealthy people in America get and remain wealthy. They know a ton more about money management than the average person and they use this specific knowledge to make better financial decisions.

Making better choices is mainly about getting great information and then disciplining yourself to use it.






Processing Questions for PLI Curriculum Teachers/Trainers:

1. The Millionaire came at the problem of parking his Ferrari from a different direction then most would. What is an area of your life that could benefit from attacking the problem from a different direction?

2. What are the advantages of attacking a problem from a different direction?

3. What are some ways you can discipline yourself to use the information you have to make better choices?

Wise Judgment: Have Mercy

We just presented at a leadership conference for 500 students in southern Oregon. We had eight of our best presenters working with these students for two full days on leadership and life skills. A good part of the students were respectful, attentive and ready to learn how to get better at life. However, there were certainly a large number of "squeaky wheels" that took our presentation energy and who spent their entire time at the conference being disruptive, disrespectful and, at certain times, just downright mean.

However, I have mercy for those kids. A teenager simply acts in response to their long-term environment. You can take a good kid, put them in a negative environment and, with enough time, they will make poor choices. And the reverse is true, as well. It saddens me as a trainer, speaker, coach and parent to see a young man disrespect a young woman in front of his peers because he simply doesn't know any better. Or to see a kid playing with his cell phone right through a life lesson that could have changed his entire life.

My wish is that every student leadership conference had mandatory attendance from the parents/guardians, as well. I firmly believe we are making a difference in the lives of young people with our Personal Leadership Insight conferences. I believe even more that for some of them, their parents/guardians need it much more.

With all that said, thanks to Asia and Cynthia and Tyler and all your positive peers for leaning into the conference and taking a ton away from the experience. We wish you the best.

General: Grant Me Leadership...

God grant me...


Vision to see opportunity.

Integrity to be what I say.


Innovativeness to create value.

Wise Judgment to choose right.


Service mindedness to be significant.

Processed Goals to live purposefully.


Emotional Maturity to act with control and grace.

Skill Assessment to engage my strength.


Fostered Relationships to experience the richness of life.

Masterful Communication to bring clarity into an unclear world.

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Wise Judgment: Quotes

“Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment.”
Euripides

“If you're not learning while you're earning, you're cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.”
Napoleon Hill

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
Albert Einstein

“The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions.”
John A. Simone, Jr.

“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year.”
John Foster Dulles

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Wise Judgment: The Stop Light Principle

The Stop Light Principle

"Great decision making is an act of getting emotions and systems to play nice together."

The Stop Light Principle allows millions of drivers to operate safely and securely every day. Every driver that pulls up to an intersection with a stop light instantly knows the recognized protocol for how to make their next decision - red light means stop, green light means go, yellow light means punch it! Effective leaders learn, practice and implement a system for making simple, daily decisions and for making huge, defining-moment decisions.

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General: Understanding the Pitfalls of Missing Links

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The Personal Leadership Insight Blog is built around our ten PLI Essentials. As you peruse through the posts, you will find each post discusses one of the ten. For deeper study into each Essential, click on an Essential in the PLI Tags list in the right-hand sidebar.

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Wise Judgment: Bodyguard

Your reputation needs a bodyguard. Business, school, peers, and even family members can and will ask you to help prop up their shortcomings by looking out for them first and your values and integrity second. This is a basic survival instinct, but is contrived. The best way to mentor and model for others is to stick to your core values on a yearly, monthly, daily, and hourly basis. To do this, your reputation needs a bodyguard to save your life as a leader. This bodyguard is your ability to make wise choices in the face of bad information.

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Wise Judgment: Child Leading a Child

I was reading an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the current state of our airline industry. With airlines still at "just after 9-11" reduced staff and airline schedule level, the stress produced from the customer and staff experience is at an all-time high. This is resulting in packed planes, delayed schedules and Denver luggage ending up in Sheboygan. The decisions having to be made by the airline leadership are complicated and it reminded me of a decision I was faced with on a recent trip.

Standing in the ticket line at the DFW airport, I had a man in front of me talking on a cell phone. He had a 4-year old girl trying to run around the airport in front of him. I say "a" and not "his" because I hope that he was just transporting a child movie star or helping out his brother and that he was not one of the primary care givers to this girl.

After being repeatedly warned to stay put, she finally made one final dash for anywhere other than the ticket line. He grabbed her arm, literally threw her back into him (her feet flew off the ground), picked her up and proceeded to threaten her within an inch of her life, all while still on the cell phone - obviously not talking to his anger management coach.

My "manly-man" instinct was to find someone four times larger than him, have that person give him the Vulcan death grip and throw him into a wall. Seeing that Andre the Giant obviously wasn't traveling to Dallas that day, I just bit my lip. However, my "leaderly-man" instinct was to not react, have empathy for his impatience and then thoughtfully consider whether I should intercede. Her life wasn't in immediate danger and I was not an authority figure in her life or in his life. In retrospect, I could have carefully asked him if he needed help.

Question - what would you have done? Say something to him? Say something to her? Say something to security? After getting my ticket, I just called my wife and asked if she would have driven to Dallas to visit me in the hospital if I would have said something to him and would have probably been thrown into the nearest load-bearing wall...

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