How many of you reread your books?  How about re-listen to your books? I’m listening to an audible book for the third time and it is called “Change Your Questions, Change Your Life” written by Marilee Adams, Ph.D.  The book gives me something new each time I connect it in my car or plug in a pair of ear buds during my commute.  Adams runs an organization called the Inquiry Institute which includes the tag line “great results begin with great questions.”  The book is told in a story format which gives me a fictional situation of a person who is in a leadership role and struggles with…well…leading.  (I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in further developing their leadership communication skills.)

Many times, we assume that what got us our leadership role are the hard skills to get the job done.  One of the most humbling experiences I’ve encountered is the realization that my success is based on how well my staff perform, the day I realized that I no longer controlled my success through how many widgets I could produce but how many widgets I could lead a team to produce.  A struggle that many have is how to coerce, cajole, or browbeat a person to your way of thinking or behaving.  However, that is not leadership — by a long shot.  One needs to remember that every person has a choice of whether or not they are going to work for you.  They obviously presented something that made you hire them, right?  Well, why not bring those qualities out? Why not cultivate the individual perspective so that you can create an environment of diverse thought?

The title of this post discusses judgement.  So that we are clear just what is being discussed, let’s have a definition.  Merriam-Webster.com defines judgement as “the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing.”  The question to be answered in this definition is just what are we comparing to? Truly, we are comparing our own perception and/or experience in the matter, aren’t we?  What else might a person have to compare?  So, if I’m a very experienced traveler, for example, and I’m traveling with someone who has never flown on an airplane, my judgement on the situation may be very different from the air travel newbie.

Adams discusses the importance of setting aside judgment and asking questions about the situation or event.  In many situations, you might not even know you are actually making a judgment as the idea is just a part of our functionality.  We judge people very quickly and, probably, incorrectly.  A 2014 Time Magazine article called “Our Brains Immediately Judge People” highlighted a number of studies on how quickly we make judgements…in fact, probably so fast that we don’t even realize the nuance.

However, once we realize that we are capable of misjudging a person or situation, our success is dependent on how we adjust.  Leadership really is a series of judgements, critical evaluation, and taking corrective action where needed.  If one already knows that part of this key area is inherently flawed by just being human, this knowledge and being mindful of our unique situations is the first step in effective leadership.