Before committing yourself or your team to any learning intervention you must be in a position where you can clearly answer the following questions with positive answers:

How does it seek to motivate me?

When attending a course you want it to stretch you with new ways of thinking and different ways to approach your work when you apply this new knowledge. The course you choose then must gain your commitment to using these new ways, not only because it makes sense but because, emotionally, you want to do it.

Does it start at the right point for me?

You have a unique background knowledge, what you have learnt from your formal education and work experience, how well you know yourself, how easy you find it to accept challenge and learning and are willing to try out new ways of doing things. Check the course content, does it assume too much or too little of you, hold your interest without lecturing, patronising or baffling you with jargon.

Has the course been designed for our team goals or is it an off the shelf course that does not fit our job?

Why waste time and money acquiring skills you don’t need or, worse still, get bored listening to what you already know. Choose a course that starts with an assessment of your needs and tailors the content to meet them. Clear work based goals will help you concentrate, achieving these goals will give you the satisfaction and confidence to continue with your new work practices. Look for a course that helps you set these goals and then focuses on giving you the skills to make them happen.

What style of learning is it and can we direct the pace?

Over the length of any the course you will acquire new knowledge and confidence; you may discover face new issues that have not seemed important before and require more attention. Check for flexibility that allows you to change content and direction to meet your evolving needs.

Will the content of the course help me apply my learning to the performance of the team and organisation?

Your new skills and techniques require practice to perfect, before they can become second nature. This requires time and opportunities for refining the skills in the real world as well as in training sessions. Seek out training that incorporates supported practice at your work. Your enthusiasm for your new ideas and ways of working will affect your working relationships with your seniors, peers and junior colleagues. The accepted ways of doing things within the organisation will either help or hinder you. Your ability to influence and adapt your new knowledge to the organisation may be part of the new skills you want to acquire.

What support do I get after the course?

It is an emotional experience to challenge and allow others to challenge your long held beliefs and ways of working. Having someone to talk to, who has been through a similar experience, can help you cope with these feelings and stop you getting disheartened when something doesn’t go right first time. Choose a course that builds in this support, either a coach or another participant that will continue to support for a few months after.  It is very easy for these skills to fade away if we don’t keep drawing them from our unconscious and put them use.

After each of my courses I always summarise with this renowned saying:

‘Tell me and I will forget’

‘Show me and I will remember’

‘Let me do it and I will understand’

Each of these questions are important for all managers, teams and individuals if they want to take their professional development seriously.

Interestingly he discusses what organisations in the future will need to improve on in the future with the first being an  increase in their agility to succeed and cope with global issues.  Secondly he mentions the importance of loyalty and how it will be crucial to develop good relationships with clients and employees if you are a leader.  Lastly he highlights integrity and trust and how leaders will need to sharpen up their ethics and morales due to how quickly your mistakes can be published in the media or social networks very quickly.

To me I was very surprised that these traits or behaviours are only being mentioned now on what will make the difference for the future of organisations. For years , they have been the core values of a British Soldier with the exception of agility. Nevertheless, although agility is not a core value it is the agility that makes them different and successful in any difficult environment.

Link below is the video:

Leadership 2030 results

Sometimes it can genuinely mean building the team: new people coming together, a change of roles, new expectations, sorting out difficulties or communication issues: all things that prompt the need for team building. But sometimes it isn’t that at all. For example, recently we were asked to run a team building day for a group of people and almost as soon as we met them and started putting the programme together, they realised they were a very ‘built’ team already. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that their ‘output’ wasn’t what the company expected from them and so they (the company) thought if they had a team building event the team would work better.

That’s not team building, it is, however, team development. And increasingly, we find that when people talk about team building that’s what they really mean. Part of this whole process is learning about how teams work. And,  no matter what the books say (and there are plenty of them) – every single team is different: there is no model you can follow that will create the perfect team. However , the key to the planning is the question below:

What do you want your teambuilding to achieve? Teams are complex machines and it’s not surprising that they malfunction occasionally or need re-alignment.

• Do you want people working better together?
• Do you want to set new team goals and agreements?
• Do you need to iron out communication difficulties that have crept in?
• Do you want a jolly – to reward the team for being terrific?
• Do you simply want to get everyone’s creative juices going and brainstorm new ideas?
• Do you need to set clear parameters and boundaries so everyone knows what’s expected of them?Do you want to inject some fresh enthusiasm and energy into a group that’s been working too hard and may have lost sight of the goal posts?

The five stages:

• Stage 1: Forming
• Stage 2: Storming
• Stage 3: Norming
• Stage 4: Performing
• Stage 5: Adjourning

This article provides background on each stage and an example of a team going through all five stages.

Stage 1: Forming

The “forming” stage takes place when the team first meets each other. In this first meeting, team members are introduced to each. They share information about their backgrounds, interests and experience and form first impressions of each other. They learn about the project they will be working on, discuss the project’s objectives/goals and start to think about what role they will play on the project team. They are not yet working on the project. They are, effectively, “feeling each other out” and finding their way around how they might work together.

During this initial stage of team growth, it is important for the team leader to be very clear about team goals and provide clear direction regarding the project. The team leader should ensure that all of the members are involved in determining team roles and responsibilities and should work with the team to help them establish how they will work together (”team norms”.) The team is dependent on the team leader to guide them.

Stage 2: Storming

As the team begins to work together, they move into the “storming” stage. This stage is not avoidable; every team – most especially a new team who has never worked together before – goes through this part of developing as a team. In this stage, the team members compete with each other for status and for acceptance of their ideas. They have different opinions on what should be done and how it should be done – which causes conflict within the team. As they go progress through this stage, with the guidance of the team leader, they learn how to solve problems together, function both independently and together as a team, and settle into roles and responsibilities on the team. For team members who do not like conflict, this is a difficult stage to go through.

The team leader needs to be adept at facilitating the team through this stage – ensuring the team members learn to listen to each other and respect their differences and ideas. This includes not allowing any one team member to control all conversations and to facilitate contributions from all members of the team. The team leader will need to coach some team members to be more assertive and other team members on how to be more effective listeners.

This stage will come to a closure when the team becomes more accepting of each other and learns how to work together for the good of the project. At this point, the team leader should start transitioning some decision making to the team to allow them more independence, but still stay involved to resolve any conflicts as quickly as possible.

Some teams, however, do not move beyond this stage and the entire project is spent in conflict and low morale and motivation, making it difficult to get the project completed. Usually teams comprised of members who are professionally immature will have a difficult time getting past this stage.

Stage 3: Norming

When the team moves into the “norming” stage, they are beginning to work more effectively as a team. They are no longer focused on their individual goals, but rather are focused on developing a way of working together (processes and procedures). They respect each other’s opinions and value their differences. They begin to see the value in those differences on the team. Working together as a team seems more natural. In this stage, the team has agreed on their team rules for working together, how they will share information and resolve team conflict, and what tools and processes they will use to get the job done. The team members begin to trust each other and actively seek each other out for assistance and input. Rather than compete against each other, they are now helping each other to work toward a common goal. The team members also start to make significant progress on the project as they begin working together more effectively.

In this stage, the team leader may not be as involved in decision making and problem solving since the team members are working better together and can take on more responsibility in these areas. The team has greater self-direction and is able to resolve issues and conflict as a group. On occasion, however, the team leader may step in to move things along if the team gets stuck. The team leader should always ensure that the team members are working collaboratively and may begin to function as a coach to the members of the team.

Stage 4: Performing

In the “performing” stage, teams are functioning at a very high level. The focus is on reaching the goal as a group. The team members have gotten to know each other, trust each other and rely on each other.

Not every team makes it to this level of team growth; some teams stop at Stage 3: Norming. The highly performing team functions without oversight and the members have become interdependent. The team is highly motivated to get the job done. They can make decisions and problem solve quickly and effectively. When they disagree, the team members can work through it and come to consensus without interrupting the project’s progress. If there needs to be a change in team processes – the team will come to agreement on changing processes on their own without reliance on the team leader.

In this stage, the team leader is not involved in decision making, problem solving or other such activities involving the day-to-day work of the team. The team members work effectively as a group and do not need the oversight that is required at the other stages. The team leader will continue to monitor the progress of the team and celebrate milestone achievements with the team to continue to build team camaraderie. The team leader will also serve as the gateway when decisions need to be reached at a higher level within the organization.

Even in this stage, there is a possibility that the team may revert back to another stage. For example, it is possible for the team to revert back to the “storming” stage if one of the members starts working independently. Or, the team could revert back to the “forming” stage if a new member joins the team. If there are significant changes that throw a wrench into the works, it is possible for the team to revert back to an earlier stage until they are able to manage through the change.

Stage 5: Adjourning

In the “adjourning” stage the project is coming to an end and the team members are moving off into different directions. This stage looks at the team from the perspective of the well-being of the team rather than from the perspective of managing a team through the original four stages of team growth.

The team leader should ensure that there is time for the team to celebrate the success of the project and capture best practices for future use. (Or, if it was not a successful project – to evaluate what happened and capture lessons learned for future projects.) This also provides the team the opportunity to say good-bye to each other and wish each other luck as they pursue their next endeavor. It is likely that any group that reached Stage 4: Performing will keep in touch with each other as they have become a very close knit group and there will be sadness at separating and moving on to other projects independently.

Is The Team Effective or Not?

There are various indicators of whether a team is working effectively together as a group. The characteristics of effective, successful teams include:

• Clear communication among all members
• Regular brainstorming session with all members participating
• Consensus among team members
• Problem solving done by the group
• Commitment to the project and the other team members
• Regular team meetings are effective and inclusive
• Timely hand off from team members to others to ensure the project keeps moving in the right direction
• Positive, supportive working relationships among all team members

Teams that are not working effectively together will display the characteristics listed below. The team leader will need to be actively involved with such teams. The sooner the team leader addresses issues and helps the team move to a more effective way of working together, the more likely the project is to end successfully.

• Lack of communication among team members.
• No clear roles and responsibilities for team members.
• Team members “throw work over the wall” to other team members, with lack of concern for timelines or work quality.
• Team members work alone, rarely sharing information and offering assistance.
• Team members blame others for what goes wrong, no one accepts responsibility.
• Team members do not support others on the team.
• Team members are frequently absent thereby causing slippage in the timeline and additional work for their team members.

Example of a Team Moving Through the Five Stages

Background and Team Members

A team has been pulled together from various parts of a large service organization to work on a new process improvement project that is needed to improve how the company manages and supports its client base. The team lead on this project is Sandra from the Chicago office who has 15 years experience as a project manager/team lead managing process improvement projects.

The other members of the team include:

• Peter: 10 years experience on various types of projects, expertise in scheduling and budget control (office location: London)
• Sarah: 5 years experience as an individual contributor on projects, strong programming background, some experience developing databases (office location: Glasgow)
• Martin: 8 years experience working on various projects, expertise in earned value management, stakeholder analysis and problem solving (office location: London)
• Donna: 2 years experience as an individual contributor on projects (office location: London)
• Anne: 7 years experience on process improvement projects, background in developing databases, expertise in earned value management (office location: Glasgow)

Sandra has worked on projects with Sarah and Martin, but has never worked with the others. Donna has worked with Martin. No one else has worked with other members of this team. Sandra has been given a very tight deadline to get this project completed.

Sandra has decided that it would be best if the team met face-to-face initially, even though they will be working virtually for the project. She has arranged a meeting at the London office (company headquarters) for the entire team. They will spend 2 days getting introduced to each other and learning about the project.

The Initial Meeting (Stage 1: Forming)

The day of the face-to-face meeting in New York has arrived. All team members are present. The agenda includes:

• Personal introductions
• Team building exercises
• Information about the process improvement project
• Discussion around team roles and responsibilities
• Discussion around team norms for working together
• Introduction on how to use the SharePoint site that will be used for this project to share ideas, brainstorm, store project documentation, etc.

The team members are very excited to meet each other. Each of them has heard of one another, although they have not worked together as a team before. They believe they each bring value to this project. The team building exercises have gone well; everyone participated and seemed to enjoy the exercises. While there was some discussion around roles and responsibilities – with team members vying for “key” positions on the team – overall there was agreement on what needed to get done and who was responsible for particular components of the project.

The onsite meeting is going well. The team members are getting to know each other and have been discussing their personal lives outside of work – hobbies, family, etc. Sandra is thinking that this is a great sign that they will get along well – they are engaged with each other and genuinely seem to like each other!

The Project Work Begins (Stage 2: Storming)

The team members have gone back to their home offices and are beginning work on their project. They are interacting via the SharePoint site and the project is off to a good start. And then the arguments begin.

Peter has put up the project schedule based on conversations with only Martin and Anne on the team. Donna and Sarah feel as if their input to the schedule was not considered. They believe because they are more junior on the team, Peter has completely disregarded their concerns about the timeline for the project. They challenged Peter’s schedule, stating that it was impossible to achieve and was setting up the team for failure. At the same time, Sarah was arguing with Anne over who should lead the database design and development effort for this project. While Sarah acknowledges that Anne has a few years more experience than she does in database development, she only agreed to be on this project in order to take a lead role and develop her skills further so she could advance at the company. If she knew Anne was going to be the lead she wouldn’t have bothered joining this project team. Additionally, Martin appears to be off and running on his own, not keeping the others apprised of progress nor keeping his information up to date on the SharePoint site. No one really knows what he has been working on or how much progress is being made.

Sandra had initially taken a side role during these exchanges, hoping that the team would work it out for themselves. However, she understands from past experience managing many project teams that it is important for her to take control and guide the team through this difficult time. She convenes all of the team members for a virtual meeting to reiterate their roles and responsibilities (which were agreed to in the kick-off meeting) and to ensure that they understand the goals and objectives of the project. She made some decisions since the team couldn’t come to agreement. She determined that Anne would lead the database development design component of the project, working closely with Sarah so she can develop further experience in this area. She reviewed the schedule that Peter created with the team, making adjustments where necessary to address the concerns of Donna and Sarah. She reminded Martin that this is a team effort and he needs to work closely with the others on the team.

During the virtual meeting session, Sandra referred back to the ground rules the team set in their face-to-face meeting and worked with the team to ensure that there was a plan in place for how decisions are made on the team and who has responsibility for making decisions.

Over the next few weeks, Sandra noticed that arguments/disagreements were at a minimum and when they did occur, they were worked out quickly, by the team, without her involvement being necessary. Still, she monitored how things were going and held regular virtual meetings to ensure the team was moving in the right direction. On a monthly basis, Sandra brings the team together for a face-to-face meeting. As the working relationships of the team members started improving, Sandra started seeing significant progress on the project.

All is Going Smoothly (Stage 3: Norming)

The team has now been working together for nearly 3 months. There is definitely a sense of teamwork among the group. There are few arguments and disagreements that can’t be resolved among the team. They support each other on the project – problem solving issues, making decisions as a team, sharing information and ensuring that the ground rules put in place for the team are followed.

Additionally, the team members are helping each other to grow and develop their skills. For example, Anne has worked closely with Sarah to teach her many of the skills he has learned in database design and development and she has been able to take the lead on accomplishing some of the components of their aspect of the project.

Overall, the team members are becoming friends. They enjoy each other’s company – both while working on the project and after hours via communicating on email, via instant messaging, on Twitter, or over the telephone.

Significant Progress is Made! (Stage 4: Performing)

The team is now considered a “high performing team.” It wasn’t easy getting to this stage but they made it! They are working effectively as a group – supporting each other and relying on the group as a whole to make decisions on the project. They can brainstorm effectively to solve problems and are highly motivated to reach the end goal as a group. When there is conflict on the team – such as a disagreement on how to go about accomplishing a task – the group is able to work it out on their own without relying on the team leader to intervene and make decisions for them. The more junior members – Donna and Sarah – have really developed their skills with the support and help of the others. They have taken on leadership roles for some components of the project.

Sandra checks in with the team – praising them for their hard work and their progress. The team celebrates the milestones reached along the way. When necessary, Sandra provides a link from the team to the executives for decisions that need to come from higher up or when additional support is needed.

The project is on time and within budget. Milestones are being met – some are even ahead of schedule. The team is pleased with how well the project is going along, as is Sandra and the executives of the organization.

Time to Wrap Up (Stage 5: Adjourning)

The project has ended. It was a huge success! The internal customer is pleased and there is definitely an improvement in how the company supports its clients. It has been a great 8 months working together…with some ups and downs of course. Each of the individuals on the project will be moving to other projects within the organization, but no one is going to be on the same project. They will miss working with each other but have vowed to remain friends and keep in touch on a personal level – hopefully to work together again soon!

The team has gotten together in the London office to discuss the project, including documenting best practices and discussing what worked effectively and what they would improve upon given the chance to do it again. Sandra has taken the team out to dinner. They are joined by the project sponsor and some other executives who are extremely pleased with the end result.

The End!

This is a simplistic view of a team working through the five stages of team development. I hope it provides some benefit to you.

Remember that at any time this team could revert back to a previous stage. Let’s assume that another individual joins the team – the team will revert back to the “forming” stage as they learn how to work with the new team member; reestablishing team guidelines, finding their way again, and learning how to work cohesively as a team. Or, let’s assume that Martin slips back into his old ways of keeping to himself and not sharing information with the team – this may cause the team to revert back to the “storming” stage.

Summary

It is important to remember that every team – regardless of what the team is working on – will follow these stages of team development. It is the job of the team leader to help see the team through these stages; to bring them to the point where they are working as effectively as possible toward a common goal.

I found this this article a great explanation of each of the stages of team development that I wanted to share with my readers which was written by Gina Abudi @ PMhut.com

An interview from the EI guru Daniel Goleman

Here are five potential dysfunctions of a team in Lencioni’s model:

1.  Absence of Trust

This outcome occurs when team members are reluctant to be vulnerable with one another and are unwilling to admit their mistakes, weaknesses, or need for help. Without a certain comfort level among team members, a foundation of trust is not possible.

2.  Fear of Conflict

Teams that are lacking trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate about key issues. It creates
situations where team conflict can easily turn into veiled discussions and back channel comments. In a work setting where team members do not openly air their opinions, inferior decisions result.

3.  Lack of Commitment

Without conflict, it is difficult for team members to commit to decisions, fostering an environment where ambiguity prevails. Lack of direction and commitment can make employees, particularly star employees, disgruntled and disenfranchised.

4.  Avoidance of Accountability

When teams do not commit to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven individuals are hesitant to call their peers on actions and behaviours that may seem counterproductive to the overall good of the team.

5.  Inattention to Results

Team members naturally tend to put their own needs (e.g., ego, career development, recognition, and so on) ahead of the collective goals of the team when individuals are not held accountable. If a team has lost sight of the need for
achievement, the business ultimately suffers.

When the team are working in harmony, these dysfunctions cease to cause problems. Lencioni’s model highlights the results when the team lack trust, and this should be the area you concentrate on the most.

1. Know Your Role

While you may be the leader of the group, your primary concern must be the group itself. Even if you’re a hands-on manager, remember you’re also there to coach, evaluate, and mentor. Make time to attend to each of these areas regularly and allow the team to grow with experience and trust.

2. Understand the Value of Your Employees

You can’t accomplish your team’s objectives by yourself, so work hard to help your employees do their jobs using their strengths and bringing on the weak areas that need developing . Remove obstacles, work through glitches, and fight for the resources your employees need to achieve success.

3. Keep Fairness in Mind

Avoid playing favourites or putting your own ambitions above those of your team, because people are quick to sniff out words and actions that are unfair or self-serving. You’ll still need to make unpopular decisions from time-to-time, but you’ll retain your team’s respect.

4. Treat Your Employees Like Adults

Few things undermine respect and enthusiasm as quickly as being criticised, disciplined, or embarrassed in public. Allow employees the courtesy of carrying out sensitive discussions in private, give them the benefit of the doubt when mistakes occur, and never lose sight of their individual career goals.

5. Look for Each Member’s Strengths and Leverage Them

By utilising an employee’s natural strengths to their full potential, you’ll not only allow the employee to feel a tremendous sense of value and accomplishment, you’ll also be giving your team the benefit of those skills.

6. Encourage Success

When an employee accomplishes a tough goal or really pulls out a win, seize on it. Let the rest of the team know about the accomplishment, look for other ways to repeat the success on future projects, and keep an eye out for opportunities that would allow the employee to help mentor others to achieve similar results.

7. Give Prompt, Direct, and Useful Feedback

Without it, your employees will become frustrated that their efforts aren’t paying off, and you’ll be equally exasperated because your team isn’t reaching its potential.

8. Focus on Long-term Success

Don’t expect employees to learn new skills, modify behaviours, or improve their performance overnight. Instead, work on small changes here and there, and you’ll find solid long-term results.

9. Use Mistakes as a Learning Tool

Once you’ve worked with the team to correct an error, shift your focus to helping them understand how the mistake occurred, what signposts they missed originally, and how they can avoid repeating the same mistake later.

10. Realize That You Aren’t an Expert in Everything

If you have a team member with more expertise in a particular area, don’t try to hide or mitigate it-celebrate it! Successful teams combine each member’s specific talents into a high-performing whole, and any ego or insecurities you bring to the table will only undermine that.

For the organisation, the value of the military-to-organisation skill set transition comes when military skills and methodologies are translated into the context that creates the greatest value for the organisation. Just because it worked well in combat or worked well for a military organisation does not mean that it will do so for a civilian or commercial organisation. A military technique must constantly translate the language, context, framework, and effectiveness of the military skills to the organisation in which they now serve. Additionally, military skills must further be adapted to the organisation as that organisation transforms to position itself surrounding the factors of customers, competition, regulation, and other environmental influences. Just like combat, no environment, business model, or customer base is static — effective evolution is a must.

The military has a wide range of skill sets and proficiencies that business needs:

Intelligence: The military excels at systematic and ongoing analysis of competitors as well as how the operating environment influences the outcome and potential success of an operation. Additionally, a uniform, frequent, and ongoing intelligence effort provides a common competitive assessment to an organisation. In an organisation’s leadership, how many leaders have a common view of competitive threats? How often is the competitive analysis updated?

Planning and Preparation: The creation of a timely, comprehensive, and structured plan is the hallmark of military operational planning. Many organisations do this well. However, what most organisations lack is the creation of multiple contingency plans, the use of wargaming or competitor-on-competitor scenarios, and mission rehearsals to ensure a flawless execution.

Execution: This requires the ability to rapidly adjust and improvise when an operation does not go according to plan. The use of Commander’s Intent, a military planning and execution framework that describes the commander’s description and definition of success, is an essential tool when operating in a dynamic and chaotic environment. When a plan changes, military personnel rapidly adjust their actions using independent action and initiative to meet Commander’s Intent.

Team Leadership: The value of good leadership goes beyond the team being led. Good team leadership extends into leadership by example and positive role models that can inspire throughout the organisation.

Subordinate Development: The military uses a process known as the performance coaching session employed by the immediate supervisor of a military member to address what soldiers, marines, sailors, or airmen did well, what they need to improve, and the plan of action to make them a better overall contributor. This inherent subordinate development process is of extraordinary value for an organisation because it makes every employee in the organisation better.

Military veterans and military techniques, when applied properly to an organisation’s culture and business processes, can bring value to corporations, non-profits, non-governmental organisation, and educational institutions. All of these organisations can benefit in vast and immediate ways through the application of military skills to their operations.

We found this article on HBR by Chad Storlie.

A fireman in Cleveland was battling – and failing – to control a kitchen fire when suddenly he had the urge to pull his men out of the room immediately. He didn’t know why; all he knew was in that split second they had to get out.

The team rushed from the room and seconds later the floor collapsed into an inferno below. The fire hadn’t actually been coming from the kitchen but the basement, so the firemen had in fact just been fighting the tops of the flames rather than the heart of the fire.

How did the fireman know to give that order to get out? Was he one of those people who seem to be gifted with psychic powers, as he himself became convinced? The truth is it was not paranormal forces at work but a dramatic demonstration of the power that our unconscious self wields over what we do.

It is commonly assumed by decision-makers – particularly in business – that their choices are usually made after they’ve given the subject in question a good deal of thought and weighed up the options.

One man who assumed rational decision-making was the norm was Peer Soelburg, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is an expert in how we make our decisions and taught ‘rational choice strategy’, which had 5 stages and was supposed to ensure effective decisions.

These steps were:

1. identify the options
2. evaluate the options
3. give a weighting to each of these
4. ask how they rate compared to one another
5. pick the option that comes out on top

To prove how effective this was he decided to base his PhD thesis on how his students selected their jobs when they finished their degrees. After all his hard work with them in his classes he thought – quite understandably – that they would use the rational choice strategy he taught them. But he was quite wrong. Instead they made it all based on intuition, or rather, their gut instinct.

Despite all the training he gave them in the rational method they ignored this in favour of going with their gut instinct – even if they didn’t realise it. The students themselves wouldn’t admit they were using intuition and claimed they were checking all the options before deciding. But Soelburg found when he analysed their behaviour he could guess what job they would go for weeks before the students themselves said they have decided. His success rate was 87%.

What was actually happening, according to Soelburg, was their subconscious was telling the students what would be best for them and then they were constructing arguments to prop up this decision rather than really analysing the other options. This ‘analysis’ was therefore just adding extra time to the process not actually scrutinising it.

On another occasion, scientists in Iowa looking into how our emotions affected our decision-making found further evidence of this unconscious force driving us. They asked volunteers to choose cards from any of four decks put in front of them. The volunteers were told that some of the decks would give them a better chance of winning than others. When they turned over a card they would learn whether they had won or lost points.

How it worked was two of the packs had big wins but bigger losses in them, while the other two had smaller wins, but were more likely to leave you with more points in the long run. The scientists found that after about 50 cards the volunteers had developed a good hunch as to what was going on. After 80 they had it pegged and completely ignored the packs with the big losses.

This isn’t remarkable – they just learned what was happening by taking the evidence they had, weighing it up, and making a decision. This is back to the rational method described above. But here’s the interesting bit: the scientists had attached a machine to the gambling guinea pigs that measured the activity of the sweat glands below the skin in the palms of their hands.

What they found from their data was the volunteers started to sweat – i.e. exhibit a stress response – after taking only 10 cards. At this time they also started to pick more and more of the cards which would ultimately give them better returns. Their subconscious had worked out what was going on at least 40 cards before the volunteers actually came to realise it.

And so we return to the story of the fireman in Cleveland. His story came to light when decision-making expert Gary Klein took his case on board and spent two years analysing it to find out just how the fireman had known disaster was imminent. Klein took him over the scenario time and time again to build up a picture of what happened.

“The first thing was that the fire didn’t behave the way it was supposed to,” Klein said. “Kitchen fires should respond to water – this one didn’t. He told me that he always keeps his earflaps up because he wants to get a sense of how hot the fire is, and he was surprised at how hot this one was. A kitchen fire shouldn’t have been that hot.

“I asked him: ‘What else?’

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen, and the other thing that surprised him was that the fire wasn’t noisy. It was quiet, and that didn’t make sense given how much heat there was.”

Looking back on it this all added up to the fact that it wasn’t a kitchen fire: it wouldn’t go out because they weren’t tackling the source of the fire, it was quiet because it was muffled by the floor and finally it was really hot because of all the heat rising from below. The fireman made all these connections unconsciously and saved the day.

But ask yourself this: what if he had taken the rational approach and decided to analyse what was going on and justify it? It all would have ended in disaster. Does this mean that by teaching our leaders to think in this logical, reasoned way, we are losing one of the most powerful and effective tools we have – the power of intuition? Or is our insistence on logic and analysis just wasting time because our subconscious has already made a decision and we are only going to labour to justify it?

This interesting article was orginally written by Kevin McAlpin and Gavin Ingham at http://www.performancecoachinginternational.com/resources/articles/truthofdecisionmaking.asp