So, first things first, what the hell is a heuristic?
A heuristic is a mental shortcut most commonly used to help us simplify problems and avoid cognitive overload.
Heuristics are an important part of how the human brain is wired, and how it’s evolved, which in turn allows people to quickly reach reasonable decisions or solutions to complex problems.
These mental shortcuts sound amazing right? An easy way to use what you already know to help you work faster? They can be really helpful, but as with many things, there are risks.
Heuristics can often be super helpful for you by:
Helps you get to a conclusion faster
Reduces the mental strain needed to make decisions
Helps you with complex problem-solving
Turns complex questions into simple ones
However, heuristics can also lead to hidden cognitive biases.
As an example, think about the availability heuristic. You’ll be more likely to make a decision based on information that pops into your mind quickly because you have recently been looking at something similar.
Imagine you are reading articles on a regular basis about hostile managers and the damage they cause. This means that your availability heuristic will more easily help you identify this trait in managers at work because the heuristic is helping you get from A to B too fast.
Because of this, it’s important to understand what heuristics you use. Those heuristics could impact your daily decision-making process.
Here’s some of the most commonly used heuristics:
Affect
This is all about how people react to different stimulus and how this affects decision making. It could be any positive or negative feeling they experience at a particular moment and in a specific situation.
Anchoring
In this heuristic people tend to make their judgment based solely on the very first pieces of information they get, often called an “anchor”. Unfortunately the decision is usually made quickly so it may be inaccurate. Impulsive decision-makers forget or ignore other facts, making poorer choices.
Availability
This one we already mentioned. It’s due to our search to reach the best conclusions means we look to the sources that are the most readily available ones.
Representativeness
This makes people evaluate the likelihood of a solution or conclusion to a situation based on a similar past event that acts as representative data. It, thus, provides a reasonable probability of selecting the most effective alternative under uncertainty. You’re simply judging it based on the closest experience you have experienced.
Once you know what these are, and the ones you use the most, you can pause and analyse the effect they are having on your decision-making. This takes some effort because our heuristics feel very comfortable to us. They feel ‘right’ and it can be hard to challenge them.
A way to challenge?
After making a decision, especially a quick one, try to take a step back and consider what other possibilities existed that you didn’t choose. If you had chosen one of them, would the outcome have been different? This helps you internally calibrate if your heuristics are helping you make better decisions (or not)
Making BRAVE decisions
When you work with us we share our BRAVE principles to help you make your decisions in a well-formed and well informed style.
At We Are BRAVE, bear in mind, (pun intended) that we all are proud learning geeks, so when we think Goldilocks, we imagine something very different to most people.
We think about The Zone of Proximal Development. Yep. Really. We know it sounds like something in a Marvel movie.
Learning happens best in the zone of proximal development. This has been defined as the place where learning is still challenging enough to be interesting, but not too challenging that it becomes overwhelming. It’s within this strangely named zone that the really good learning occurs the most.
Most humans are a little bit like Goldilocks. They don’t want their porridge too hot or too cold.
What we’re really looking for, is for our porridge to be ‘just right’.
This leads us to the hook. Just right is also how most people like their learning and development.
Studies have shown that when learning or problem solving begins, our clever computer like brains quickly make a judgement call on what’s about to happen. Either, this is going to be too hard – I should abort, or this is going to be easy – I might get bored, therefore it’s time to check out.
At We Are BRAVE we make sure that our learning hits the ‘zone’ and helps the learner say ‘this is pretty interesting, and feels a little challenging, but I’m curious to know more’
Whether it’s our range of development programmes, our flagship BRAVE product or one of the many other solutions we both develop and deliver for our clients, you can be sure that we’ve applied the Goldilocks Test to make sure your experience is one you won’t forget.
What we can’t promise you is a bowl of porridge. Or 3 bears.
If you’d like to learn more about what we do, and how we can help you then get in touch today to start the conversation.
Now, before we start…don’t judge me but I have realised how much I miss attending conferences!
I was invited to attend #FuelX as the guest of the speaker and panel expert Robin Erickson. The event was hosted by Fuel50, a purpose-driven and progressive talent platform founded by Anna Fulton.
All things talent, engagement, learning and retention were discussed and in particular how current challenges could be addressed with more forward-thinking ideas and practical solutions. We were treated to case studies from giant corporates such as Johnson & Johnson to the world-changing United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Who, as a side-note, have an internal learning & HR team of just three people. Three!
I’ve distilled what I heard and what I found insightful in this article. I will say up front, I was really impressed with how each case study showed how they had shifted not only the approach to talent & learning but also their culture and mindset by engaging a purpose-driven platform (and no, this is not a #ad for Fuel50!).
The key discussion areas of the day
Talent: great resignation, attracting & retaining, encouraging & growing the right peole AND the right careers
Skills: what do employees, what do organisations need and how do you get those two things aligned
Culture, culture, culture: organisations can make or break any of the above if the culture works in direct opposition to progress. Bias-breaking culture is what’s needed
Here are my top take-aways:
Talent: gaining it, retaining it, inspiring it
Robin Erickson spoke brilliantly about an organisational ‘talent mindset’ and about how you may be unaware of how your systems ‘filter’ talent before it even gets to you. For example, do you know for certain how any talent recruitment process (internal or external) filters for education and gaps in employments?
She challenged the room to be conscious and deliberate with thinking about your talent pool and challenging mind-sets around the more traditional CV expectations. It is limiting to think about the best candidate being the most educated. What is wrong with someone taking an employment break?
Our focus over the past few years on well-being, breaking bias and focussing on the individual means organisations (and their processes) need to shift to reflect this.
Ask yourself these questions:
What comes to mind when you think of the talent you want to attract?
Who are you ignoring based on out-dated modes of thinking?
How is your platform & process supporting or hindering the scope of the talent pool you can accesss?
Robin gave an inspirational example of how the formerly incarcerated have been given work-opportunities in the US (Robin is from Chicago) and have proven over and over how their attitude and motivation often outstrips those from other traditional routes.
Finally and most importantly, think about your bias-driven language when you want to attract (and retain) people. How well are you speaking to your audience or is it also limiting your reach?
Skills – the ones you want to acquire, retire and inspire
(that phrase is unashamedly stolen from Nick Holmes @ Fishawack Health)
From the different case studies and the panel-expert discussions one theme came through loud and clear: we need robot-proof skills! Which skills do people want to grow (acquire), recognise can be left behind (retire) and are not even aware of yet (inspire)
Once those are defined, how do people get hold of the skills and shout about them to enable their career development?
This was an interesting discussion: getting an organisation to shift from experience-led (eg: roles) career development to skills-led career development. That’s quite an organisational mind-set shift but no different or less important than the shift needed for acquiring or retaining talent, as mentioned above.
The shift is to no longer place absolute priority on ‘have you done the JOB’ and to move to ‘have you got the transferrable SKILLS?’. There is always the argument for technically specific role experience (think doctors, scientific roles) but that argument is too often used across other parts of an organisation where it’s less necessary.
Again, this means a shift in organisational mind-set eg: culture. I’m coming to that one next.
What are those all important robot-proof skills that will help growth, career development and organisational innovation. This is not a definitive list but the themes that were mentioned more than three times:
Critical thinking
Empathy
Collaboration
Intellectual curiosity
What are some of the ideas around developing these skills. What I heard as the most exciting part of the case studies was the ‘gig assignments’ – essentially setting up the opportunities for people to work on a project, in another department, to develop specific skills. Amazing collaboration and idea-sharing not to mention the innovation and creativitiy that came from some of the unlikely partnerships across an organisation.
Culture, culture, culture – is it eating itself?
This topic is bigger than 15 lines in a blog but here is what I heard and what I can definitely identify with, in my experience.
Compassionate, curious, forward-thinking: this is the culture that supports people and grows an organisation and yet we know processes and attitudes can drive the very opposite outcomes.
Leadership play a critical role and the focus on recognising and rewarding leaders who grow and ecourage high-performing talent not just high-performing teams. Having leaders that are expected to show how and where they have grown talent not how they have protected and retained (at worst, stifled) their team’s talent & career.
Platforms and systems that remove bias, show skills gaps and talent pools, internally. So the challenge can be laid at decision-makers and those who influence the culture at all levels.
One speaker challenges his leadership team to think continually about their organisational mind-set by asking three questions;
“With this approach can our employees say
Can I trust you?
Do you care?
Are you committed to me as a person?”
It’s not so much that the answers always need to be ‘yes’ to those questions but have you paused and checked on the culture you’re driving with your actions.
And finally, the ‘Great Resignation’ needs to be seen as a cultural opportunity to offer a ‘Great Renegotiation’. What does this organisation need to offer and renegotiate to ensure they are future-proofed for their people.
Thankyou again to Anne Fulton and the team at FuelX – it was a great day and I have two books to read along with trend reports. I’ll finish as I started: don’t judge me, I’ve missed conferences!
You can learn more about the conference by clicking the link below.
We’re so excited to have been invited to talk about BRAVE and the power of having difficult conversations by the London Institute of Banking & Finance. 👍🏻
It was a brilliant experience and we hope you love it. You can listen by clicking here.
We’ve also created a BRAVE Podcast Download that you can download & keep giving you an insight into what a BRAVE programme can do for you.
We talked about this horrible feeling of ‘blah’ way back in 2021, mid pandemic, when it became the coined name for what so many of us were feeling. A miserable mid-point between fed up and down and out depression but you couldn’t quite put your finger on what to call it.
Languishing was the buzzword we needed.
If you still have this feeling hanging over you you’re probably feeling more than a little bit meh.
Muddling through a week? Everything lost its shine? Lost your get up and go?
Maybe you just don’t bounce out of bed like you used to, or you do have energy, but just not in the same way. You know it’s not a feeling of ‘all is lost’ because you don’t feel hopeless, but you might feel like all the fun is being sucked out of stuff and you’ve just lost your general sense of direction.
Organisational Psychologist, Adam Grant called languishing the ‘neglected middle child of mental health’ in his NY Times article. We think that name is just perfect!
So, we spent time thinking about this and decided to focus this article on how to help you move forward from this dreadful fun-removing feeling.
We want to help you flourish.
So, what does it mean to flourish, and how is it different from languishing?
The way we look at it is if languishing is at one end of the road, the other far end is flourishing. When you languish you can feel disinterested, have a loss of focus and feel a little bit disconnected.
At the other end of that road is those who are flourishing and they’re experiencing engagement and joy in what they are doing. Flourishing can be said to feel like a sense of being connected to your life, your day to day and even towards the relationships you have, and the job you do.
When you flourish, you’ve got bags of energy and, more importantly, the will to do something with it. You’ll feel like you have direction and the courage to get on, do it and take ownership of your mental health and how you feel.
We did some research and found Dr. Martin Seligman. His research on flourishing says the best way to move from languish to flourish is using something called the PERMA model. Dr Seligman developed PERMA as an acronym to help him share the elements of what leads to flourishing.
We’ll share one thing we think you can do under each of his research headings, to see if we can help you onto the path of flourishing by cultivating the five PERMA factors in your life:
We all have something that does it for us. Running each day, a comedy movie, time with family & friends, gardening or getting down to DIY. There is something in all of us that ticks the engage button. Whatever it is, do more of it as it builds your energy, passion and of course your engagement levels.
It’s often easy to let relationships drift when you languish, but in fact we need to reach out more, make contact, make new friends, start new conversations and network. Set yourself the challenge to start one new conversation each week and watch the confidence start to flourish with each interaction.
Make good choices with the work you are doing. We all need purposeful work, so make sure that even if not everything you do contains it, at least one thing each day has a meaning. Try planning for the future too, it’s a sure-fire way to get you to focus on something that is out of the here & now.
Set some small attainable goals, perhaps even using some of the tips we’ve given you above. Make sure to focus on what you have done and reward accomplishments. Rewarding yourself for getting things done helps you move from languish to flourish. The more you do it, the further down the road you move towards the land of flourish-ville.
So, what are you waiting for?
If you liked this article and it’s inspired you to leave languishing behind then share it with others to help them and get out there and start your PERMA actions to change.
At We Are BRAVE we’re full of useful insights that can help you, your teams and your business reach its potential. Get in touch to see what we can do for you.
I’m Alex Manners. I’m proud to be an Asperger’s Champion, a motivational speaker, TV & radio presenter & author. I’m focused, determined and have a lust for life. I consider myself lucky to have Asperger’s because I believe it will be the catalyst that allows me to “pursue my passions” and achieve my dreams!
I present talks on “My Life Living with Asperger’s” to many different companies, law firms, universities, schools and autism groups. I have presented talks to places such as Coca Cola, Linklaters, Viacom, Zurich Insurance and the Autism Shows across the UK. I have also written many articles and had many TV & Radio interviews on my Asperger’s, Presented my own children’s radio show for two years, have started my own “Autism & Football” campaign, appeared on series 10 & 11 of “The Undateables” on Channel 4 and written my own book.
Presenting live talks
Presenting talks in in front of hundreds of people would be daunting for most individuals! My grandma once said that she would not be able to eat for a week if she had to present a live talk. However, I absolutely love presenting talks all about my Asperger’s, whether online or face to face. I am never nervous and like to look upon this ability as one of my ‘Asperger’s Superpowers’.
I was diagnosed with Asperger’s when I was 10 years old and have been presenting talks all about “My Life Living with Asperger’s” for the past three or four years. Before covid hit the UK I had never presented an online talk before. Suddenly that was about to change.
Online v face to face
At first, I found working online a challenge as I missed meeting people, travelling the UK and going on adventures. One of the most difficult things was that I could not see the reactions of people during a talk. I could therefore not gauge how a talk was going until the end. If I am being honest, I was only presenting talks online due to covid so I was in a pretty stressful place anyway.
Now I am presenting nearly all of my talks online and I have grown to love working in this way. Firstly, I can reach lots more people from all over the world. I am not limited to how many people can fit in a room so can essentially speak to as many people as I like. When presenting face to face talks, I can only fit one or maybe two in a day due to the logistics of travel. Now I can present up to five talks a day. I can also work from home, in my own office, in an environment totally suited to my needs.
Travel and public transport
However, the best thing about working online is that I don’t have to travel. Traveling can be the most challenging part about my work. What happens if one of my trains is delayed or what do I do if I lose my ticket. These are just some of the worries I have. Also, lots of people with Asperger’s struggle in busy environment and with certain sounds and smells. So, not having all of these travel worries is fantastic.
My advice
When presenting an online talk, I always make sure that I log in 10-15 minutes early. This gives me time if something goes wrong. I also ensure that I have a spare laptop, phone or device I can use should my main laptop stop working. My biggest worry Is always with the Wi-Fi. Luckily, I have never had a problem with my Wi-Fi yet during a talk. Our neighbours have a different internet provider and they have very kindly agreed that should our Wi-Fi stop working I can always go and work or present a talk in their house. So, having back up plans is really important.
When I am travelling to a venue by train, I always ensure that I get the train before the one I need. It is better to arrive early than be worried about being late! Another thing I always do, is print off any tickets. This is encase I have no Wi-Fi on my phone or my phone runs out of battery. I also print of my directions and times of each train. What I try to do is minimise an many possible problems as I can.
When I am presenting a talk, I always pretend that I am speaking to my parents in the living room. If there is something or someone I am familiar with then I can always focus on them during my talk. I also ensure that I can always see a clock. This helps me to dictate the timings of my talk.
What if you deliver a training session and a delegate has Asperger’s?
When you are speaking to somebody with Asperger’s there are a few things that you can do. Explain things in as much detail as you can, avoid using any idioms, phrases or sarcasm, give them more time to answer a question and don’t worry if they are not giving you any eye contact. Also, if you are asking them questions then closed questions are always better for us than open questions.
Always have a quiet space that the individual can use if they need a short break or if they become a little stressed. Adapting the environment is also very important. So, if they don’t like sitting near a clock due to the ticking noise then allow them to sit further way from the clock. If you know this individual will be present before the training starts, then send them over as much information about the training as you can beforehand. Include the structure of the session and any photos of the room or location. When sending over this information, it may be a good time to ask them about any adjustments that can be made to help them on the day.
Conclusion
Whilst having Asperger’s can be a challenge, it is also something that I look upon as a positive. Being able to start my own business and present talks in front of large audiences is definitely two of those positives or ‘Asperger’s Superpowers’. I never feel nervous speaking in front of large numbers of people and am very brave to be able to share my story to educate and inspire others. I also feel extremely lucky to have been able to manage my Asperger’s over the past 25 years. Because Asperger’s is a lifelong condition it will continue to pose many challenges. But those positive elements are the things I like to focus on every day. If I did not have Asperger’s, then I would not be Alex Manners.
If you want to achieve something in life and have the drive, determination and ‘never give up’ attitude, then I believe you can achieve anything.
Want to learn more about me or Asperger’s?
Grab a copy of my book, “That’s Not Right! My Life Living with Asperger’s” on Amazon in paperback or kindle.
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