Tag: thinking habits

If you’re like most leaders, you face an increasingly complex world where problems are everywhere and decisions must be made faster than ever before. In that pressure cooker, it’s tempting to fall back on distorted ways of thinking that guarantee poor results. The consequence: lost opportunities, unresolved issues, and overwhelmed teams engaged in never-ending damage control. Here are seven problematic thinking habits that can ensnare even the brightest leaders, as well as specific solutions to overcome them.

1. Overanalyzing

In an effort to be more thorough, overthinkers create complexity from simplicity. A potential solution turns into an uncertain jumble of what-ifs and maybes.

Solution: Speed trumps perfection when the world is moving faster than you can. Be prepared to experiment, fail, learn, and try again. You don’t have to create the perfect prototype or the perfect outcome. Instead, you just have to learn.

2. Rejecting ideas

Actively ignoring an idea simply because it comes from outside the team or organization is a colossal waste of valuable insights.

Solution: Stop ignoring what’s going on outside your four walls. Welcome and celebrate innovations developed elsewhere.

3. Self-censoring

This is when you instinctively judge and reject your own thoughts before you even share them with others. Self-censorship is one of the worst thinking flaws of all.

Solution: Self-distance. Ask yourself, “What would someone I respect say about this idea?” This creates psychological space between you and your idea.

4. Jumping to solutions

You may find yourself defaulting to jumping directly to solving a problem instead of first identifying its true nature. It’s easy to skip this crucial step because it seems pointless.

Solution: Focus as much on formulating the right questions as you do on finding solutions. Ask better questions and you will almost certainly discover superior answers.

5. Staying in old patterns of thinking

Your brain is hardwired to use the same thinking patterns that served you in the past, even if the game has changed. However, as Marshall Goldsmith explored in his best-selling book of the same title, “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Solution: Invert your thinking. What does failure look like? How can you make this worse? Negative or “what if” questions sometimes unlock new ways of thinking.

6. Accepting “good enough”

When left to your own devices, you may settle for “good enough” answers. However, just think about all the mediocre solutions in the world that exist simply because they seem good enough.

Solution: Break through mediocrity by synthesizing two opposing but mediocre solutions. Creativity emerges when you combine the best of both options in unexpected ways.

7. Settling for less

Do you find yourself scaling down expectations so you can win a quick but modest victory? In reality, when you do that, you’re just increasing the problem.

Solution: Jump start stuck projects by taking a break to let your subconscious do some heavy lifting. Then, once you’re clear-headed, return and recommit to your initial, more audacious goal instead of the easier one.