So counselors painstakingly scatter breadcrumbs along our paths to lead us toward making our own good decisions. Counselors understand that we hominids have a greater propensity to follow through on decisions we make rather than advice prescribed to us. You have to ask the question-you have to want to know-in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.” If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. There’s no getting around the fact that well-placed, appropriately timed, thought-provoking questions result in better decisions and fewer regrets.Ĭlay Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, said, “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. Right? Every decision we make impacts somebody in our public, beginning with the folks closest to us. Private decisions almost always have public ramifications. You’ve never made a personal decision that didn’t become somebody’s business. After all, they’re personal! Translated, it’s nobody’s business.īut let’s be honest. This is especially true when making personal decisions. It’s virtually impossible to welcome new information or insight when we’re convinced our judgment is being questioned.
When we confuse one for the other, our defenses go up and our learning aptitude goes down. In the moment, we feel like we’re being questioned rather than simply being asked a question. Truth is, most of us resist uninvited questions when making a decision. But pausing to ponder a list of potentially disruptive questions is neither easy nor intuitive. This is why, on the back side of a bad decision, it’s not unusual to hear someone say, “I should have asked more questions.” Why? Because we know intuitively that the more questions we ask, the more information we acquire, which leads to greater insight and, hopefully, better decisions. Simply put:Īnd better decisions lead to fewer regrets. To tease that out a bit, he helped me make the connection between well-placed, appropriately timed, thought-provoking questions and good decision-making. He helped me make the connection between good questions and good decisions. By opting for questions over direction, my dad connected two important dots for me.
That something else is the point of the small group study Better Decisions, Fewer Regrets. Perhaps unbeknownst to him, my dad was teaching me something else as well. But to his credit and my advantage, he started when the stakes were low.
#Better decisions fewer regrets andy stanley how to
He was teaching me how to make decisions. Why all the questions? Why not just tell me what he thought I should do? The reason was simple.
What I didn’t appreciate then, that I most certainly appreciate now, was why.
But when I leaned in, it eliminated unnecessary regret as well. During middle school and high school, his arsenal of questions included one of the five we will explore later: What is the wise thing to do? As a teenager, that pesky question usually eliminated most of my preferred options. His go-to question wasn’t his only question. Maybe one day they’ll write a book about it. As it turns out, I employed the same strategy with my kids. My go-to response was: But you are around, so tell me! Clearly, his response did not indicate a lack of interest on his part. Worse, instead of answering my questions, he asked me questions! His go-to question was: What are you going to do when I’m not around to tell you what to do? But on occasion, I wanted him to tell me what to do. And I was like most kids most of the time. True, most kids don’t want their parents telling them what to do. Specifically, he wouldn’t tell me what to do when I didn’t know what to do and wanted him to tell me what he thought I should do.
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