Leadership Conversations: Challenging High Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders

CHAPTER 16

Develop Your Judgment Gene

People must be taught how to think, not what to think.

—MARGARET MEAD

Judgment is the ability to consistently make the right decision at the right time in the right way. Good judgment looks like magic to those who do not have it. When a leader takes an unusual and brilliant action that is wildly successful, others wonder where the decision came from. Examples of bad judgment are readily visible because everyone sees their consequences. Good judgment, in contrast, often goes unnoticed because it seems routine. Leaders make decisions every day. Some are easy, but the strategically important ones require judgment and are often complex and risky.

For example, well before the dot-com boom, a government executive challenged ...