The ability to help others gain insights seems very important to me, and I think one of the most effective, but most difficult, ways is to listen sympathetically when people seem to be saying stupid things or thinking in confused ways. Rather than write them off, we can try to diagnose what is wrong with their thinking - what flawed belief they might be holding. And then search for ways that enables them to discover the flawed belief for themselves.

Society's epitome of credibility is John Wayne, who sizes up a situation and says, "Here's what I'm going to do" - and you follow him.

You shouldn't trust the judgments of stock brokers picking individual stocks.

I worry about leaders in complex situations who don't have enough experience, who are just going with their intuition and not monitoring it, not thinking about it.

The ability to help others gain insights seems very important to me, and I think one of the most effective, but most difficult, ways is to listen sympathetically when people seem to be saying stupid things or thinking in confused ways. Rather than write them off, we can try to diagnose what is wrong with their thinking - what flawed belief they might be holding. And then search for ways that enables them to discover the flawed belief for themselves.

You need strategies that help rule things out. That's the opposite of saying, "This is what my gut is telling me; let me gather information to confirm it."

The most valuable insight I have made about how people make decisions is that when they become skilled they don't have to make decisions - choices between options. Instead, they can draw on experience and the patterns they have acquired to recognize what to do, ignoring other options. This is the basis of the Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) model my colleagues and I described thirty years ago.