Improve Your Decisions and Behavior by Catching “This vs. That” Thinking
One of the easiest ways to artificially constrain your thinking is when you (or a team of people) say or think: “we’ve got a decision between [this] or [that].” This can also be referred to as “black and white thinking.”
Very rarely is anything actually a binary choice, yet it’s very attractive to our minds to assume something is binary—possibly because it gives us a false, yet comforting, sense of simplicity.
In this article I will talk about ways to overcome this containing way of thinking and allow for you and your team to create much better solutions than you would have otherwise.
Catching “This vs. That” Thinking
The first step is catching “this vs. that” thinking in yourself or others. There are several ways to do this.
One is to watch for the pattern with yourself. Start asking yourself and noticing, “did I just set this up as a ‘this vs. that?’” Or whenever you are stuck with a hard decision, write down your decision in words, which will make this pattern easier to spot.
You can also create a norm with your team where you all work to spot “this vs. that” thinking as you collaborate together. Often it’s easier to catch in others rather than in yourself.
As a coach, I often catch this for my clients.
Solution 1: Make It a Spectrum
A very common example of “this vs. that” thinking among leaders is the falsely constrained decision of “do I want to be a directive leader or a collaborative leader?” Of course, it’s not all-or-nothing with being directive or collaborative; it’s a spectrum. This may be easy for us to see now that it’s written out, but if it’s jumbled up with all the other thoughts in our head—thoughts which may include memories of a boss you really don’t want to become yourself who either rarely made decisions or always micromanaged you—it can really seem like a binary choice.
Once you’ve caught that you’ve fallen into a “this vs. that” way of thinking, the next step is to establish that your decision on what to do or how to act is a spectrum.
Instead of deciding whether to be directive or collaborative, look at it as a spectrum from 1 to 10, where 10 is fully directive (you tell everyone exactly what to do) and 1 is fully collaborative (where you strive for full consensus with everyone on the team).
Now that a spectrum has been established, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I am a 3 and I want to be a 7 on this spectrum.”
What you really want is to be able to occupy different places on the spectrum at different times and for different types of decisions or situations. Sometimes being very directive is important (like in specific types of crises) and sometimes being collaborative is really important (like when helping your direct report figure out their long-term career goals).
So instead of wanting to be a 7 at all times, the growth area for you may be to obtain enough behavioral flexibility to occupy a greater range of outcomes on the spectrum. If you usually operate between 2-5, you may want to stretch yourself to be able to be anywhere from 2-8 depending on the circumstance. You can even define what types of decisions you want to be more directive on and which ones you want to be more collaborative on.
A fear that often comes up when trying to increase the range you can occupy on the spectrum is that you’ll overcompensate and go too far off one end. This almost never happens.
Years ago I worked with a coach on how to improve my online presentation skills. The coach noticed that I was speaking too quietly while on camera. The coach asked me to amp up the volume in my voice. In the coaching session he recorded me speaking and would play back the recording so I could hear it myself. When I thought I was being too loud, I was still too quiet. It wasn’t until I felt like I was yelling did I actually sound great on the recording. Only when it felt like I was at an 11 for loudness was I actually speaking just right. After practicing at what initially felt like an 11, a louder speaking voice became more normal to me and stopped feeling like an 11.
It’s good to partner with someone (peer, boss, or direct report) to help calibrate you like my coach calibrated me. For more information on the benefits of sharing your goals see this article which focuses on sharing goals with your direct reports.
A spectrum like this often works really well with enhancing behavioral flexibility since it’s somewhat simple. You can say, “for this meeting I’d like to be a 4 on [ABC] because [XYZ].”
However, even a spectrum can be overly constraining particularly when making a decision on how to operate as a company or team.
Solution 2: Make It a 2-Dimensional Plot
I was working with a CEO of a small, quickly growing startup who really valued autonomy. He wanted employees to think of new ideas and build them instead of waiting around for clarity from leaders on what to do. In our first session, he brought his frustration about why his employees weren’t moving very fast or being autonomous even though autonomy is what he values most.
This CEO had set up a false spectrum between clarity and autonomy. He associated leaders creating too much clarity with constraining employees, reducing their creativity, and dictating to them what to do.
In his efforts to increase autonomy by avoiding creating clarity as a leader, he didn’t clearly express how much he valued autonomy, which left employees unsure whether they were supposed to set their own direction or wait for direction.
The key insight for this CEO that allowed him to get his team working much more autonomously was to turn that false spectrum into a 2-dimensional plot.
Once he envisioned this as a 2D plot he was able to more easily brainstorm what forms of clarity could increase autonomy such as making company values more clear.
Especially as companies get larger, creating clarity and structure for employees to operate in often makes them more autonomous. For example, see this article on how instituting a clear escalation procedure improves autonomy, trust, and speed.
Solution 2b: Make It a 2-Dimensional Plot with Different Axes
A very common false spectrum I see with leaders is in the form of speed vs. process. Leaders know there are benefits to adding processes as their company grows and they often think it always means a compromise on speed. So they are stuck in this false dilemma of how to balance speed vs. process. A false spectrum like this can be an extra nefarious dilemma since not only are “speed” and “process” not opposites, “process” probably isn't even a goal in itself. Any process is meant to achieve some other goal. When using a false spectrum like this, anything other than a 10 on speed is actually introducing process for process’ sake 😱
When you’re debating between two things, it can be useful to change the axes. When you turn this into a 2-dimensional plot, try thinking of the two end goals you actually want to achieve. For example, you may be looking to optimize both speed and quality. In this 2D plot, one axis will be speed and the other will be quality.
As you open up this thinking into a 2D plot of the goals you actually want to achieve, you’ll likely find at least one solution that can improve both quality and speed. For example, a clear decision making process can yield quality decisions by pulling in the right people and reducing the time it takes to make a decision.
This is not to say trade-offs aren’t ever necessary, but if you create the above example as a 1-dimensional spectrum, you’ll only be operating in the trade-off zones.
Even filling in things that are slow and low quality can be useful to provoke your thinking and let you know what not to do.
Once you create this 2D plot with an axis for each end goal, you can begin to generate more ideas and better thinking about what could achieve things in each of the quadrants with an emphasis on solutions in the top right quadrant. Try it, it’s amazing how this gets your mind working in new and refreshing ways. You can even draw dots in specific areas of each quadrant for each solution.
Insight and Action
What is the 1 biggest insight you got from this article?
How will you catch “this vs. that” thinking with yourself or your team?
What is a false binary you are wrestling with right now that would actually be better thought of as a 1-dimensional spectrum or a 2-dimensional plot?
P.S. I help founders and technical leaders thrive while scaling their companies and teams through hypergrowth. I also coach successful individuals in their late 30’s and early 40’s who have reached a plateau and want to feel more alive again in work and life. If one of those sounds like you, send me an email at kevin@kevinricecoaching.com.