Leadership

Leadership Theme - Practical Wisdom

For our first global leadership theme, we're looking at how to balance conflicting aims and principles when making difficult decisions.
Kayla Kim Jul 15, 2022

We all face difficult decisions every day. A small example: three weeks ago, you promised a friend that you would have dinner together. Then, on the day you’re supposed to meet your friend, you receive a call—your grandmother is in the hospital, and she needs you to pick her up. What do you do? On one hand, you want to follow through with your promise. On the other hand, you want to support your family.

How can you make a wise decision in a situation where your values conflict? 

Herein lies the problem: there is no set of rules that will get us exactly what we need. Making a wise choice means appreciating that there is no perfect choice and that each choice has benefits, drawbacks, and uncertainties.

This is “Practical Wisdom.” Scroll down to see a curated collection of tips on how to use it from our team and beyond.

 

 

❓ Key Questions to Consider

  • Do you agree that actions need to be tailored to each situation? Why or why not?
  • How do you make difficult decisions while balancing conflicting aims and principles? What are the key questions you ask yourself?
  • What do you do when you’re in an argument with someone who has the opposite perspective as you?

 

 
📜 History

Aristotle coined the concept of Practical Wisdom (phronesis) in his Nichomachean Ethics. He suggests that to improve our lives we must be virtuous, and to be virtuous we must not only study virtue, but act and learn how to act correctly from our own experience. Untangle Aristotle’s Practical Wisdom here, or read a short case arguing for its importance here.

 

 

🎤 Laidlaw Leaders

Daniel Effron

How cultural norms impact what we consider to be ethical and how we can build moral muscle. If you’re looking for general advice, check out his webinar.

[19:29] “I always reassure people that I’m not a moral authority. I’m not here to say, ‘This is the right set of values to have or this is the right ethical framework.’... As a psychologist, what I argue about is the idea that all of us have moral values that we would like to shape our behaviour. Your values may differ from mine, may differ from everyone’s in the audience, but we would all like to be virtuous in whatever way we define that.”

If you’re a 2021 scholar and you’ve missed your cohort’s live sessions, catch up here or see Daniel’s reading recommendations.

Jacqueline Novogratz

How writing and committing to a manifesto gives you an inner compass by which to make decisions. Watch the full webinar.

[37:50] “Ask yourself the question: ‘If there’s not an idea for which you are prepared to die, is there an idea for which you’re prepared to live? What that might be?’ And I don’t believe that many of us are lucky enough to know that early in our lives. We have to stumble along and then purpose ultimately finds us—but not when we’re just sitting there thinking about purpose. I think we get purpose by doing a lot of other things, including following good leaders, following instincts, solving problems around us. But as we get closer to an understanding of what that is: what are the values that drive you? How do you think about the means that you want to use to achieve the goals that you hope to attain? How do you want to be? Because that will help you make decisions that are sometimes gruelingly difficult to make.” 

Alex Packham

How to separate noise from good advice. Watch the full webinar.

[14:00] “Stress Testing is the best way to phrase that… Stress testing are things like: when someone says an idea to you which you think is really valid, going through the concept several times with that individual to really get the ‘why’ of what they want you to create.”

💭 Your Voice

Your research and Leadership-in-Action projects will require you to exercise your decision-making skills and serve as a source of Practical Wisdom for your future decisions. Here’s some reflections from scholars who have been there. 

Blogs

Anna Wilson: “Uncertainty in Action”

“The snowballing of issues left me feeling lost, stressed and with very little confidence—how could a singular typo potentially delay the project so much? What if I have taken the completely wrong approach? This has been for me the hardest lesson to learn, and one that I know for a fact I will continue to face throughout the rest of the LIA and into my further endeavours: Mistakes will be made.”

Laoise Rogers: “5 Lessons Learned”

“Deciding to change the focus of my research, although it happens for researchers all the time, felt like a big deal[...]. Despite this, I decided to stick with my instincts and am now much happier with the direction of my research. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking and end up being quite indecisive sometimes. However, this small achievement reinforced to me that I am capable of being self-directing, and that telling myself ‘I’m indecisive’ is itself a ‘limiting belief’.”

Cath Brislane: “Top tips for your research: The self-care approach”

“Remember where you came from! It is so easy to fixate on the future that you will never truly give yourself the time that you need to celebrate and heal from the past. If you can, schedule 15-minutes or so into your day every so often in order to work on reflective practice. While it is great to learn from your past, it can be even better celebrating it.”

 

Podcasts

Elif Tru: Channeling Anger to Create Change

Elif shares how her experience of poverty and loss of jobs in South Tyneside fuelled anger which in turn fuelled passion for campaigning against poverty. 

Sanjna Ullal: Reconceptualising Justice 

Sanjna shares why seeing the ‘ground reality’ of the community she was researching made her shift focus and see her work in an entirely different light.

     

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🚀 More Resources

  • Using Our Practical Wisdom - Video
    • “A wise person knows when to bend the rules. A wise person knows when to improvise. And most important, a wise person does this improvising and rule-bending in the service of the right aims.