123. High-Stakes Decisions: Think Clearly and Communicate Well Under Pressure with Caroline Webb

Psychology at Work | Career Success, Leadership, Communication Skills

Melody Wilding interviews Caroline Webb about how leaders can think clearly, make trade-offs, and communicate difficult decisions under pressure. Webb connects her new book,

Key takeaways

• Caroline Webb describes Leadership Intelligence as a companion to How to Have a Good Day, blending science, stories, and practical leadership advice.
• Webb identifies three leadership strengths: making wise choices, inspiring people to perform at their best, and building resilience to ups and downs.
• She recommends the ABC routine—awareness, breath, and a centering question such as
• —to counter stress-driven narrowing of perception.
• Webb presents the
• model for handling uncertainty by acknowledging difficulty, staying grounded, and focusing on what can be done.

Main topics

• Leadership intelligence and human judgment in the age of AI
• Thinking clearly under pressure and stress
• Managing uncertainty with practical frameworks

Notable quotes

what really matters here and what do I most want to notice

Conclusion

The episode is useful for leaders and managers who need practical, psychologically

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It's by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you're not. I'm Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor, and award-winning executive coach. Get ready and let's put psychology to work for you. Speaker 1 (0:36) I bet you find yourself in situations almost daily where you have to make choices that stress you the heck out. You have to decide whether to push back on a timeline, even though you know someone will be disappointed. You have to choose between speed and quality when both are important. You have to move ahead with incomplete information because you can't afford not to. And the hard part is not just making the decision. You then have to communicate it and manage the reactions. And this is all the more true right now as work is moving faster, AI is changing what we're doing. You as a leader are expected to deliver when priorities are shifting midday sometimes, and you're being asked to do more with less, all while keeping everyone around you engaged and calm. And it's a lot, to say the least. So I brought in some expert help today. I am joined by Caroline Webb. She is the author of the international bestseller, How to Have a Good Day, and her new book, Leadership Intelligence. Caroline is a former McKinsey partner. She is an economist, a longtime executive coach and advisor. She is one of the best thinkers I know on how psychology, neuroscience, behavioral science apply to workplace challenges, which is exactly what we love around here. In this conversation, We talk about how do you think clearly when stress and pressure is narrowing your focus? How do you make trade-offs without feeling like you're failing someone? How to communicate decisions people don't want to hear? She's going to show you how you build the habits, the structures, so that every hard choice not only feels more manageable, but also gets you a more successful outcome for yourself and for others. Speaker 1 (2:25) Caroline, I am so excited to have you here on Psychology at Work. And I think a lot of it is because so much of your work is about leveraging our own psychology, navigating other people's psychology for maximum performance. So I'm excited to get into this conversation with you today. Speaker 2 (2:45) Thank you. Me too. Speaker 1 (2:46) Yeah. And I have been a fan of yours and now we are friends and colleagues. So it's quite an honor. I can remember 10 years ago when your first book, How to Have a Good Day, came out and just being captivated by it. Such an elegantly simple title, but such... Speaker 1 (3:07) game-changing ideas within it. And at that time, 10 years ago, 2016, this idea of your own well-being at work and really being able to drive that was very fresh and was something a lot of people weren't thinking about. We were knee-deep in hustle culture back then, if some people remember. But I am curious because you now have a new book coming out, and I would love to hear just a little bit about the trajectory of how did you get from How to Have a Good Day, which has been a huge success internationally, to this new topic around leadership intelligence? Speaker 2 (3:44) Well, they're really very deeply connected. They are quite similar in style. They blend science and practical advice and stories, real stories of real people doing their best. And they really germinated alongside each other, to be honest. So How to Have a Good Day absolutely was the book that made it first out of the gate. But leadership was always the topic that I focused on as a management consultant. So, you know, when I was at McKinsey, there was a large part of my work which was about organizational change and effectiveness. And then I would typically work with the leaders to help them build a culture or drive the change that they were trying to drive. And so I always had this interest in well-being and performance at work broadly, but also specifically what can leaders do to unlock magic in other people. And so I guess I felt that both books were going to come out at some point. And now when people ask me how long did it take me to write this book, I've got a very cute answer, which is 25 years. Because it's been bubbling in the background. And so Leadership Intelligence is very much a companion to How to Have a Good Day. And there's a lot of solidarity between the two, I think. Speaker 1 (5:00) Yeah. Well, what I love about the title and the whole philosophy around the book, which I want to unpack in a second, is how, I mean, the word intelligence really suggests that you can be great at delegation and setting priorities, concise communication. Some of those outward tactical skills, you could be great at project management and roadmapping, whatever. But it's really these. Speaker 1 (5:30) invisible, relational, emotional skills that truly make the difference. And it's that level of intelligence that is hard to acquire. Most people get it by trial and error. So what I really appreciate about this book is, yes, the real stories from people that are very relatable, especially for the person who's going through it. But also you break the book down into three key strengths of a leader, which are more psychological. And they are making wise choices, inspiring people to perform at their best, and building resilience to up and downs. What made you out of the whole universe of things you could choose? How did you land on and really say these are the three? Speaker 2 (6:19) Well, a couple of things. So first of all, if you think about it, Deciding what you do, both in the big and small of the everyday life of being a manager, and then inspiring people to do it, and then keeping people moving when things don't go perfectly, you know, that's a pretty big universe of what leaders need to do. And so that's that feeling of, okay, good choices, get people rallied around, get people moving, keep people moving. It felt like it really covered just about everything that I work on with my clients. You know, over the last 25 years, I've been coaching leaders and managers at all levels. And it felt pretty universal. And the other part of it is that if you think about what humans do as opposed to what our AI tools do, there is something really important about, even as AI leaps forward in capability, there's something really important about judgment. critical thinking, the ability to make choices when there isn't a clear right answer. So that's what I call deliberate wisdom. It's developing the habits that allow you to think clearly about a situation, even if you've never seen it before. And that is on the shoulders of the human leader of the human team. And intrinsic inspiration is a second big block. And I call it intrinsic because we're not talking about motivation that comes from outside we're not talking about status and money necessarily although you know it's important to treat people really fairly no question about that but if you're looking for motivation that lasts and inspiration to do your best work you want to look at the intrinsic rewards that the brain the brain's reward system reacts to and so that's that big chunk and you know as a leader it's you that's sitting and looking at your team and thinking huh people are off their game I wonder what's going on. How do I read this? What is it that I need to do to unlock something fresh in them? And then the third big chunk is reasoned resilience. Reasoned because a lot of it comes from thinking about what your interpretation of the situation is. And, you know, again, it's a human leader's responsibility to say, OK, well, this is really tough, but I'm going to help us find a way through. I'm going to... lift our sights and our spirits to see a path forward, even when it doesn't look as if there is an easy one that's presenting