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Esmie Lawrence interviews Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky short Bio:
Known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is a consultant, coach, trainer, speaker, cognitive neuroscientist, and the best-selling author of “Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters”
So, that means that we are very much reluctant to give up our place at the top of the tribal hierarchy. And that means that we will do things like hide losses, whether it’s job loss, fraudulent accounting from companies, anything. We will do a lot to hide our mistakes, to hide losses, to not admit problems that we cause, not to admit messes that come from our behaviors because that causes us to lose status, lose prestige in the tribal hierarchy, be seen as losers.” -Dr. Gleb Tsipursky
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Show Notes:
Esmie Lawrence:
Welcome. This episode is sponsored by my Co-Author course. I’m looking for 10 to 16 writers for the book. Step into your power. You write your story or I will interview you and turn your interview into your story. Use your story, only 4,000 words, to inspire others. Speak on stages, do workshops or become an authority. Contact Esmie today at esmielawrence.com. And now, my guest is known as a disaster avoidance expert. He is a consultant, coach, trainer, speaker, cognitive neuroscientist, and the bestselling author of the book, Never Go With Your Gut, How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. My guest today is Dr. Gleb Tsipursky. Dr. Gleb, welcome. And how are you?
Dr. Tsipursky:
I thank you so much Esmie, it’s a pleasure to be here and I’m doing pretty well. Thank you. I hope you’re doing well too.
Esmie Lawrence:
Oh, I am doing awesome. Thank you so much. So tell me about some of your struggles as a child.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Well, one of the biggest struggles was coming to the United States. As you can tell from my accent, I ain’t from around here.
Esmie Lawrence:
I ain’t from around here.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Exactly.
Esmie Lawrence:
Where you from?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Originally, I was born in Moldova, which was a small country in Eastern Europe. I was born in ’81, my parents left in 1991 just as the Soviet Union was falling apart and it was really great that they came here, I’m very glad. Moldova was freed from Russian Soviet domination, so that’s the time when they came here. And I’m very glad that they left because I found that later when I became an adult, Moldova, the Republic of Moldova is actually one of the least happy countries in the world. I was like, “Whoa, why is that?” I had no idea, but I didn’t grow up there. I was 10 when I left. But yeah, I was very pleased that they left.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So I was very happy that I came to the United States and it was really hard to transition to get into the American spirit, American culture, American norms. My parents were poor as all immigrants are when they come to United States. My mom washed people’s houses for a living. My dad, we got lucky with my dad because he got a job driving a truck for an Italian bakery in New York City, so at least we always had bread that fell off the back of the truck. So that was kind of my childhood, so that was hard, that was a challenge.
Dr. Tsipursky:
I mean, there were other challenges, but that was definitely one challenge. One of the things I recall and one of the things I talk about is how I was proud of my cultural heritage. I mean, many children my age who immigrated, chose to give up their accents, drop their accents, retrain themselves basically, but I was proud of my cultural heritage. It’s what my parents taught me to be, so I chose not to. I found out later, when I got into what I’m doing right now, decision making, this is my area, consulting, coaching and training, researching, writing and decision making. I kind of found out that that was a dumb idea.
Dr. Tsipursky:
I really should’ve dropped my accent because apparently what the research on this topic shows is that Americans trust people with a foreign accent less than they trust people without a foreign accent, it’s just an unconscious bias. One of the dangerous judgment errors that I learned about in graduate school, already by that time, I couldn’t drop my accent.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yeah.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So, that’s called accent discrimination. That’s one of the many things that we need to watch out for in making good decisions.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
That was part of my childhood, getting into America and learning how to deal with this discrimination.
Esmie Lawrence:
Well, I think your accent is nice.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Thank you.
Esmie Lawrence:
It’s really sad that people will judge you according to your accent.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yeah.
Esmie Lawrence:
Actually, I had a similar experience coming from Jamaica when I was 12 years old.
Dr. Tsipursky:
About the same age.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yeah. I would come home crying because people didn’t understand me. They’d make fun of my Jamaican accent, it was a thick Jamaican accent. So I went about trying to eradicate my Jamaican accent. Of course, there’s certain words I say and it sounds Jamaican, but now I’m thinking back, I’m thinking, “Why did I even do that?” I should have been saying, “Listen, my Jamaican accent, I’m proud of it. This is part of my culture, the way I speak. So what?” But then, yeah, I try to totally get rid of it. But now, if I’m speaking to a Jamaican person, I can just start talking in that Jamaican accent, not a big deal and I’m proud of it, I’m proud of my Jamaican heritage.
Dr. Tsipursky:
That’s great.
Esmie Lawrence:
So, I’m glad that you also are proud of it and it’s okay, you know? Leave the accent because it’s sexy and I love it.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Thank you very much. I appreciate it, Esmie.
Esmie Lawrence:
You’re welcome. So go back. What age did you learn to speak English?
Dr. Tsipursky:
10. So I came here when I was 10 and that’s when I was really starting to learn English.
Esmie Lawrence:
Okay. Right. Did it come quickly or was it a struggle?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yeah, it came pretty quickly. When you’re 10, languages come pretty easily for kids. So yeah, it wasn’t too difficult. I mean, I had other struggles. My parents were, how do I say this? They’re not the most emotionally, socially intelligent people. They don’t always make the right decisions, so they actually fought a lot and that was a difficulty of my childhood. They had a lot of conflicts, a lot of tensions, and they fought over some stupid stuff that I knew even as a kid, I knew it was not a good idea to fight about. My mom always liked nice clothing so you know she wants to buy a $90 sweater and my dad is like, “No sweaters should never cost anything over $20.”
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
They would have fights over these sorts of issues all the time. The worst was, there was this one fight, my dad was a real estate agent and so he worked based on commissions, which means he had variable income. There was this one time when he hid some money from my mom, that he had made quite a lot of money. He said, he’d hid it for my mom and he bought an apartment elsewhere and he was leasing it out for a couple of years. When you found out, that was a huge, huge scandal. That was probably the biggest fight I’ve had them seen. It was just really, really, big.
Dr. Tsipursky:
They actually, ended up separating for a while. So they lived apart. They eventually reconciled, but my mom could never really trust my dad again with his financial, really terrible financial decisions by him. That was another thing that caused me to really be very interested in why people make bad decisions and how they can make better ones.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yes.
Dr. Tsipursky:
That kind of shaped me as a child in wanting to, one side was the discrimination and knowing that, “Hey, I’m not actually less trustworthy even though people perceive me to be less trustworthy.” That was not great. And the other side was seeing my parents make really bad decisions that caused me to be really interested in why people make bad decisions and how can I help people make better ones?
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. And of course, I can understand why your mom was upset.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yes, I can understand. I totally understand why. That was a very dumb decision by my dad.
Esmie Lawrence:
It was. Just tell her that he’s doing this and let her know. In a relationship you have to be open and honest.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Absolutely.
Esmie Lawrence:
But when you hide something like that, then it’s hard to trust after that.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Especially money issues.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yeah.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Money is so important and it’s such a touchy subject. See, there’s so many people who make bad decisions about money, including in the relationships. One of the biggest causes of divorces in this country is money, bad, misunderstandings around money.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yeah. So, that’s a tough thing. Yeah, that was not great.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. So then what were some of the struggles when you were in high school?
Dr. Tsipursky:
So, high school, I had some of the similar struggles, adapting to the situation, dealing with my parents. One of the challenges I had in high school with my parents was, when they were trying to get me to become a medical doctor. So they wanted me to go to medical school and I always was passionate about, like I said, decision making. Already since that time, how do people make their decisions in historical and contemporary settings, business settings, so I really wanted to study that.
Dr. Tsipursky:
There was this push and pull between them and… when you’re younger or in my early years in high school, the first couple of years, I was like, “Okay, I’ll become a medical doctor.” But later, into high school, I was reconsidering it. So, that was always a challenge. I went to college, still thinking probably I’ll become a doctor, maybe I won’t. But finally, in the last year of college, is when I really decided that “Hey, becoming a doctor, it will be financially lucrative, that would be nice. But that would be the main reason that I would do it. It’s just about the money and the social status, the prestige.”
Dr. Tsipursky:
So those are the two things that would cause me to become a medical doctor, but it wouldn’t be fulfilling. It wouldn’t really be my calling, my mission. And so what I was really passionate about as I increasingly understood, is decision making and how do people make decisions? I saw that if I went into medical school, I really wouldn’t be satisfied. I wouldn’t be fulfilled.
Dr. Tsipursky:
I had great grades, I was fine getting into medical school, that’s a tough thing to do, but it would be using some of the techniques that I later learned and refined. I saw that would be a really bad decision for my future self, the future that I wanted to have for myself. So that’s what caused me to eventually not go into medical school and go into what I’m doing right now, studying decision making and teaching it.
Esmie Lawrence:
So, you got your degrees, you have your masters too, right?
Dr. Tsipursky:
I have my PhD.
Esmie Lawrence:
You have a PhD. What did you study?
Dr. Tsipursky:
The history of behavioral science. It’s the topic of how do we make decisions in historical and contemporary settings? Specifically, I was focusing on, and I’m focusing on right now, on decisions in economic settings. How do we make financial decisions? Seeing my parents make bad decisions.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Also, when I was growing up, it was around the time of the dot-com boom and bust. So I was born in ’81, I was 19 in 1999 when the tech leaders were partying like it’s 1999.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yes.
Dr. Tsipursky:
For those who remember the Prince song.
Esmie Lawrence:
Prince song. I love it.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Maybe it ages me, I don’t know. It was a time when a lot of money was invested into the dot-coms. Just a couple of years later, they all went bust. Webvan, Pets.com, buda.com, nobody remembers these because they all went bust, but they were worth billions and billions of dollars in their own time. I saw really big, prominent business leaders be the heroes in the pages of the Wall Street Journal in 1999 and then just a couple of years later, they’re the zeroes.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So it’s like, okay, people make really bad decisions, especially when the leaders in Enron, WorldCom, Tyco made terrible decisions to hide their losses using fraudulent accounting methods. That was clearly terrible decision making. They went to jail, it couldn’t have lasted more than a year or two until it was discovered and then they went to jail. They knew that it would be discovered, but they used these terrible decisions to try to hide their losses.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So I can see that even very prominent leaders make terrible decisions and that’s costly. Hurts a lot of people when they make these decisions. My value set is utilitarian, wanting the most good for the most number and that’s why I wanted to see what I could do to address these bad decisions.
Esmie Lawrence:
But why do people hide losses, like those big corporations and affected so many millions of people because they lied.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yeah, yeah.
Esmie Lawrence:
So, why did they do that? Is there one common denominator?
Dr. Tsipursky:
You know why people find losses? Yes, there is. People hide losses, not only for these top business leaders, but you see a lot of people who get fired from their jobs, leave their jobs, they don’t tell their spouses, they don’t tell their friends. They just pretend to go to their jobs and keep doing it, or they, whatever happens, people hide their losses a lot.
Dr. Tsipursky:
And here’s the reason, what I learned about this. You can see the Bernie Ebbers who was the leader at Enron, hiding their losses for a very primal, natural, instinctive reason. It has to do with how we make our decisions. Our decisions are shaped about 80% to 90% by our emotions. That’s where decisions come from. They’re very much shaped by our emotions, if we let our emotions shape them, which is what we do, because the main advice that we get in decision making is go with your gut. Horrible advice. Terrible advice to go with your gut but that’s the advice that people give.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So, when people get that advice, they let their emotions shape their decisions and our emotions are actually, not adapted for the modern business environment, professional environment. They’re not adapted for the modern world at all, they’re adapted for the Savanna environment when we were hunters and foragers living in small tribes of 15 people to 150 people. So, tribalism was very important to us and there are two really important aspects of tribalism here.
Dr. Tsipursky:
I talked about my accent. So, the accent has to do with the fact that we like people who are like us, who are similar to us and we don’t like people who are not like us, who are not part of our tribe. And the accent of course indicates that I’m not part of the mainstream American tribe. Right? Same thing with looks, appearance, anything, religion, sexuality, other forms of discrimination, anything that results from tribalism where it was really important for our ancestors to be tribal, otherwise, they would be kicked out of the tribe and they would die. So, that was one aspect of tribalism.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Now, the other aspect of tribalism has to do with hiding losses. Has to do with climbing to the top of the tribal hierarchy. That was very important for getting resources and for spreading our genes, reproducing. We are the descendants of those people who were the best at climbing to the top of the tribal hierarchy. And those were the best at maintaining tribalism within their own tribe.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So, that means that we are very much reluctant to give up our place at the top of the tribal hierarchy. And that means that we will do things like hide losses, whether it’s job loss, fraudulent accounting from companies, anything. We will do a lot to hide our mistakes, to hide losses, to not admit problems that we cause, not to admit messes that come from our behaviors because that causes us to lose status, lose prestige in the tribal hierarchy, be seen as losers.
Dr. Tsipursky:
I mean, my training, consulting, coaching is mostly with business leaders and when I see business leaders, one of their biggest fears when I talk to them is, being seen as losers, being seen as failures. It’s an incredibly powerful driver. It’s more powerful than profits.
Esmie Lawrence:
Wow.
Dr. Tsipursky:
This kind of social status, prestige, not wanting to be seen as a loser is incredibly important for them. So this emotion greatly, this fear of being seen as a loser, as a failure, is one of its negative consequences and there are many, is that they hide losses and including through fraudulent accounting and not telling their friends when they lose jobs, not telling their wives and so on.
Esmie Lawrence:
But eventually, we find out anyways.
Dr. Tsipursky:
That’s right.
Esmie Lawrence:
Look at Bernie Madoff, Enron.
Dr. Tsipursky:
That’s right.
Esmie Lawrence:
We always-
Dr. Tsipursky:
We do.
Esmie Lawrence:
… end up finding out we do always end up finding out because it can’t go on forever.
Dr. Tsipursky:
It can’t. But you see that it could repeatedly happen. I mean, look what happened with Boeing. Just right now, the CEO of Boeing was fired just a couple of days ago for Boeing producing a plane that was clearly unsafe and the CEO knew it was unsafe. We now have internal documents from Boeing showing that there were a lot of whistleblowers within Boeing saying, “Hey, this plane’s not saved. Don’t produce it, don’t go forward with it.” But they went forward with it, they produce it, even after the first crash. They weren’t willing to acknowledge that there was a problem.
Esmie Lawrence:
Even at the safety of the client? Even at the safety of the public? They didn’t care?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yep, 346 people. And that comes from an emotional place. It’s not that they didn’t care. It’s about what they care about more. They cared more about not suffering the short-term losses of prestige, reputation. That’s what the CEO of Boeing cared about. That’s what the Boeing leadership cared about is, they would suffer a lot of losses in their reputation, their prestige, even though he suffered much more now that he’s fired and that he’s let go. People don’t think about that. And that was one of the other really bad problems about our emotions. That when we go with our gut, when we trust our intuitions. Our intuitions, our gut reactions, are incredibly short-term oriented. This is why people eat, they go and they think they’ll eat one scoop of ice cream from a gallon, and then they end up eating the whole gallon.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Right? Never happened to me. Right? You think, I’ll get a dozen donuts. Right? They’re sold by a dozen. People are like, “Oh, whatever, I want a donut but I’ll get a dozen because it’s cheaper.” And then they end up eating the whole dozen donuts.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yes.
Dr. Tsipursky:
This is what happens because we don’t, and we regret it. The next day, we might regret it as soon as we see that empty donut box or the empty canister of ice cream.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
But we don’t think about the long-term consequence. We don’t feel, our gut intuition doesn’t feel the long-term consequences. Our gut intuition feels the short-term pain of acknowledging loss, so acknowledging failure. It feels the short-term pain of not eating the 11 remaining donuts or we’re not eating the rest of the gallon of ice cream. It doesn’t recognize the longer term pain of whether it’s weight gain and guilt and frustration or whether it’s being fired and all the damages that are caused.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yes.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Or my dad talking to my mom and having the blow-out fight and separation of hiding the money. That is not what people think about, because our gut intuitions, our gut reactions, they follow their gut, they just do what feels natural, comfortable, intuitive, and they don’t realize that these short-term gains that they’re getting come at the price of much higher long-term losses.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. Is this the same thing as cognitive bias?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Right. This is one form of cognitive bias. So cognitive biases are the specific dangerous judgment errors, and that’s what my book, Never Go With Your Gut, How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters. It’s about the most dangerous judgment errors that we make, cognitive biases in business, professional settings in your career, whatnot. Looking at the 30 most dangerous judgment errors and this judgment error is called, there are two judgment errors that I’ve talked about already.
Dr. Tsipursky:
One’s called loss aversion, where we’re very averse to losses. We really don’t want to lose and we are willing to sacrifice much higher gains for these losses. That’s one, and the other one that’s called hyperbolic discounting, where we discount the future. It’s a fancy name for the term, that we discount the future, greatly. We really don’t accept much. We don’t think about the long-term losses that are coming to us from eating the ice cream, meeting the donuts, hiding the money, and it can come in many ways.
Dr. Tsipursky:
A lot of people, for example, stay in dead end jobs for way too long when they should be leaving those jobs and they should be finding a better job because it causes a short-term pain for them to do a job search. It’s a lot of hassle. It’s a lot of effort. There’s a lot of rejection. Especially, with the tribal aspect of things, people don’t like rejection, so they stay in dead end jobs.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Same thing for relationships. My next book, The Blind Spots Between Us, which will come out in April 2020, is about relationships. One of the problems of romantic relationships is that we stay in the relationships that aren’t good for us for way too long because we don’t want to suffer the short-term pain of separation for the long-term gain of not suffering in the relationship that’s bad for us.
Esmie Lawrence:
So then how do you teach your clients to move past all these, live in the present? And to be able to focus on the future with honesty and integrity?
Dr. Tsipursky:
One of the most important things to do is, I teach certain decision making techniques that they can apply to any decision and there’s going to be two techniques that are really important to learn. One is for bigger choices, major choices, whether it’s finding the CEO for your company or finding a significant other or launching a major project, moving to a new city, whatever you want to do, launching a product, whatever you want to do. It’s a major project, it’s a major endeavor. The other one is for everyday choices, smaller everyday things.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Now, the first one is for things that you want to maximize the outcomes, whatever the outcomes are for you, happiness in your relationships or what I focus on in the book is, the bottom line kind of profit, and that’s, never go with your gut. Now, the other technique that we shall briefly talk through right now is, a technique for everyday decisions. It’s not designed to maximize the outcome of the decision. It’s designed to prevent you from screwing up.
Esmie Lawrence:
That’s good to know. We want to know that.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Yes, yes. It’s designed to prevent you from failing and a lot of decisions, you just need to make them good enough. You don’t need to make them perfect, and so this is for good enough decisions. So, you ask yourself five questions about any decision that you don’t want to screw up. First question, what information did I not yet fully consider? Again, what evidence didn’t I take into account? This question is very important because a number of the dangerous judgment errors, cognitive biases that we have in our heads, cause us to be uncomfortable looking for information that doesn’t confirm our beliefs. We have really liked information that causes us to feel like we’re right.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Tsipursky:
We like that information, it’s pleasant, it’s good, it feels comfortable, our gut intuitions like that. So, if you go with your gut, you’re only going to look at information that makes you comfortable. You have to go against your comfort zone. You have to go against your gut to look at information that makes you uncomfortable, and this question is designed to help you do that. So look at important information that is uncomfortable or that goes against your preferred choice. It goes against your preferred option. If you can’t, try to disconfirm your preferred option, if you can, that’s great, it’s more likely to be right, but you want to make sure to do that.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Second question, what dangerous judgments are there? So cognitive biases that are not yet considered? There are a number of cognitive biases that will be relevant to each choice. So you want to learn about all of these cognitive biases and there’s a list of them in Wikipedia, over a hundred cognitive biases, so you can check that out. In my book, Never Go With Your Gut, How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters, which is right there. I looked at the 30 most dangerous ones for professional careers for businesses and how to address them effectively.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Then third one, what would a trusted and objective advisor suggest you do? Think about someone who could be a trusted and objective advisor to you. What would they suggest you do in this situation? You know, when you give your friend advice, you give much better advice than the kind of decisions you take yourself because you could look externally at the situation. Things that your friend doesn’t see, you could probably have that in your experience. So think of someone who is a good friend to you and could be objective and who would be trusted and good on the topic. Think about as Esmie, think about anyone who you would trust to give you good advice.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
What would they tell you? The little angel on your shoulder? What would they tell you?
Esmie Lawrence:
Right.
Dr. Tsipursky:
You get about 50% of the benefit just by asking this question and of course you can get the other 50% of the benefits by calling this person or if you’re a millennial, texting this person. Next, fourth question. How have I addressed all the ways this could fail? Think about all the ways as this decision could fail. In order to do that, first of all, imagine that it completely failed, whatever you’re doing, whatever you want to do, whether it’s launching a product, going to a meeting, writing an important email, asking your boss for a raise, or getting a new client, imagine that it completely failed. Think about all the reasons for why it failed, all the reasons for failure, and then try to see what you can do in advance to address them.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So if you’re trying to start on your business, maybe you didn’t research the market enough. If you’re launching a new product, maybe you haven’t thought about your logistics thoroughly. If you’re moving to a new city, maybe you haven’t explored what the climate conditions, whatever, are in that city. So try to address those problems in advance, whatever you might not have addressed.
Dr. Tsipursky:
And then the other aspect of things is, unexpected things that might come up. Think about what would happen if something unexpected came up that you didn’t consider. If you’re launching a product, think about what would happen if your competitor launched a product similar to yours at the same time? What would you do in that situation? You want to create a plan, create a plan, contingency plan. Because if you don’t have a plan, when the problem arises, you’ll be running around like a chicken without your head. But, if you have a plan, you know what to do. So that’s the fourth question.
Dr. Tsipursky:
And finally, what new evidence would cause me to change my mind? What would cause you to reconsider your decision? It’s very hard for us to change our mind when we’re in the heat of the moment, implementing the decision, whatever it may be, whether I were moving to a new city, deciding on a relationship, hiring a new person, launching your product. But if you decide in advance that, “Hey, these are the indicators that would show me that this is a bad decision or this is something that I really should reconsider.” That is going to be very helpful for you to actually revise your options, your choices, especially if it’s a group decision.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So for example, in a business relationship or any other relationship, one of the things I make sure to do is not consider the relationship stable until I’ve had my first conflict with the person involved. Because you’ll eventually you’ll have a conflict but if you rely on the relationship too much before you have a conflict and you find out that the person is not able to deal with conflicts, that’s not really going to be a healthy long-term relationship, business relationship, or any other for you. So you want to make sure to be able to do that. And that’s an example you can do anything for. In the product launch you can say, “If the product doesn’t hit 450,000 within the first six months, then I’ll need to seriously reevaluate the situation.” That’s another example.
Esmie Lawrence:
Wow.
Dr. Tsipursky:
So these five questions are very easy to ask. It just takes you a couple of minutes to ask yourself these questions, but it will save you a lot of stress. Many, many hours of recovering from problems. Many, many thousands or millions of dollars of recovery.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yeah, Dr. Gleb, those are great questions. If you ask yourself those questions, you will evert disasters in your personal life, in your business, whatever it is that you do because they’re great questions. And those questions are in your book, right? Is that correct?
Dr. Tsipursky:
They are. So they are in the introduction of my book and in the rest of the book talks about applying these questions and other techniques about how to avoid dangerous judgment errors. And those are very helpful questions to ask. Very helpful, easy techniques that anyone can use to quickly and effectively address these problems that are unfortunately, part of how our brain is wired due to our evolutionary biology.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. Oh, okay. So, Dr. Gleb, I would like for you to go back in time, with all the knowledge you have now and talk to your say, seven year old self. What words of wisdom would you give yourself?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Well, I’d tell myself to probably drop the accent, that’s one. Oh, gosh, there there are a ton of things that I would have changed about my younger self if I knew it. I probably have focused much more on social intelligence and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has to do with emotional self-awareness and self-management. Social intelligence has to do with understanding, feel how other people feel and being able to influence your relationship with them and influence those other people. Those are skills I’ve developed when I was in my early 30s. Unfortunately, they would have been so helpful to me when I was young.
Esmie Lawrence:
Yeah.
Dr. Tsipursky:
We are so influenced by our emotions. Like I said before, I didn’t realize that when I was a kid and there were a lot of dumb decisions I made, bad decisions I made, when I was a kid that I didn’t realize. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So I would have learned, it would’ve been hard to learn about cognitive biases when I was seven, maybe when I was 12, I could learn about them. But then when I’m seven I could still learn about emotional awareness and emotional management and social awareness and social management, this emotional intelligence, social intelligence, very useful skills. And I wish I could have conveyed them to my seven year old self and to my 12 year old self, I would have taught about cognitive biases and these decision making techniques that I’m talking about.
Esmie Lawrence:
Right. And so I would really like for you to… what I want to say to you, your accent is good and if people don’t trust you because of the accent, well, maybe you don’t need to work with them. So you’re a very successful person.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Thank you.
Esmie Lawrence:
But what is it that you’re struggling with now?
Dr. Tsipursky:
What I really want to develop right now, what I’m focusing on developing right now, is my skill in storytelling. So stories are incredibly important for people to understand and appreciate information, but they’re not intuitive to me because I am in this way, I’m not neuro-typical, I’m not like the average bear out there. I don’t appreciate stories as much as the average person. I’m much more oriented toward more technical information, more technical ways. So I’m more of a broad picture person. I just want kind of the model, the framework, the theory, but I’m not typical in that way. So I want to be able to better communicate to people who are not like me, who are not as analytical and who are less oriented toward this broad picture perspective and who want more stories. So this is the skill that I’m working on developing right now, effective storytelling.
Esmie Lawrence:
Awesome. And so what would you like to share with our audience today?
Dr. Tsipursky:
Well, I’d like to share that they can check out my book. Never Go With Your Gut, How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Businesses Disasters in any physical book store anywhere, and by a traditional business publisher called Career Press and of course Amazon, Barnes & Noble online and so on. You can check out my information at disasteravoidanceexperts.com. Again, disasteravoidanceexperts.com videos, blogs, various podcasts and so on. Consulting, coaching, speaking, training, if you want to check that out.
Dr. Tsipursky:
Now you can get a free eight module video-based course, so eight video-based modules at disasteravoidanceexperts.com/subscribe. Again, disasteravoidanceexperts.com/subscribe. It’s called The Wise Decision Maker course. It’s essentially decision making 101, contains all the essential information that you need to help yourself make better decisions. I’m active on LinkedIn. You can connect with me there. Gleb Tsipursky, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky. G-L-E-B. T-S-I-P-U-R-S-K-Y. Dr. Gleb Tsipursky. Our gut intuitions are going to lead us in the wrong direction very often, and you need to use simple, effective and counter-intuitive techniques to make sure that you actually succeed in life. And I’m Sprinting to Success with Esmie Lawrence.
Esmie Lawrence:
Dr. Gleb, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us today. So to learn more about Dr. Gleb, you can go to esmielawrence.com. Thank you for listening and have an amazing day.
