Is The Path To True Wisdom Paved With Data?

In our previous post discussing wisdom, the fourth pillar of leadership in our series inspired by Stoicism, we talked about how to convert knowledge to wisdom – even if it’s an area in which you don’t have deep experience.

Let’s continue now by talking about how you can bring wisdom to your team by letting them find their own path and how we can actually use data to more accurately measure wisdom.

Injecting Your Team With The Power To Find Wisdom

Frankly, it’s easier for someone in a position of leadership to find the courage to question what they’ve heard and form their own thoughts. It’s far more intimidating and challenging for those who work for you, which results in many of them leaning on you for every significant item they have a question on.

How can you help these team members formulate their thoughts and directions without you? You can start by giving them some parameters and guidance, but it’s just as important to have the trust to step away from it and let them find their own path to the answer. Otherwise, it’s still your answer and not theirs to own.

They can still come to you for feedback. But you can’t hover over them and say, “No, that’s not right. This is the way I would do it.”

That’s micromanagement and probably not the best way to transfer knowledge.

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Accumulate The Data Points From Doing, Not Planning.

The way I view each of the thoughts or opinions that come my way is a data point. By itself, one data point means next to nothing for you. You need at least one other data point to draw a line to so you can better clarify a direction.

As we’ve stated before, nobody has “THE Answer.”

There’s more than one answer in most cases, anyway. Wisdom comes from accumulating data points and experiences as well as learning which ones to filter out and where to draw the line in a particular direction.

However, some perspective is needed here so we aren’t endlessly planning and eventually transitioning into doing.

Don’t let your plan get in the way of forward movement. Because as crucial as a plan can be, you still are not doing what you want to be doing yet. There will never be a perfect plan – every plan has something wrong the moment you publish it. The best is an evolving one that everyone can appreciate.

What’s more, consider this: Up to this point, it’s still your plan. Not your team’s plan.

Bring them into ownership of the direction by ensuring the plan elements make sense and encourage them to articulate what they might change. When you have this true collaboration and co-authorship style, you will likely hear ideas that will surprise you from a different perspective.

This is the realization of wisdom and transmission of it to others: You can be the “launch pad,” but the beauty of seeing wisdom in action occurs when you and the team put your theory or idea to work by testing it.

In the same breath, testing requires you to be nimble. So, once you’ve gained some knowledge from the data points, done the analysis of your test and come up with conclusions supported by facts, you now have something critical: Facts.

You’ve discovered what you don’t need to be doing, which is often just as important as what you should be doing. Said another way, learning, thus wisdom, is an iterative process.

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Trust Your Gut And The Data…But Only So Much.

If we look back on our foundational statement, wisdom comes from knowledge and experience. Be honest with yourself: How much of your thought process comes from a gut feeling versus having sufficient data to go on? Conversely, how much is all data without any judgement involved?

Herein lies the essential balance of what leaders and their teams need for wisdom: A balance of what you’ve learned in the past and what you are learning from what is right in front of you now.

In doing so, you’ll be well-equipped to deal with peers and employees who tend to lean too much on the past to inform the present. You’ve likely heard it in the form of “Well, when I was at (former company), this is the way we did things.”

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Having the balance we’re speaking of above will enable you to respond:

“That’s true, but we have a different set of circumstances now than what you’re describing. We are in a different environment, time, set of talent, set of resources and even a different challenge. So it’s not exactly the same. We should discuss this further.”

Make no mistake. We’re not suggesting that what worked in the past is wrong or misguided. It may actually work here again.

Even so, if you know only one way, then you only know one way.

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Having conversations with other colleagues, gaining input from them and collecting a series of perspectives that can ultimately be distilled into the decision process. These are the components of why wisdom isn’t the property of one person but many.

Think about this as you face your next significant challenge that you surely don’t have to face alone.

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