Good Judgment Is a Skill You Build, Not a Gift You Get

Good Judgment Is a Skill You Build, Not a Gift You Get

A first time parent brings the baby home, hears the first cry, and freaks out. Hungry? Wet? In pain? Tired? Every cry feels like an emergency. A parent on their third child hears the same cry and says, sometimes they just fuss in their sleep, give it a minute. Same sound, completely different read. Nobody handed the experienced parent that calm. They built it through trial, error, and feedback. Judgment at work is no different.

Tenure is not the same as skill

Most people assume judgment comes from years on the job. Philip Tetlock studied over a million predictions and found something more useful. What builds judgment is informed practice, not time served. Informed practice means you track your calls, get honest feedback, and review them. You write down the decision you made, what you expected to happen, and why. Then you compare it to what actually happened. Making decisions is practice too, but it is not enough to grow your judgment skill.

Don't confuse a good outcome with a good decision

Success is not a reliable proof of good judgment. You can make a poor call and still get lucky. Annie Duke, a former professional poker player, builds her book Thinking in Bets around exactly this: judge the decision, not only the result.

Sir Andrew Likierman makes the same point. Outcomes are shaped by timing, luck, and factors you never controlled. If you grade yourself only on results, you will learn the wrong lessons and potentially repeat errors in judgment. He also names overconfidence as one of the biggest enemies of good judgment, because it makes us stop listening and stop learning from our mistakes.

Build the loop, on purpose

You can train this. At Boss at the Helm we use the Helm Method℠: Aim, Act, Adjust.

• Aim by setting the intention to strengthen your judgment.
• Act by tracking your decisions before you know how they turn out.
  • Try a premortem: picture the decision failed, then name what killed it and which biases crept in.
• Adjust by reviewing your decision log over time so you can see your blind spots and your patterns.

One more habit from Likierman's work: before a final call, find someone who will genuinely disagree with you, and listen. Seek diversity, not validation. Echo chambers are where good judgment goes to die.

Start small this week. Keep a decision log. Write your call, what you expect, and why. Then find one person who sees it differently and hear them out. When the outcome is known, come back and record what happened. 

Judgment is not a gift you were handed or a prize for time served. It is a muscle you build, one tracked call at a time.

Watch this week's Mini but Mighty℠ Leadership Lesson on YouTube

If you want judgment built across your managers with practice, feedback, and a shared language, that is what the Helm Leadership Essentials℠ Cohort Program is built to do. Reach out at bossatthehelm.com/contact.

Lead yourself. Then lead others. Be a Boss.