Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to use the headline test.

When you are making a decision, consider how your decision would sound as the headline of a newspaper article.

You want to make the best decision, not just the most popular or easiest one.

But there is also something to be said for considering how

other people will be likely to understand your decision at first glance. You want to make sure it

won't come off in a way that you don't intend. Many business leaders learn the advice that you shouldn't do anything you wouldn't want written about on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

If you would be embarrassed by that prominent telling of what you are about to do, you should really think about whether you should do it.

And that is good advice.

But even if you are doing something reasonable,

headlines often tell the most controversial or grabby aspect of a story.

If people are likely to talk about what you are doing, you want to think about the potential

headlines so you can be intentional about how you explain the decision and your reasoning.

For instance, if you are on the school board for your town and decide to move your own child to an independent school,

you will realize that this probably does not pass the headline test on its face.

School board member abandoning public schools, right? That's what people will think. So you need to

think about how you will narrate that

decision in a way that doesn't undercut your support for your town's public schools. And there

are various reasons that this might be the case. Maybe your child has a special need that a local

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