Hey, my friends, my podcast family, Mark Cole here. Welcome back to another episode of the Maxwell Leadership Podcast.

Or, by the way, maybe your first time, we have a lot of first time listeners each and every week. We're glad you are here.

I've been waiting on you and we're glad you're here today. You are in for an incredible lesson from John C. Maxwell today.

In fact, Jake told us right before we were going to listen to this that this was one of his favorite that we've had in a while.

And Jake, I agree with you. This lesson called the DNA of great decision making is going to be a lesson that will impact you.

By the way, if you're a leader or really, if you're just a living, breathing human being, we have to make decisions every single day of our life.

With every decision we make, there's the pressure to know if we're making the right decision, if we made the right decision, and what needs to be considered to make that best decision.

It can seem daunting. In fact, sometimes overwhelming, but yet today, the Maxwell Podcast is going to help you with decision making.

So John's going to teach a very important lesson, give you four things to consider in decision making. After John is done teaching, I have my friend, your friend Chris Goady.

He's also the co-host of the John Maxwell Executive Leadership Podcast. You need to subscribe to that as well. Chris and I will come back and give application to what John is teaching us in today's lesson.

If you would like to take some notes, if you'd like to follow along with John, you can go to Maxwell Podcast dot com forward slash decision and download the free bonus resource,

which is a fill in the blank PDF where you can follow along and fill in blanks with John. So here is John Maxwell.

Let me give you what I consider to be the DNA of good decision making. Number one, evidence. In other words, I'm speaking about specific facts that can be independently verified.

Beware. This is an important statement. Beware of overconfidence. Think about the last time you made a decision that turned out poorly. You probably were confident about your decision. Otherwise, you wouldn't have made it.

But confidence and accuracy don't necessarily go hand in hand according to marketing professors, J. Wesley Hutchison at the Wheaton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Joseph W. Alba of the University of Florida and Gainesville.

That's because here's a statement. You need to underline this in your notes. This next statement really, really helps us understand why evidence is important. Here we go.

Accuracy reflects what we know while confidence reflects what we think we know. So therefore, if I'm making decisions just based on confidence, I could be wrong.

Here are some tips to detect over confidence in yourself and others who are bringing you critical information needed to make a decision.

Dig deep when someone is very confident of a prediction is likely to be overconfident. Beware of people who mall over decision without obtaining new information or insight.

Probe for the basis of someone's belief. We all assume our information is correct. The so-called truth bias. Assume a 20% chance of being wrong when there is a slight uncertainty that allows you to consider the consequences.

Take a hard look at your areas of expertise and find the boundaries of your knowledge. Then watch for over confidence in yourself and others when you're outside those limits.

Test your opinions by looking for information that challenges your beliefs or facts rather than looking for information that supports your opinions.

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