026: A framework for making more confident decisions with Abby Davisson, author of "Money and Love"

Really, emotions do have a place at work, and emotions certainly come into play and relationships when it comes to making career decisions. And so just knowing that that's okay and knowing that actually if you have strong emotion or if there is an important relationship that a career decision doesn't need to ignore that.

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Welcome back to the show . Today I am so excited to have Abby Davidson with me. Abby is a social innovation leader and career development expert, she's served as the president of the GAP Foundation and co-founded Parents at Gap, Inc. She's a sought after speaker and workshop leader on the topic of how to make money and love decisions. Ooh. Super fun topic and Abby and I recently connected to discuss our journeys as first time authors and we got to talking about the role of managers and making it safe for team members to make decisions.

And we thought, what better conversation to bring on the podcast. So that's what we're talking about today. So thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having Melia. So let's start with a fun one. Thinking about your career and you know, your journey as a leader and, and managing people, or you know, being managed as we all have.

Who had the biggest impact on you, one of your best managers, or one of your worst manager? Well, I lucked into having some of my best managers early on in my career. And you know, after some early gems, I had some not so great managers, which made me realize how good I'd had it and how much having a good manager matters.

And so one of my best managers was somebody I worked for right after college actually. And she was very smart and strategic in the workplace, but she was also extremely intentional about how she integrated her work life and her family. So she had two young daughters at the time when we worked together, and she would bring them to the office and she would invite her colleagues into her home.

And she just didn't compartmentalize her life. And I really appreciated that because she gave me the sense that it was possible to be an amazing leader, an amazing parent at the same time. And even though that didn't seem like it was going to be my reality for many, many years, I just appreciated having that as an early role model.

And. Seem like those two parts of my ambitions were not incompatible with each. Hmm. I love that. And as I read in your book, that became something very important later and when one of the big decisions that you had to make later in your career and in pursuing your MBA, was that it? 

Yes, definitely. And she continues to be a great mentor of mine and confident and friend, so I feel very lucky to have cross paths with her.

Awesome. And managers out there. You know, this is something Abby talked about. This was years ago when you were in college. This was maybe a newer thing to, to, you know, recognize the, the work, the life, the whole person. And now I think obviously the pandemic has shifted our understanding of people have families and lives and.

You know, this is the transformational impact you can have on your team members when you celebrate the many facets of them and, you know, offer flexibility. I think this conversation is really top of mind right now as we look at return to office and distributed work and hybrid teams, but regardless of whatever the configuration is of in-office versus remote, Celebrating that flexibility and remembering that when we encourage, I should say, people to be with their full selves, not have to pretend they don't have a family or hide that they have other things going on.

People end up doing better work and that's something I always especially important to, to reinforce. When we're thinking about the concept of doing more with less, that we're all kind of under pressure right now, that we have to be having higher results. It doesn't have to come at the cost of flexibility.

So anytime anyone mentions flexibility, I have to drive that point home because I worry that right now when people are scaling back, that's gonna sort of be on the chopping block. But we all do better work when, when we don't have to sort of manage all these things behind the. I think that's really instrumental in trusting your employees.

Absolutely. There's this great quote from Oprah. I had the opportunity to hear her a couple times speak, and she said, when you do your best work is when you are most whole. And that just struck me as so wise because, and managers really play a role in encouraging people to bring their whole selves to work and share what their whole selves need to do their best work.

So I absolutely agree and I, I think that. Feel very comfortable with our managers when they create that sense of psychological safety, is when we're able to share with them what the whole self that we have needs to do their best work. So echo what you said a hundred percent. Yeah. It looks different for every manager and every team, and I think part of it is, like you say, creating that.

Space that safety. But as in your example, your manager really modeled it. And that's another thing that's really powerful and important for managers to do is not just say, it's okay to take time. It's okay to not email at night. It's okay to take a parental leave, but then you never do it. Now people are thinking, well, I don't know if I can.

And I've had some really great leaders that took paternity. Three months off. And that really opened the door for men to say, okay, it's not like we say there's paternity leave, but if you're off for more than three days, you kind of, or look down upon. And then when you have things like that, now you're sharing the burden of care taking across, you know, both parents or, you know, you're just making it more equitable across the board.

So modeling that flexibility is, is a huge piece. I think also in the example you shared, That showed you don't have to compromise your focus and your dedication to your job because you have a family. Absolutely. And those two things can reinforce each other. I mean, I remember this was a consulting firm, and so she would bring her daughters in for Take Your Daughters to Workday, and there were some junior folks, including myself at the time, who got to actually work on.

Case studies and teach them and, and play roles that we might not have been able to, you know, in a client facing scenario, but that we got to work on because she created the space to do some of those things in the office for opportunities for the partners children. And so I love that. I thought it was so creative and actually helped build skills at the same time, so it was a win for everyone.

Yeah, I love that. Let's dive into your topic of expertise decision making, and this is something I know I struggle with. I think a lot of us out there, especially with the overthinking decisions, and you talk a lot about this in the book and how to find a little bit more comfort and security, even if it's a really hard decision than.

And I know the love and money is probably the hardest decisions that folks have to wrestle with. And so before we dive into how it applies to managing the workplace, I guess why love and money, what did you find in your research in, in your work, working on the book for why Love and money stood out as the kind of prominent themes?

Well, my co-author is a labor economist and economist typically study money, and the conventional wisdom is that we should separate decisions about money from decisions about love, right? Never let your emotions influence your financial decisions, and certainly never let your. Head conversation, you know, thoughts about money influence your relationship decisions, but that is completely flawed because all of big's life decisions have an element of both.

And when you ignore part of the picture, you're more likely to make a decision that you regret. And so my co-author taught a class for over 40 years in Stanford Business School where I studied with her, that talked about the importance of looking at both money and love. In all of life's biggest decisions, and it really was a light bulb moment for me.

It opened my eyes to why I had been really struggling in my early and mid twenties to make some of the life decisions that I was faced with, and really started me down this path of thinking very differently about the decisions that I had to make. And I was fortunate to take her class with the man I was dating at the time who eventually became my husband, and we.

Really been putting the lessons of the course into practice over the last 15 years. And we've had two young kids. We've had lots of career decisions and and life decisions to make at that time, and I can say that her class really changed our lives and gave us the blueprint for how we navigate all of the big decisions we've made.

I love that. So let's talk about this blueprint. In, in the book you talk about the five C framework for making decisions. Can you share what this is and let's apply it to a decision that a manager would have to potentially make? Yeah. And first of all, let me just share why it's helpful to have a framework.

Because I mean, certainly economists love frameworks. I'm a, a recovering consultant. We love. But, uh, we offer it because, um, there are a couple of human biases that really get in our way when we are facing decisions. And so the first is our tendency to, um, not like to be uncomfortable, right? So humans don't like to have, uh, uncertainty.

We certainly don't like to. Feel emotions like anger and fear and guilt. And so when we're faced with a big life decision where emotions or really, you know, any decision where emotions run high, our temptation is often to just get to the other side of that decision quickly. Let's just like decide something and move on.

So we don't have to sit in that not knowing. Uh, but that can again lead to decisions we regret. The other human tendency is to focus really on the short term. So we have a very short term bias in our thinking, and so we often. Sort of see the up close consequences of our decision, but not play that decision farther out.

And so part of the reason we offer a framework is to overcome these human biases and encourage people to slow down and turn over some important rocks that are key to making decisions that will be better and they'll feel more confident about in the long run. So that's the context of why a framework.

Yeah. But we call ours the five Cs. And I'll touch on the CS quickly, and then as we talk through the decision, we can go in some more detail. So the first C is to clarify what's most important to you. The second is to communicate with the other people who are involved in the decision. The third is to generate a broad range of choices.

The fourth is to check in with friends, family, and trusted resources. And the fifth is to consider the consequences of your decision in both the short term, medium term and long term. So that's the high level of the five Cs. Yeah. And before we apply it to an example, you know, where, why I found this so helpful was I have a tendency, and I know a lot of folks that I have coached and talked about, I talked about this in my TEDx talk and my book to overthink to the point where I have a negative confirmation.

Where no matter what happens, I'm looking for the reasons it was a bad decision. So when I, I get in this place where I'm overthinking, I'm overthinking, and then I'm looking out. For all those reasons, it was wrong. And what I think is really helpful about this framework is it sort of covers off on those things that you're gonna look for as reasons it was wrong ahead of time.

It's almost like doing a pre-mortem to that decision so that you don't find yourself in that. And then you can go back and say, Nope, I thought about these things and this is why it was the right decision for right now. So again, I think that's another reason for me, I found the framework really helpful was it starts to quiet that inner critic, that snowball thinking after where, you know, if you have that tendency for, let me find all the reasons that I was wrong, because I knew I would be wrong, then it's gonna really come in.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. And we have a quiz on our website actually, money love book.com that allows people to see what type of money and love decision maker they are. And it sounds like you might tend towards the analyzer type that likes to kind of look at all the different angles, play out all the different scenarios and, and you can.

They ha they might have the potential to get stuck in analysis paralysis. Yeah. Where you're kind of playing just the worst case scenarios over and over. And so for folks who have that tendency, it does help you kind of get yourself unstuck from that swirling. Um, other people have the opposite. Challenge where they are really just gut trusters and they kind of go with the first thing that pops into their head about what they should do.

And the framework allows those folks to really slow down and say, wait a minute, is that such a good idea? Let's kind of cover off. Let's turn over a few more rocks and see what we might be missing here. Yeah. I love that. And for people leading teams, I mean, think about how many decisions that you have to make on a daily basis, but really from the career standpoint, I think that's where this love and money concept comes up.

Taking on growing a team, a new role, you know, moving into, maybe moving to another city to, to have a great opportunity, but it, it creates a lot of change in your life and. And as I thought about how valuable this framework is for the workplace, I thought about how managers can get really stuck in thinking about the different dimensions of themselves, their growth, their team members.

The team members' growth, if they, you know, a lot of pressure they're under. I think a lot of times folks are asked to be a manager because they were great. Individual contributors, but they don't really have the skills or maybe even the interest in being a manager. So I think that's where this comes in such so I think that's where this is so handy to, to look at because it can help us think about it in a, in a different way.

That's somewhat depersonalizes a little bit. Yeah, I think that's right and I, so I'll share, you know, just in terms of the, the decision that we can talk through something that I faced that was a, a very personal decision. Um, and how I used the five Cs to help get unstuck from that. So in the early months of the pandemic, so this was, you know, a couple months in, I had the opportunity to take on an expanded role at work.

But to set the stage, my husband and I mentioned we have two young kids. We were trading off responsibilities for our. At the time, older son who was in second grade has remote learning. Our younger son was in preschool and I mean, that was just its own challenge. Um, and so he was kind of in a pod, but thankfully out of our house.

But I felt like I was barely able to do my job and support the team that I already had and help my son. Learn remotely. And so now I was being asked to take on an a larger team. Some of them were based in India, so completely different time zones. I already had team members in all time zones across the US and leadership for my team's function.

And so it was all a little head spinning, uh, was working on the book at the time. And so had an opportunity to say, okay, let's just see if I can apply this f. To how I can get through, you know, make this decision. And so in terms of clarifying what I wanted, I certainly wanted the opportunity, but I also really wanted to take care of myself in the process.

I knew just from being a parent that I needed those reserves in order to, you know, care for the people who depended on me, both in my home and also at work. So I didn't wanna burn myself out in the process. I communicated. First thing actually when I was presented with the opportunity is to ask my manager if I could have a few days to consider it.

Um, and I think that's really key. So not rushing into a big decision, not feeling like you have to say yes or no on the spot. That was very helpful. And she said, sure, you know, take the time. You need to think about it. I then communicated with my husband, I told him about the opportunity, you know, I wasn't even sure how it would logistically work given, you know, everything we had on our plates and the time zones that I would be required to have meetings in.

Um, and so we started talking about our choices. We talked about how it would work if I said no, like would I even be able to keep my old job. Uh, we talked about what would need to change with our situation if I said, Um, and, you know, I got to the check-in part, and this part was tricky because I couldn't talk about this with many people at work, right?

And that's often very challenging with decisions like this. Um, especially as you get further up in management roles, it can, you have fewer peers and it can feel lonely. And so I fortunately had friends outside of work who also had faced similar decisions who I, um, checked in with. And one of them asked me a powerful question, which was, you know, what would I regret?

You know, not taking the opportunity or taking the opportunity. And that was clarifying for me. And I said, well, not taking the opportunity, I mean it would feels like it's, it's being presented to me. And I, I wanted to see at least how I would like the new role. Um, and so my husband and I talked a lot about consequences and we talked about in the short term it would be tough, but I also knew.

You know, it wouldn't be this way forever. At the very least, my kids would get older and be able to, uh, take on their more responsibility for their work. Um, we talked about, uh, my, in the short term, my husband actually offered to take the lead on remote school. I mean, he was, uh, in a leadership job in his.

Full-time job, but he had been in it for a bit longer at that point. And so, you know, I would then be able to get up the learning curve with my new role. And that was a huge, um, burden off my shoulders, you know, and it talked about, uh, how in the medium term it would give me a sense of, uh, if I, if I enjoyed leading a function and in the long term, it would look really good on my resume.

And so I. I was leaning towards accepting it. Uh, but the challenge was, as I think many people are facing right now, it wasn't going to come with additional pay. Mm-hmm. And so that was important to me. It didn't feel sustainable and it didn't feel equitable. And, and that's a core value of mine. And so I went back to the manager, I said, listen, I'm, I'm, it's very compelling, uh, but can we talk about how we could make this sustainable and.

Prompted me to do, you know, I had done some more check-ins and see, saw what comparable roles were, um, were providing in terms of salary. And so armed with that information, you know, asked for what I felt was fair and was able to get a bump in salary. And so I did. Actually accepted the role. And, um, having gone through the process, I felt more confident in feeling like I had really thought through this.

I certainly, I don't think you ever feel ready to take a big, um, bump in responsibility, but I felt like I had played it out in a way that, um, was the best thinking I could do and prepared me as well as I could have for the opportu. Wow. I love that. I mean, there's so many things here to dive into. First, essentially a six C could be coaching, right?

And you're, what you're doing here is, is essentially coaching yourself, especially in those that clarify and looking at the different timeframes to figure out, you know, how can I look at this more from a place of. Possibility and potential as opposed to analysis and overthinking. And, and I think this is the, the power of both having a framework or working with a coach to help navigate a decision because they can help you look at it through, um, really an unbiased, more objective perspective of, Hey, there's no, there's no bad answer.

There's no bad choice. We're just looking at all of the possible directions this could go knowing. You know, as you said, it's not forever and, and things will change and there's no certainty anyway. Um, the other thing I really love that you called out is the importance of advocating for yourself and not getting swept up in, oh, this is a good opportunity and someone has promised me sort of a.

You know, career growth and visibility without all the other things that should come with it, which is pay really, and, and, and, and as you said, sustainability and in managers listening as you're being asked to take on more, especially if there's been layoffs or cuts, or not hiring backfills or hiring freezes that it's okay and and necessary to be advocating for yourself.

Around what's fair and what you need. And if it's not possible to increase pay at that moment because of all of the constraints right now, getting a commitment from your leadership around, well, when can that be revisited and what is that time horizon? And following up and saying, okay, I'm gonna follow up with you next quarter, as we talked about in, in a few months, and have that conversation.

And if you're seeing over time, they're not showing up for you, it creates a new decision to have to think through. I think around the future. But what you did there, and what I love about your example is you based on running through this framework and doing that self-coaching, you uncovered something that wasn't sitting right, that then you could advocate for yourself around and, and bring in skills around negotiation to, to make sure that, that the thing really was right.

And I think that's, it sounds like really helped clarify and, and solidify that decision. Yeah. Well I love your six c I do think there's a coaching element and certainly having an unbiased person who's not in the thick of the decision is so, is so helpful and important. It's also really helpful to, um, just kind of give yourself some space where you can do.

Your best thinking about it. And so for me, that looks like being outside. It's one of the reasons I live in Northern California where I can actually go for a hike, um, take the time to kind of be a little bit more expansive. And, you know, our lives were so closed in at that time that it felt impossible to get perspective.

And so, you know, finding even just like a quiet place where you're not kind of staring at your to-do list or looking at a screen and taking a minute to kind of think expansively can really. With the, the coaching piece that you mentioned, whether it's yourself or going for a walk with someone else who can be, uh, an.

Yeah, as you think through it. Yeah, absolutely. That embodiment is really important in getting, you know, kind of seeing where things sit with you, getting outta your environment where, you know, you kind of have the same sort of thinking to, to get more to an expansive place. I think one more thing about, you know, before we move into, I think where people get most stuck, I always like to ask that question is, I think for managers, the importance of communicating your decision making process.

Because a lot of times now you have this lens and this framework, maybe you have another framework that you apply that's been effective, and this is why I talk about it in my ops Playbook program, is, you know, sharing with your team members. What process you are using to make decisions when you are making the call, when you are encouraging them to make the call, you know how, how you'll be informing them and vice versa.

Because a lot of times I think we can get stuck around decision making on teams because it's unclear how and when and why and who's contributing inputs. And so by communicating that process that you're going through, this helps create an uh, more flow of information and a more ease around these big decisions that have to be made on a team.

Yeah, that makes. So moving into, you know, where do you see people get the most stuck? I know we talked about a little bit the analysis paralysis or trust in your gut. Like are those, speak more maybe about this quiz and the sort of places that you find people, sort of these buckets they fall into. Yeah, I mean I, I think we all have a natural tendency when it comes to making decisions and so some people, you know from very early on, and I actually can see this in my two kids, they're like totally to both boys, very different personalities.

And so I can see that one is an analyzer and he can get very stuck kind of thinking through like, All the angles and wanting to have a hundred percent certainty before he makes a decision, which we know is impossible. Right? Even if you think you have a hundred percent certainty, you know something is gonna change.

And so people like him need to have something that kind of forces them along to move quickly and to kind of. Feel comfortable acting without a hundred percent information, a hundred percent certainty. And then there are other people, like my younger son who is more, they're more of a gut truster, right?

They're more like, okay, well, you know, they might call it intuition or they might call it, you know, I just have a feeling about this. But they kind of go, they have a tendency not to wanna overthink it, right? They actually say, oh, but I just have a, I just know I'm just gonna act on this. And, um, sometimes that.

Kind of tend into impulsivity and, and so they can actually act without gathering more pieces of information that give them more of the picture. Um, and then there are somewhere some people that are somewhere in between, um, who kind of have elements of both that they might bring out in different situations.

But when they're stressed, they probably have one dominant type. And so again, you know, quiz is pretty quick and fun and it, it offers ways that you can apply the five Cs to help guard against some of the, um, challenges that your tendency might present. But I think, you know, going back to your question of, of where do people get stuck, I mean, I do think that when it comes to work decisions, one of the biggest challenges people have, Thinking that they need to be made with their heads only.

I mean, I talked about how the conventional wisdom is really about separating career decisions, which are typically money decisions, right? Because we're, our career is our. For many of us, our source of financial livelihood from love decisions, but really emotions do have a place at work and emotions certainly come into play and relationships when it comes to making career decisions.

And so just knowing that that's okay and knowing that actually if you have a strong emotion or if there is an important relationship that a career decision doesn't need to ignore that. I mean, certainly I have, even if you think that this decision is yours alone to make. So even, you know, before I was married and when I was younger and earlier in my career, I ended up moving to a new city for a relationship.

And I, you know, when I would tell the story on my resume and people would say like, talk me through your resume. Like, I would only talk about how, you know, the career decisions played out. But truthfully, like what was behind that decision was, was wanting to pursue a relationship. And we have sort of created the conditions in our workplaces where it's actually not okay.

You have to like, Only talk about the career progression and, and how, you know, that decision was really made because you wanted more responsibility and you were interested in this aspect of a, of the opportunity from a job perspective. But truthfully, I mean, we, we all know that the whole picture is actually about both money and love decisions.

And so, you know, I certainly believe that you should allow yourself to think about the love implications of the work related decisions that you. Love that perfect place to close. I think remembering it's that whole self point again and that these things exist, whether we say it or not, and knowing that it's okay.

So before we wrap up, is there anything you're excited that you're working on that you wanna share with our audience? Yeah, well as you mentioned, you know, my book came out in January and I've been leading workshops, uh, related to the book. And we talked through our five Cs framework and I have been struck.

The big decisions, the big money and love questions that people are carrying around with them and they've been sharing really vulnerable things in these workshops. Some about being, you know, the first generation in their families to go to college and feeling a lot of responsibility for supporting their parents, others being, you know, torn between staying in the US where they might have better.

Prospects, but where healthcare is so expensive and our social safety net systems are so precarious and you know, it can feel really lonely to be carrying those decisions. And so one of the co-authors of the book, No Hard Feelings, Liz Fosslien I don't know if you know that book, but it's a great one, has a great cartoon that shows four people looking at their laptops and each of them has like a thought bubble coming out of their heads thinking I am the only one on this team with personal and emotional.

And it's like if even one of those team members spoke up about their needs, it would make others feel more comfortable doing the same thing. And so I think that managers have a really profound role in helping ensure that their teams are supported, not just from a job skills perspective, but from a personal and social emotional needs perspective.

And so I really, you know, the last chapter of our book is all about how. Individuals can be change agents and help push against some of the suboptimal systems we have when it comes to supporting people to pursue relationships outside of work. And so I would just encourage everyone who is a manager or is aspiring to be a manager, to know that they play an enormous role in setting culture and sometimes even setting policies and to think of themselves as change agents and make sure that they're doing all that they can to support positive change so that everyone can have more money and love in their lives. Love that. Thank you so much. What a great place to wrap up. So thank you, Abby, for being on the show. I will include all those resources, the link to your book, the link to the workshops, and that cartoon in the show notes so folks can check it out.

Thanks so much. This was fabulous. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple Podcast where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive. I always love to hear from you, so please reach out at liagarvin.com or message me on LinkedIn.

See you next time.