Latest / The MillionaireByMorning‘s Podcast / The Art of Decision Making with Danute Debney Shaw
Transcript
- Rashad Thirlkill: Welcome back to the Millionaire by Morning Podcast. Today, we're talking about something every leader, entrepreneur, and decision maker faces. But very few people have truly mastered, and that is the art and discipline of making powerful decisions. My guest today is Danute Debny Shaw, founder of Celephantis, where she explores a powerful approach to leadership and decision making centered around what she describes as Total subjective engagement. The idea is simple but profound. When we're making consequential decisions, we shouldn't rely exclusively on analysis, data, or conventional cognitive thinking. Powerful leadership requires us to engage the full range of our resources, including our rational and cognitive abilities, intuition, and creativity. In a world where leaders are constantly being asked to make faster and more complex decisions, the ability to think differently, see differently, and engage ourselves more completely may be one of the greatest competitive advantages we have. Today we're going to explore what happens when leaders move beyond simply asking, What makes sense? and begin asking, What am I seeing, sensing, creating, and understanding that can lead to a Better decision. Danute, welcome to the Millionaire by Morning Podcast. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. Danute Debney Shaw: Well, thank you so much for that lovely introduction and I'm delighted to be here with you. Rashad Thirlkill: All right, well let's get started and let's begin with the big idea. When you talk about total subjective engagement, what exactly does that mean? Danute Debney Shaw: It's it's really as you pointed out in the introduction, it's simple but not something we often take stock of. It's the idea of using everything, the intuitive process, the rational process, the creative, emotional intelligence, imagination, as appropriate. So it isn't about throwing out the rational by any means. It's about also stepping back, sort of pulling back the aperture and taking account of what else may be happening in this situation. You know, negotiations is a very important part of what we all get involved in, whether we're negotiators per se, or whether we're involved in a business of one kind or another, or just negotiating our way through life. We have to take into stock what it is that's in front of us. We can't just come up with a script and say, this is what I want, this is what I'm going to say, this is what my outcome will be, because it's engagement. Anything that involves engagement has other aspects to it. Generally, if you're if you're dealing with individuals or you're dealing with an institution, you're dealing with some kind of organization, whatever it is, there's there's gonna be a give and take. And in order to be able to be most effective in it in that give and take and come out of it most powerfully and successfully, it helps to take all of it into consideration. I spoke with somebody I actually not long ago who's involved in business, has been for many years. He does it a little bit differently. I usually look at what does the picture look like first. Because that guides the the track of rational engagement I'm going to take. He does it a little bit differently. He he goes with what's going on, this is what I want that's in front of me. This is how it's looking. This is what we're going to discuss, or we already have discussed, or we're in the middle of discussing, and then he pulls back subjectively, pulls back. He's not pulling back physically. He's there. But he's looking at it. He's really seeing the nuance of how it's going. He's taking a measure of what. What's involved in this engagement, and that allows him to respond more powerfully, because that's another aspect of my little seeds of resilience. I call them the seeds of resilience. They're all the little bits and pieces that l lead up to us being able to engage most powerfully and most resiliently. We need to be able to take the measure of the situation, and that isn't dealt with strictly objectively. Rashad Thirlkill: Okay. All right. So what do most leaders misunderstand about how they actually make decisions? Danute Debney Shaw: Well, I think a a a lot of it, n and not always, of course I'm grossly generalizing. If we had specific scenarios or whatever, that would be different. But if I'm going to speak in a very large, enlarged way about it, I think a lot of people come into business situations, leadership situations, with a kind of preconceived notion. There's what they hope what they want to achieve. And usually from a leadership perspective, it's not so much a hope to achieve. It is what they are really, you know, trying to go for. What they're going for. This is what I'm going for. This is what I'm saying it is. This is how I'd like to unfold it. This is, I think often what happens because leadership, whether leadership as an entrepreneur in your small group, leadership in a larger group, leadership as a solo, you know, business person. You're still leading, you're leading your effort forward. So you're you may be leading just yourself, but you're still leading. It's very easy to kind of lock into a sense of A to B to C. It's A to B to C. These are the elements. And sometimes that is supported by the kinds of workshops and things people take. I'm a very big believer that there's a lot of material and information out there. I'm always happy to refer people for additional information on what they may need that I cannot provide them. It's not my area of discourse or of of consulting. I'm very happy to refer people on. But here's the thing about people just randomly say, I'm going to sign up for this course, I'm going to do that, I'm going to get the six of this, the twelve of that, the whatever, and now I'm good to go, and this is it. Well, that can all be very helpful. These are all bits and pieces of information, programs of process. All of this can be very helpful. But it's not the end of it all. It's not that you can just superimpose some kind of platform. on all of your decisions and think you're just going to be able to jump into it and make it happen. It's going to involve the engagement. And one of the surprises that I I I bring up sometimes is that the emotional engagement actually matters as well. Because I have rarely been in a business situation where emotion has not been involved. And by that I don't mean people are screaming or crying or laughing. Not that kind of an emotion. It's the the power behind their impetus. It can be a drive, it can be a passion, it can be compassion, it can be fear, it can be competition, it can be jealousy, it can be a lot of elements that are factoring into the play of how we interact and proceed. So I'm using that as just one example of that whole bunch of ammunition that I'm talking about. It includes our emotional positioning. It includes, you know, how we're going to be able to respond rather than quickly react. You know, you'll you'll notice that. That often when when companies, countries have reacted rather than responded, they almost always have to go into some kind of correction. Now, of course, there are situations where an immediate reaction is needed. You know, you have to get out of an oncoming train, you have to get away from that. Whether that's a metaphor or whether that's really what's going on, yes, then a reaction is needed. But if we are talking about something of greater and broader consequence, deeper consequence, you need to have a response. And where is that response going to come from? In your brain, using the little gray cells, as Poirot from Agatha Christie's detective series would always talk about is little gray cells. That's where we use all of those little gray cells. And the more practiced you are in exercising them, rather than superimposing, this is my approach, this is who I am as a leader, this is how I do it, boom, boom, boom. I think that's the kind of trap that people can get into, particularly when they are. They are concerned, if not worried or or frightened about the outcome of what they're stepping into. They want to feel strong, they want to feel prepared. All of that is very important. But so is flexibility, so is adaptation. And sometimes you've got to do that adaptation right there in the moment. We have even seen that with international leaders speaking to each other. You can see them adapting and shifting, and you know, and and using their power in certain ways to. To and to make the engagement more successful, hopefully for both sides, but certainly for their side. And so this is really the ultimate thing I think that is a kind of a danger for leaders is to get themselves tracked in a way that they go about things and then superimpose an approach they're going to take and assume that the result is going to be there for them. Rashad Thirlkill: Okay, all right, thank you for that. So we're often taught that good decisions are based on facts, data, and rational analysis. Where does that approach work and where does it fall short? Danute Debney Shaw: Well, you know, as an extension of what we were just talking about, this sort of flows naturally into it. If you decide to dismiss certain awareness that you're getting, and and this is again, it goes back to that A to B to C. Usually you you kinda want to blinker yourself and not be bothered with whatever else is out there. And the in reality, you need your box, you need that rational, you need to have worked things through, done your research if you needed to, learned what whatever you needed to. About what whatever discussion you're going to have or decision you're going to have to make, who's involved, what their impact may be. You've got to do all that homework, yes. But what you really sometimes tend to fall short, and all of us, all of us, myself included, because you know, you get into the rhythms of life and you're just kind of moving along and you're going, going your way, pay attention when something is sort of thumping you in the head. In fact, that same leader that I was talking about who would decide to look at everything rationally and then pull the lens back. His approach was, what am I not seeing in this picture? Is this feeling right? What what am I getting here? What's coming into he would ask himself certain questions. Of course it would depend on the situation, what and how many questions. Sometimes there's not much to ask. You have a simple decision to make, you're making a decision. Not everything needs to be made into a complexity. I'm talking about situation where more is at stake. It may be more consequential for you. Or you know it may mean maybe in mean different directions that you're even going to have to take. Those are the situations that are most critical to engage as fully as you possibly can. Some some may be very simple. For him, whenever he was doing anything relatively consequential, and he was in a position of tremendous leadership, he would just literally pull back for a second. He gave himself that subjective moment. If you need to take a break, you need to step out of the room, you need if this is consequential, You don't want to just jump in there with it. If this is something that you're gonna have to speak to and be responsible for, and for example, if it's a big negotiation for a huge contract that will that will affect l a h a large price point and possibly let's say a maintenance service organization contract or you know a a master services agreement where you're going to have to keep doing the service over and over and over again with different you know orders that will be submitted along the way, then that's not just one agreement, that's a series of agreements that will be governed by the decisions you're going to make. So it's important if you're getting that nagging feeling, if something is saying, mmm, and that's what he would do. He would just take a moment. And if he could, he'd take more than a moment. If this didn't have to be answered in that moment, but could take, he could table it, he could come back to it, w what whatever he needed to do. He might need to Ask more questions. He may need to pick a few more things apart. And this is something that we are sometimes afraid to do because often leaders want to be strong and decisive. And that's all wonderful. However, if you haven't taken everything you need into consideration, at least that you can access at that time. Obviously, if things happened later, you couldn't have known. You made whatever decisions you made at that time with the best, best possible input from all the sources you could tap, including what's going on in your brain, right? That's all you can be responsible for. But that's the thing that I find that leaders sometimes fall short on. They they because they have to exhibit confidence and ego sometimes step in as substance as well. And really successful, truly successful leadership does very little about ego. You need some ego to tie your shoes in the morning and show up, obviously. But if ego is what is driving you, that that can also be a very strong impediment in being able to use even the rational e-sort resources at times. Rashad Thirlkill: So I think what I am hearing you say is that in situations, once you have the facts and the data and all of the rationale and you've analyzed everything, it is okay to go with your gut. Danute Debney Shaw: Well, I th I I well I have to qualify that. It's okay if that still feels congruent. You know, it's not the sort of thing like, well, I was in the middle of a meeting, but I really feel I'd like to jump off a building. I think I can do that successfully. No, we're not talking about your gut being, you know, outside of the context of what you're trying to do. In other words, how you're feeling about it should should fall in like this. It should be like, yes, this is working. This is a click. This feels strong. This feels like we can go somewhere with it. That's the kind of insight, that's the kind of analysis, if you should if is subjective analysis, if you're gonna we're gonna use that term, to put to a factual body of information. That's how it should work together. That's what I'm saying. If your gut is suddenly telling you something completely different on this same issue. Well, then then there's something really wrong here. Because, sometimes when we come to making a to make a decision, particularly in a negotiation, things are thrown at us that we've not had a chance to really consider deeply. Or there are, you know, we've been given a certain body of facts, but is that all the facts? Is there something else we may not have been told about? And often what happens when people get that feeling like this gentleman, where he's thinking, it doesn't quite feel right, it's because he got part of something, but maybe not enough of. Or all of something. And our brains are pretty darn powerful. They can pick up nuances. They can pick, they can read things from, you know, visually, from visually from just the sense of expression, the pauses someone is making, the way they've made the statement. All of this comes across to our brains in ways sometimes we're not consciously able to pick up in the moment because we're so busy getting ready with what we're gonna say and what we're gonna do. But our little brain is going, wait, wait, wait, wait, what was that hesitation about? Is he covering something there? Is there something that we we should have discussed but didn't in that moment? So there's parts of us that I believe personally try to speak up. It's our perception, it's how we're perceiving something. And that's that's what the reading is when we talk about negotiating. You need to read the other person. If you're not good at perception, you're not very perceptive, and you can't read another person, wow, you better have somebody else in on negotiation with you because there are all sorts of subtleties that can come across in a complex negotiation. That you need to be prepared for and ready to engage. And you have to be coming from a position of self-trust on this, meaning that you understand because you've worked like this gentleman that I'm referring to, he's done this a lot. He knows what his, you know, he knows what his little mind does, how it tickle, how his brain tickles him when something is wrong or something is missing. Or something just needs to be nailed down better. Maybe we didn't clarify one point. I can't just sign off on this. This point is too vague and I I was too busy worried about the other stuff. I didn't catch it. You hear people say that after they've entered agreements because they really weren't tuning in all the way. And am I saying that you'll never miss some point in a negotiation or you'll never overlook something or no. I'm just talking about doing things as fully as you can. And sometimes it's not that complicated. Sometimes it's pretty factual, it's pretty straightforward, and you run with it. I'm just saying that when there are there is complexity, there is nuance. There are potential issues that haven't been clearly established or laid out. This could be you talking to a vendor or you talking to a government official in another country where you may want to be able to sell your product. it could be it could be very complex, very high-end, or it could be a more day-to-day engagement, and it still requires a little bit more attention sometimes. I can't tell you as somebody who's worked on contract negotiation and someone who's been a federal practice counsel working on discovery for large litigations with hundreds of other attorneys and a body of work where we're sifting through material and learning all this stuff, we get to see how this can occur and how it does occur. And sometimes someone intended what they actually got into, and sometimes they weren't entirely aware of all of the implications. The reason I'm bringing up this this intuitive subjective aspect is just as an augmentation. I'm not saying do it in place of normal, you know, rational down to earth thinking, grounded thinking. No, because the idea in the end is it should go together. One should now every now and then, every now and then, and actually this same gentleman said this to me. He said, now there are times when a deal looks great on paper. And I just have an awful feeling. I just have an awful feeling about it. And I can't give you a rational i you know explanation. That doesn't mean what he's getting is irrational. It's a rational. There's no rationale to it that he can see right now. That doesn't mean, again, that he hasn't read something from the other person or picked up some nuance, that he can't put his finger on in this moment, but something is telling him to step back. Maybe he needs to reschedule this meeting if it's not something that needs to be taken care of instantaneously. Maybe he needs to take another look at this contract. Maybe he needs to think about what's been stated, what's been asked for, what he's conceding to. or what he's insisting upon. I'm saying that this is just more power, more mojo to put into your ability to make decisions in a leadership capacity. I'm using negotiations because that's one of the things that leaders get involved in. but it doesn't have to be strictly negotiation. It could be many other contexts. Where you are putting something forward, you're hoping for one kind of objective. But if you haven't analyzed it well enough, you haven't taken the people into consideration, you haven't taken time frames into consideration, you haven't taken, other factors, knowable and sometimes even unknowable at the time, but you have to allow for the fact that there'll be some space of variance there. You have to take all that into account when you're throwing out these leadership decisions, because invariably it does come back and shoot you in the foot. Rashad Thirlkill: To build on that, I'd like to ask if you're not, if you're not a persuasive person, if you're not a person who can judge a book by his cover, if you don't have that type of intuition, can that be developed? Or is it something that you're just simply born with? Danute Debney Shaw: Well, that's an excellent, excellent question. And I don't often get asked that. And I think it's a very, very pertinent question. My whole perspective is that absolutely it can be developed. And often circumstances help you develop it, which is why one gentleman said to me once, so I was consulting with him, I don't want to have to think so much. I'm like, it's not about thinking so much. It's about awareness. It's about what's showing up in your mind as you're going through this. Maybe there's not much of anything peaking, showing up. And then you want to blame yourself later. I didn't notice that it didn't show up. That's why I'm saying this is not a question of perfection. This is a question of sort of giving yourself small set steps of self-trust, situation to situation, in smaller contexts at first, and then you can apply it in bigger ones and see how well you're doing. You know, don't want to jump into something consequential and say, hey, I'm not good at any of this, but I'm just gonna charge in and I'm Do it. It doesn't work like that. No. And some people, yes, in growing up, for example, if you grew up and your parents trusted you a great deal in terms of what you were, you know, giving you a task and having you accomplish it, or sending you somewhere to pay a little bill or to buy something, and you built a lot of confidence in your own ability to do stuff, that was very helpful. There are some children who are not put in those kinds of situations, and even far worse than that, and they they may be very subordinative. successful people now because they worked very hard to get where they are now. But their beginnings were not supportive. You know, there were parents, there are parents are just people. We learn that as we grow up. They're just people. They're not gods. They're not perfect. They bring with them whoever they are. Most of them try to do the best they can. Sometimes that's not terribly good, you know, but it's it's what they have to offer. And some of them, because they have poor self-esteem, you know, they have poor confidence, they have poor self-trust, they also project that onto their children. Or, or they belittle their children. I there are many people. I'm not a therapist, I don't I don't work with any kind of psychological guidance, but just in people with people that I've met over the course of time. You can tell that this has been something they've had to grapple with and something that they've had to build. And the fact that they have a lot of fear around making decisions sometimes. Many people get get paralytic about it, you know, because they don't have that self-trust and that self-confidence. You have to be able ultimately. put yourself in a position where you feel good about what you did. Regret, there's no point. Jealousy and regret are two things I I have no no no no reason to give any any credibility to. Regret doesn't do anything for you. It's like bowling balls dragged behind you, you know, at your ankles or something. If something didn't work that you tried, whether you feel you did well enough to be prepared or not, you did what you could. If you could have done better, you would have done better. It's as simple as that. What you can learn from it, you take from it and you move forward. Same thing with things like jealousy. There's a lot of it in business. people don't talk about talk about it as openly, but you can see it in the behaviors. If you can be inspired by something someone else did that really worked, that's great. It's kind of like, wow, they did that. That was very clever. Maybe I could do something like that in in in my business, or maybe not that, but something else that I can riff off of that idea. That's fantastic. Jealousy just wastes energy. to to it it and undermines people ultimately. These are two things there's just absolutely no point or purpose to. And and and to go back to that sense of confidence, often people who are not terribly confident are the people who who kind of fall into those two categories of being terribly jealous of someone else's success when they didn't succeed, and then get trapped in regrets over what they did or didn't do. The bottom line that you ultimately want to work towards. Is to use everything that you can that you need to. That makes sense. Because you don't have to use imagination sometimes. There's there's no need for that. Or there's no need to get very creative. You might not need that. But to be able to pull from those capabilities whenever you need to to make the best decision you can at the time. That's the strongest, most resilient way that you can move forward. It gives you power and strength, regardless of the outcome. Because in the end, there may have been things you didn't know or you didn't see or you didn't think to do. Now, the I know when people get into regret, this is where I hear regret come up, is like, I knew I should have done such and such, but I didn't. I was afraid of this, I was this or that. That's what you can possibly learn from. You can look at it and think, okay, maybe I need to shore up my self-trust and and not be as fearful about my decision making. Maybe I need to look at these kinds of situations a little bit different. differently for myself and next time I'll do better in that kind of situation. But you know, there's a danger in thinking, if I had just done it, if I had just gotten that contract. Well, you don't even know if that would have worked for you. There are times when things really do work out for the best. You didn't feel strong in a particular area of what you had to offer or you would didn't have confidence in what they were offering. Someone else took that agreement, and it worked out beautifully. So you automatically think, well it would have been fantastic for me. I should have been able to do that, et cetera, et cetera. Not necessarily. Honestly, not necessarily. This you Rashad Thirlkill: Right. Danute Debney Shaw: know, you're not that equivalent person and who knows what other factors were or were not involved in them making it work that you don't even know about. That you're just assuming, you know, they I should have been a doctor. Why didn't I become a doctor? I didn't because you didn't feel like becoming a doctor. You didn't like math that much and you didn't really want to cut you didn't want to do aut autopsies on bodies and and learn from from corpses and this was not something you had Rashad Thirlkill: Right. Don't like blood. Danute Debney Shaw: the capacity for. You the interest in the the the thirst for, the quest for. doctors are do they just happen? I think there's a yes, you can kind of doctors can be made, but many of them come with with tremendous subjective power to do this kind of work. And we all can't just jump in and think, yeah, we can you know, it's like watching soap opera. Someone went to prison one week and and a month later on the on the soaper opera, he's now a doctor, I've I've met people who who engage in these kinds of jealousies or not self-loathing, but they, they they regret that they didn't take certain directions. Well, if you had felt ready to take that kind of direction, you probably would have done everything you possibly can could to do that. And and all of the challenges, like, you know, I'm bringing this up saying it so lightly, there's so much more involved in becoming a doctor. But there are some things like, you know, I know somebody who said, I should have been a doctor, I should have been. I said, but W would you like to be like I I picked the the the what is it the not the autopsies but it's it's what what they do in the what's what am I thinking of? where they they cut up bodies, they do the dissections, they learn about the body. And I said, is this something you actually feel you could do? Now I jumped to something dramatic because there's all sorts of study of math and science and there's much more to being a doctor. But th that very thought made this person absolutely sick. And there's no way they would have done that, but they're busy envying somebody else who became a doctor. this is this is the kind of this is what I'm talking about, where we sometimes get lost, or we admire a leader who made certain compromises or took certain directions, and we think we could have been him. This is this is really wasted. I'm I'm kind of getting down the rabbit hole because I I went into medicine and it's not necessarily an an equivalent analogy, but it's but you can understand. I'm sure you've heard people say, Yeah, I could have been a doctor or They're making all that money or they're doing all this. I hear these kinds of things from people, not the leadership people that I work with, but just out in the world. And I think to myself, people waste their time envying others who who took certain steps and and for whom that may have been the appropriate path, but not necessarily for them. Rashad Thirlkill: Definitely. What what point do you believe that analysis becomes analysis paralysis? Danute Debney Shaw: yes, that happens as well. When you start to see yourself go encircled, when you start to s to feel feel yourself truly emotionally gripped by this, where you start to feel that there's a c a confusion that is taking place. Because sometimes, and it's very funny because this is why I say I do not work on the psychology side. I I don't I do not there are three things I don't do. I don't practice law in the course of doing This decision strategy work. I don't mentor children. I have no background in mentoring children. I do nothing with children, with minors. And the third is that psychology this is decision strategy, but not psychology. However, I occasionally will meet someone who wants to tie kind of take things apart. And that's part of the work that I do. We actually do a rational take apart of pieces. We put it together and we see how it feels, what it looks like. Is there something else that's missing here? And that's whether you're trying to plan. Your career. And it's funny, I thought of medicine because I spoke with someone in the medical profession not that long ago about taking a direction, not about medicine itself, but a personal direction. And and so, you know, we we we look at these things and we try to figure out what this really, you know, what it really means. And sometimes we can we can wrap ourselves in knots because of it. And you can st you can start to go back in circles. For example, I had one client and we we had parsed everything out logically. We had even looked at it from a a broader perspective on what her objectives were, because different people's objectives go in different directions. As a leader or as a decision maker, i it isn't just I am a leader, I'm a decision maker. So everybody who is an I am decision maker is going to make the same decisions. No, we all have different approaches and different desired outcomes. Well, she worked it through. This was a woman in this case, she worked it through and and it it pointed in a particular direction. And I have to say right here. I don't try to sway people in any direction. That's not the objective of my decision strategy. Work with people. It is to facilitate. It is to to bring out points that possibly were not were not brought forward. It can be an implementation, talking about how to implement something. There could be a number of things, but it I'm not telling people who they need to be and what they need to do. If you're telling me you want to swim. And you want to learn how to swim, well, I would suggest you get in the water. That would be my guidance. Get a teacher, take a class, whatever. But if they say, But I don't want to get wet, well, then that's there's a different direction. You can read books, you can watch classes, you can learn about the theory of swimming, you can do all that, but you're not physically going to learn how to swim unless you get in the water. So you see what I'm saying? There sometimes people have to be told that certain things would be necessary. I if you want to be a bodybuilder, how are you going to become a bodybuilder without actually working on your muscles? You it it It's not going to happen. So, you know, there are sometimes things have to be illustrated in this fashion, but I really never try to tell people what they must do. In this case, the woman was looking at her situation and said, But I'm so confused. So you see, this is an example of what you're talking about, of where you've spun things, you've thought things. Now she's so confused. She couldn't possibly be confused at this point because we've thrashed it all out and the direction has been fairly clear. It's evident what she would need to do for her objectives. But she's spinning it. So, there are other factors that come into place where we over go go into an overgrind. That again, self-trust is an issue sometimes, insecurity is an issue. I am I can't speak to the psychological issues of neurotic or whatever. I can't make those kinds of judgments. I have, I that that is not my purview. But clearly there is something else that is going on. If you've already looked at everything the way you've needed to, you've taken in all the elements you've needed to. And you are still sitting there saying, I'm so confused, or you, you know, you feel like you can't make the decision. Some you have to kind of again pull back and see what you may need. In her case, I I definitely stepped out of the picture because I'd done what I could. I'm not here to make her do something or tell her she must go in this direction. No, it's she has to be comfortable with what she's going to do. I did suggest perhaps some other guidance from another resource, you know. and I that's only happened to me a couple times. I don't really sort of send people to a psychologist. Or to to another consultant, particularly, just to rehash the same old thing. But if there's nothing more that can be done because a person is spinning, at that analysis, paralysis is happening, that that often means something else is going on. And that that and it doesn't have to be deep psychological problems of some kind, but it can mean that there isn't enough self-trust. There isn't enough willingness to stand by something and feel comfortable standing by that decision. Now, what needs to be done to assist that really varies quite a bit. Rashad Thirlkill: All right, thank you for that. So you have you are you are an author and a speaker as well, and you have a highly acclaimed book out. Can you tell the listeners about your book? Danute Debney Shaw: I'd be delighted to tell them about my book. I have it right here. It's gonna be coming out in an audiobook, which I think will be very accessible for everyone. People are always asking me about the audiobook, and I'm narrating it. So you'll be able to hear the author tell you her book, explain her book to you. So this is called How the Tin Man Found His Brain. And One Attorney's Path for Perceptual Development. It is a collection of essays and commentaries. A lot of stories in there. They're short chapters. They're illustrations of decision making, of dilemmas in decision making. And some of them are funny, some of them are sad, and they vary quite a bit. The the goal of it was not to convince anyone of a direction. Again, this is in this f this goes really well from your last question about you know tr about analysis paralysis and about the idea of Of what is the right decision and and and making that decision, who can make that for you. So the book is not about anybody making it for you or telling them they even have to take my approach. I'm simply sharing some of my experiences, some of how I've come to certain understanding and awareness. The idea is to support people in their process, to encourage people, and sometimes to stimulate people. I had two people tell me, one was an attorney, as a matter of fact, who said, Well, you know, I was reading your book and I I'd never thought about this question this way. Bingo, that is perfect. That that that's like honey on my heart. And another gentleman who was reviewing the book said, you know, I don't I don't even know how I make decisions. And I thought, well, it's not a bad idea to learn what that's about. Are you just you know you got your dad talking in your head and he's telling you what to do, or are you doing it out of fear? Are you doing you know what what how do you make your decisions in general? What is that about for you? Because that's a very good beginning to strengthen that muscle of self-trust and understand. when and how you're making decisions and what those decisions mean or don't mean to you and how comfortable you are about it. So my book has to do with that. It can be found through Balboa Press, the publisher. It can be found on Amazon. It can be found at Barnes and Noble. It can be ordered through Barnes and Noble. Also it is available, well Ingram is the is a distributor of the book. So even if you just had a sort of small local bookstore, they could order it for you as well. So it's very easy to get. Rashad Thirlkill: Okay, all right. And for anyone interested in working with you, where can they find you as far as social media is concerned? Danute Debney Shaw: Well, it's easy to find me. You've seen my name here during our show. You can just type my name in and lots of things will come up in Google. My I have a a Facebook under my name, Danute Devney Shaw. I do have all I do have Facebook and Instagram under my name as well as under the business, which is CeeLa Fontis, but most people will not remember Cela Fontis. I ha I have you know, I have a page for for Cilafontas on both of those sites because sometimes people will get the card or are or just have heard the name and not know my name. So that's there as a backup. But Danute Debney Shaw is the best way to find me on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and also you can go to my website, which is Celafontas.com. But that'll come up if you if you Rashad Thirlkill: Silaphantus. Danute Debney Shaw: yeah, if you put my name, if you put my name in in Google, you'll you'll see the name of the website. It'll it'll show up. So a lot of information will be right there. Rashad Thirlkill: Okay. All right. Well, I truly want to thank you for coming on today. For those who don't know out there, this has been our second time meeting. And it's always a pleasure when we speak about leadership, especially in this time and age. you know, we have so much just coming out as far as the AI is concerned. We have Danute Debney Shaw: And we didn't even get into that. We didn't even go there. Rashad Thirlkill: Yeah, that's that's a whole different conversation. But we did bring in creativity, and creativity is very much needed in making decisions, in going with your gut, you know, your intuition. These are things that now because of AI and because of new ways of doing things, we kind of have to take this approach. So Danute, I want to thank you very much for coming on, speaking with this audience today. And I'm pretty sure we'll have more conversations than this one. Danute Debney Shaw: Thank you so much. It's been delightful. I'm so happy to have been here. Rashad Thirlkill: Awesome. All you guys out there, remember, keep making moves, make money, and make meaningful memories. Until next time, we'll see you later.