(Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tg7YJ3H9vcw)
This is Session 2 of a 4 session journey exploring 16 behavioral science concepts that take emotional intelligence to the next level. In this second session, we look at how emotions and perceptions shape judgement, and how leaders can work with emotion more intelligently in themselves, in others, and across teams.
Pre-reads
Slides & Transcript
Welcome
In Session 1 last month, we explored how emotions and perceptions shape judgement. We looked at how feelings, emotional states, and the emotional climate around us can influence what we notice, how we interpret a situation, and ultimately what we decide. That session was mostly about noticing.
Today we move from noticing to doing something about it. We continue with the same overarching question. Why do intelligent and experienced people still make poor decisions, even when they have good intentions and plenty at stake?
Frame Decisions and Design Choices
Frame decisions and design choices.
Today we will explore four concepts: Prospect Theory, Defaults, Friction, and If-Then Plans.
Prospect Theory
Last session we talked about Daniel Kahneman and the affect heuristic, which explains how our immediate emotional reaction can steer our judgement before the facts are objectively examined. Prospect theory goes one step further by showing that we depart from logic and rationality in systematic and predictable ways when making decisions under risk and uncertainty.
This was groundbreaking work that brought psychology into economics, for which Kahneman, a psychologist, was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics. Amos Tversky, Kahneman’s research partner, had sadly passed away six years earlier, and since the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously, only Kahneman received the prize.
“Prospect” means a possible outcome, option, or future possibility. Kahneman and Tversky identified three recurring patterns in how we evaluate these prospects:
First, loss aversion. Losses hurt more than equivalent gains feel good, roughly by a factor of 2 to 1. Losing $100 hurts twice as much as winning $100 feels good. Interestingly, this 2 to 1 ratio is fairly consistent across studies. The lesson here is that people are often more motivated to protect what they might lose than to pursue what they might gain.
That’s why we see so much self-protective behavior in the office and in the world. Protecting status, certainty, relationships, identity, the need to look good or avoid looking bad, and the need to retain flexibility, freedom and fairness, can feel more important than a solid business case or attractive future opportunity.
Second, reference point dependence. We judge against a baseline, not only the absolute outcome. That baseline might be what we expected, what we had before, what other people received, or what we believe is fair. A team that expected a 10% budget increase may experience a flat budget as a loss. A team that expected a 10% cut may experience the same flat budget as a relief. Same outcome, opposite reaction.
This is why “relative to what are we judging this?” is such a useful question to put on the table. On different occasions, I’ve talked before about how difficult it can be to create shared understanding. What looked like an agreement may not actually be shared understanding until it is checked. A number may have been agreed, but people may have different impressions of what it means because they are measuring it from different baselines. Once the baseline is brought into the open, you can have a more useful dialogue toward shared understanding.
Third, diminishing sensitivity. We are highly sensitive to changes near our baseline, but we become less sensitive as numbers get larger. Ten dollars matters a great deal between ten and twenty dollars. But between $1,010 and $1,020, it feels like nothing. Even though the difference is still $10, we become less sensitive to the change.
So what’s the implication? It is in framing. Same facts, different frame, different feeling, different judgement.
“Our defect rate is one percent” draws attention to failure and remaining risk. Because of loss aversion, people tend to react more strongly to the possibility of failure than to the same level of success. If you say “We are 99% defect-free,” the same fact now directs attention to reliability and progress.
“We saved $10,000” and “we saved 20% of the project budget” describe the same saving. But to executives used to larger numbers, $10,000 may sound small. 20% of the project budget gives people the right reference point.
“We are writing off six months of work” and “we are redirecting our investment to a better opportunity” can describe the same decision to stop a project. The first makes people feel the loss immediately, which can trigger sunk cost thinking. The second does not erase the loss, but it shifts attention to the better use of future time, money, and energy.
“Working from home is limited to two days” versus “We are protecting three shared collaboration days.” The same policy can feel like a restriction, or like a deliberate trade-off made to protect collaboration. A good frame does not deny the feeling of loss; it helps people understand what the loss is being weighed against.
Framing is a leadership meta-skill, and leaders have a lot of influence over it. So, use it wisely. Framing can be used for manipulation, but I wouldn’t recommend that. People are usually very good at sensing even a hint of manipulation. Use framing fairly, to clarify the feelings of gains and losses, the real trade-offs, and the reference points.
In every example on this slide, both frames are true and there are no deliberate omissions. The facts are identical. The only difference is what the framing invites people to notice first.
When considering a framing, say it both ways. Draft the gain frame and the loss frame of the same facts, and see whether the preference moves. If it flips, you may have found a real framing opportunity. That is a signal that wording carries weight in this particular decision, so it’s worth a minute of thought rather than reaching for the first phrasing that comes to mind. And again, on the fairness point, choose the framing that clarifies the decision, not the one that conceals the trade-off.
The point is not to manipulate people into agreement, but to make choices easier to understand and judge. Used well, framing provides clarity, helps people respond with less defensiveness, and supports better decision making together.
Defaults
Prospect Theory showed us how framing changes the way a choice feels. Defaults come one step earlier. They shape what happens when no active choice is made at all.
A default is the option, behavior, or practice that stays in place when nobody makes an active choice.
It could be the first item on a form, a work routine whose origin is unclear, or a recurring meeting that nobody cancels.
They are everywhere. Defaults show up as a norm, a standard, a routine, a precedent, an expectation, or just “how we do it here.“
They quietly shape behavior without instruction and are closely tied to societal and organizational norms and culture.
We need defaults because nobody can decide everything from scratch. A sensible default conserves attention for the choices that genuinely need it and allows people to move through the small decisions in a day without stopping to deliberate over each one.
Helpful defaults can literally make people’s lives easier. They remove the need to remember or remake the same sensible choice again and again. They can also reduce social effort by making the cooperative, safe, or broadly useful action the easiest one to take.
Calendar notifications and automatic spell checking on our phones and computers are familiar functional defaults, while greetings and saying “please” and “thank you” are social defaults we barely notice.
Defaults also carry a cost. Because they attract little scrutiny, old defaults can preserve outdated practices, fixed assumptions, and unnecessary burdens long after they have stopped serving people well.
Bureaucracy is the classic example. Like defaults, bureaucracy serves a purpose and we need it. It brings order, consistency, and accountability. But over time, the system can begin protecting its processes rather than the purpose those processes were meant to serve. When rules, approvals, forms, and controls accumulate without being revisited, they create invisible weight, slowing decisions, weakening judgement, and teaching people that compliance matters more than independent thinking.
So what. Defaults are a central tool in choice architecture and nudge theory, the body of work for which Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2017. The core idea is simple: whoever designs the options also shapes the choice people make. If you lead a team, you are already doing this, through your routines, your meeting design, your decision rights, and the systems people use. The question is not whether you shape choices, but whether you do it deliberately, as a choice architect.
People disproportionately stay with defaults for three important reasons.
The first is inertia. Sticking with what is already in place is the low-energy choice, while changing it takes effort and carries the risk of disruption.
The second is implied endorsement. People assume the default was set for a reason, so it feels like a quiet recommendation.
The third is reference point. Once a default is in place, alternatives are judged as changes from it rather than as equal choices, giving the default outsized weight.
Knowing that people may be unwittingly sticking with the default for these reasons is very important, because it helps us recognize that people may not always be making choices that reflect their actual preferences.
When a project keeps running, it may not be because everyone still believes in it; continuation may simply be the default. A leader may feel frustrated by repeated requests for approval, and interpret them as weak initiative. In reality, people may simply be following the system they were taught to follow.
What we call passivity, weak ownership, or resistance may not be a problem with the person at all. The issue may be systemic, rooted in the default they are sitting inside.
Now, if you choose to practice choice architecture deliberately, approach it at the intersection of facilitative leadership and emotional intelligence.
Facilitative leadership examines what in the environment is shaping how people participate, decide, and act. Emotional intelligence examines how people experience those conditions, including frustration, hesitation, exclusion, resignation, and cognitive load. Together, they help leaders design defaults that support better work without quietly taking meaningful choice away.
Four moves.
First, notice. Pay attention to what the team treats as normal, automatic, or already decided. What are those defaults producing?
Second, challenge. Which defaults have outlived their purpose or create burdens people have simply learned to tolerate?
Third, remove. Take the default away where the decision genuinely deserves attention, ownership, or reflection. Some choices should not be made by inertia.
Fourth, design. Redesign everyday conditions so that good work requires less effort, negotiation, and individual willpower.
A 15-minute daily stand-up, for example, makes quick team synchronization the norm rather than allowing a daily meeting to expand. A clear expectation that messages sent after working hours require no immediate response protects personal time without each employee having to negotiate it. A leader who speaks last, but not to judge, gives team members space to form and express their own views before hearing the most influential opinion in the room.
As with framing, managing defaults is not without risk. A new rule disguised as a default may simply add burden and deepen resentment towards compliance. Use your facilitative leadership and emotional intelligence to keep defaults enabling rather than controlling.
Friction
Friction is anything between an intention and an action that makes the action cost more in steps, time, attention, or effort.
Like defaults, friction fades into the background of everyday busyness and goes unnoticed until we pay attention to it. We get used to the multiple data entries and the copy this from email and paste into the spreadsheet tool-hopping routines. We put up with searching documents in cluttered folders, meeting overloads, approval bottlenecks, ambiguous roles and fuzzy ownership, constant context-switching, and an always-on culture. Friction is everywhere, and it’s exhausting.
Friction stops action because the effort is immediate, while the benefit comes later. It costs us, and taxes us.
Removing friction is an established practice in process management. Lean works to reduce muda and muri. Agile teams remove impediments.
What tends to get missed is that friction is not only functional, physical, or mechanical. It can be cognitive, emotional and behavioral as well. A process may function technically, yet still be mentally difficult to follow.
So what. Addressing friction is a low-hanging-fruit opportunity, one of the rare places where a small change can improve team performance without persuasion or budget.
Start by noticing how it hides. When a team member repeatedly fails to follow through, we tend to make a character judgement and conclude that they lack motivation, discipline, or commitment. Sometimes that is right. But before judging the person, look at the path they are being asked to take. Friction may be at play.
Concerns about weak ownership, accountability, and initiative may have more to do with friction than you realize. Friction quietly pushes people toward shortcuts, workarounds, and whatever is easiest in the moment. It drains attention that could otherwise go into independent judgement, learning, and creativity.
That said, not all friction is bad. Bad friction adds cost without protecting anything of value. Good friction still adds cost, but it protects value. A second reviewer on anything touching client money, a pre-mortem before an important launch, a clear escalation threshold, or a deliberate pause before an emotionally charged response. They all require effort, but that effort serves a purpose.
And no friction is its own problem, because effort is what makes people stop, question, and think. Remove all of it, and decisions can become fast, but thin.
Again, facilitative leadership asks what in the environment is helping or hindering good work. Emotional intelligence asks how people are actually experiencing those conditions. As with defaults, managing friction draws on both.
Three moves to manage friction: audit, remove, and add.
First, audit. Trace one real piece of work from intention to action. Notice where people wait, search, repeat information, switch tools, hesitate, seek permission, become uncertain, or quietly give up.
Second, remove. Simplify or eliminate steps that add effort without improving quality, safety, judgement, or accountability. Clarify roles and ownership, reduce unnecessary handoffs, and challenge controls that have outlived their purpose.
Third, add. Introduce friction deliberately where slowing down or pausing adds value through inspection and better decision-making. Every added step should have a purpose that can be explained out loud to the person paying the cost.
Managing friction is a perspective-taking skill as much as a process skill. People genuinely appreciate leaders who remove burdens that everyone else has simply learned to live with, while preserving the effort that supports judgement, learning, quality, and safety.
If-Then Plans
This final concept addresses what happens after we have formed an intention. How do we actually follow through? The gap between deciding something and doing it is where many good intentions quietly die, and an If-Then Plan is one of the most effective tools for closing it.
The formula is simple: If X happens, then I will do Y. An If-Then Plan is a ready-made action triggered by a recognizable cue.
In behavioral science, Peter Gollwitzer called this an implementation intention.
He distinguished it from goal intention. A goal intention might say, “I intend to listen more carefully.” It describes what I want to do, but it leaves the actual moment of action undecided.
An implementation intention fills in that moment with a pre-planned response: “If I catch myself preparing my reply while they talk, then I will refocus on their last sentence.”
Because the response has already been chosen, far less deliberation is needed at the point of action, which is exactly when deliberation is often least reliable. It reduces reliance on willpower precisely when habit, emotion, fatigue, distraction, or urgency might otherwise take over.
So what? This is why I call implementation intentions “follow-through by design.”
Repeated failure to follow through erodes confidence and trust, which costs more than the missed task itself. For the individual, each miss can register as guilt, shame, and frustration. For others, those misses can accumulate into a label: someone unreliable, someone you should not expect too much from.
If-Then Plans can help rebuild both self-confidence and the trust from others.
The important reframe is that follow-through is often situational, rather than simply a matter of willpower or character.
Sometimes the obstacle is structural, not personal. Conflicting priorities, excessive workload, insufficient authority, missing capability, or lack of psychological safety may be the real obstacle. An If-Then Plan can help someone surface it, set a boundary, ask for support, or escalate it earlier.
The leadership responsibility is to stay alert to what the pattern is revealing. When follow-through keeps failing, do not automatically prescribe more discipline. Instead, examine whether the workload, authority, capability, priorities, or environment also need to change.
Finally, now what. How do we put this into practice?
If-Then Plans are particularly useful in three situations.
First, starting. Use a specific cue to start something you keep deferring. For example, “If I schedule a client call, then I will also block ten minutes immediately afterwards to write the call memo.”
Second, shielding. Plan for the predictable interruption, temptation or emotional reaction. “If the discussion turns personal, then I will name what we are actually disagreeing about and bring the conversation back to the issue.”
Third, recovering. Plan for the lapse, because most efforts do not fail at the beginning; they unravel after the first exception. “If I realize I forgot to follow up with a client, then I will immediately send a brief note saying I will follow up shortly.“
The design rules are simple.
Make the trigger specific and observable.
Make the response small and within your control. Avoid vague triggers like “if I feel unmotivated,” and vague responses like “then I will try harder.“
When suggesting an If-Then Plan to another person, do not simply hand them your plan. Ask where the intention keeps breaking down, and let them name the situation and write the response. The plan is more likely to work when they have made the connection between the trigger and the action for themselves.
For teams, use If-Then Plans to make values practical. “We are respectful” becomes, “If someone is interrupted, then we will invite them to finish before moving on.” “We hold each other accountable” becomes, “If a commitment is going to slip, then the person who made it will raise it before anyone has to ask.“
One final point: treat the plan as a hypothesis. As the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap reminds us, we are not always good at imagining how we will behave in a future emotional state. Your first plan may be slightly wrong. The trigger may be too vague, the response too ambitious, or the situation different from what you expected.
That’s fine. Many “if” situations recur, so each recurrence gives you another chance to test the plan. Frame it, test it, and refine it. That feedback loop is what turns If-Then Plans from a technique you use occasionally into a habit that compounds.
Work Intelligently with Emotions
Why is this perspective important?
Because emotions are information. They help us notice what matters. Frustration may reveal friction in a process. Hesitation may alert us that the way a choice is framed is influencing the decision. Emotions are not always facts, but they are important signals worth examining.
Second, because decisions are shaped by context. We tend to treat a decision as though it is weighed purely on its merits, but context is part of the decision itself.
Impressions, feelings, timing, the surrounding environment and situation, and our mental and physical state all influence what we notice, how we interpret the options, and what we choose. Change the context, and the decision may change, even when the underlying facts remain the same.
And third, because good intentions need good design. Telling people to make better choices, try harder, or remember what they agreed to is often not really helpful advice. Design is an important element of facilitative leadership: we can support better action by shaping the conditions around a decision, so the better choice is easier to notice, easier to make, and easier to follow through on.
So how do we work with these ideas in practice? The same as in the last session: know, catch, and practice.
Know what to look out for. Today, you learned four more concepts that help you recognize these patterns. This knowledge gives you an information advantage as a leader. Use it.
Catch those patterns as they happen, in your own thinking, in other people’s responses, and in the way decisions and processes are set up.
And finally, practice. Apply the knowledge and treat each intervention as a hypothesis to test. If it lands flat, do not be discouraged. Learn from what happened, adapt, and try again.
Today, we explored four concepts.
Prospect Theory showed us that people respond differently to gains and losses, depending on how a choice is framed and the reference point they are using.
Defaults showed us that what happens automatically often shapes behavior more than we realize.
Friction showed us that even small amounts of effort can influence whether people act or give up.
And If-Then Plans showed us how to prepare in advance for the moments when good intentions fail to translate into follow-through.
Taken together, these concepts remind us that better decisions are not only about thinking harder. They are also about noticing what is shaping the decision, and designing the conditions that make better action more likely.
That, takes emotional intelligence.
Thank you.
About the Series
16 Behavioral Science Concepts Most Leaders Were Never Taught
Taking Emotional Intelligence to the next level | A Four (+1) Part Series
Business schools, my alma mater INSEAD included, give serious attention to behavioral science today, taught through behavioral economics and decision science. The field has produced two Nobel Prizes in economics in the last twenty-five years, Daniel Kahneman in 2002 and Richard Thaler in 2017. Yet it has not made its way into mainstream leadership education with much effectiveness. The closest crossover is Emotional Intelligence, which earned its place in leadership development because it translated psychology into language leaders could use. Behavioral science has not had that translation done for it. Most leaders, even very senior ones, have never been taught it in any structured way.
This is a focus area for me. The premise I am working with is that behavioral science is most approachable for leaders when it is offered as an extension of Emotional Intelligence rather than a separate discipline. EI gave leaders permission to take feelings seriously in decisions. Behavioral science adds the mechanics: how emotions, perceptions, framing, time, and group dynamics actually shape what gets decided in the room.
This Dōjō series is my first attempt at that approach in a teaching format. I have selected 16 concepts and grouped them under four umbrellas, one per session, with a fifth session for application. The choice of concepts, the grouping, the sequence: all of it is a learning experiment. I am running this as a free Dōjō session to see how this lands and get feedback. Leaders, people professionals, fellow coaches and professors, come join.
The Four Parts + Wrap-Up Session
- Part 1 (completed) — Understand How Emotions and Perceptions Shape Judgement: Affect Heuristic. Integral vs. Incidental Emotions. Hot-Cold Emapathy Gap. Emotional Contagion.
- Part 2 (completed) — Frame Decisions and Design Choices: Prospect Theory. Defaults. Friction. If-Then Plans.
- Part 3 (September 22 Tuesday, sign-up open) — Use Time and Tradeoffs to Your Advantage: Present Bias and Hyperbolic Discounting. Planning Fallacy. Sunk Cost Fallacy and Opportunity Cost Neglect. Goal-Gradient Effect.
- Part 4 (October 2026, sign-up opens after Part 3) — Decide Better Together: Hidden Profiles. Wisdom of Crowds. Evaluation Apprehension. Leader Speaks Last (but not to judge).
- Wrap-up Session (November 2026, sign-up opens after Part 4) — A working session, not a recap, where we will run through the four lenses from the previous sessions on current leadership situations, a decision, a stuck initiative, a team dynamic, that participants will bring to the session.
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