👀 The Tenth Man Rule
How to make sure of your decision
Hey there 👋🏼
Today I want to share with you a concept that I often use in my professional and personal life: The Tenth Man Rule.
The first time I heard about The Tenth Man Rule, was on the hit Zombie film World War Z starring Brad Pitt. I found the idea so interesting, it became, almost immediately, a key strategy in my tool belt.
The concept is quite simple. If nine people agree on a decision, the tenth person should go against that decision, and point out flaws and possible consequences of pursuing that route.
The idea is quite similar to the concept behind devil’s advocate, where a person expresses a contrary opinion to provoke debate and test the strength of the arguments.
The main difference is that, according to the history shared, the Tenth Man Rule is mandatory when making decisions. If you want to read a little more about the history of this rule this is a good reference.
Personally, I find two occasions perfect for this strategy.
Imagine a scenario where your teams are behaving unexpectedly. A scenario where things are happening against all of what you find reasonable. I apply this rule by forcing myself to drop my preconceived notions that created my perception of reality.
With this strategy, I’m forced to reset and reassess my surroundings. I’m forced to put myself in my team’s shoes and hopefully see their reality and understand their reasoning.
Only then I can address the situation. A big advantage of taking this route is the new connections created or strengthened by putting myself in a place of learning - available to question my premises and receive new information.
The second scenario where I use this strategy is when making key decisions or having important conversations. I find it extremely valuable to stop, look from different perspectives, question my own reasoning and adjust the course.
This behavioural adjustment allows me to run multiple scenarios in my head, evaluate the outcome and attack situations feeling much more prepared.
A word of warning… I know that this might sound like a linear and easy strategy to apply, but it’s actually quite complex.
Because you will be required to go against your decisions and your thought process. By doing this, you allow yourself to question your values, your past experiences and your reality. You allow yourself to question what makes you… You.
To me, this process works like a charm because it works on a personal level as well as a professional level, alone or within a group of people, and it’s an emotion-free way of looking at important topics.
At the end of the day, this strategy helps me, personally, get closer to my teams and understand their realities. On some occasions, reassessing my surrounding helped me uncover situations that needed immediate action on my part but that I didn’t even know existed.
Are you facing a situation in your team that you’re not understanding? Do you have a difficult conversation ahead of you? Try to apply this strategy and tweet at me directly to let me know if it made a difference!
Until next month!
📚 What I’ve been reading
Just got to finish this book today. As part of my Audible subscription I got this audiobook and it made its way into my running playlist. 🏃🏻♂️
This book, Gary’s sixth, focuses on the twelve essential emotional skills that are the foundation of his success and that should provide leaders with tools to develop these traits.
If this is your first time listening to Gary, then you’re in for a ride! Gary is fast and loud! He holds nothing back and one of the cool things about the audiobook is the off-script moments that, to me make a big difference.
The book is split into three parts:
The 12 and a half principles
Real life scenarios
Exercises
Being perfectly honest, as someone who followed Gary Vee for a long time, a lot of these concepts are common in Gary's speeches but the book as a whole was a great refresher.
There's a big focus on Kind Candor, the principle that Gary (and I guess a lot of us) still needs to work on.
If you can check this book out and let me know what you thought of it! Drop me a message on Twitter!
Get the book here! Paperback | Audiobook
📣 Top Quote of the Month
I will stay in my country and if I die, I will die with my soldiers.
President Volodymyr Zelensky
On February 24th, our world got hit by another terrible event as Russian troops invaded Ukraine, in a David against Goliath scenario.
Ever since we’ve witnessed incredible displays of leadership and communication skills by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The videos released every morning, standing tall in Ukraine after a terrible night filled with missiles gives people hope.
It gives me the hope that united, we the people do not stand for uncalled acts of aggression. #stopthewar
If you're not finding value in this newsletter please consider unsubscribing. There are absolutely no hard feelings and I already appreciate a lot your part in my journey. Perhaps in the future, we'll meet again!
If you are enjoying the newsletter, the best compliment you can make is to share it with one person.
Thank you for being part of my journey!
Have an incredible month! 💪🏼
Parada 👊🏼
A Leader's Mindset