Learn the art of being a better decision-maker and live a life no one else has!
 
Christi Scarrow has been helping individuals, teams, and organizations to make decisions for more than 20 years. She is a consultant, trainer, speaker, executive coach, and author of the book Truth Warriors.
 
In this episode, Christi talks about the kind of decision-makers we actually are as she discusses insights on how we can be better at making decisions that will completely drive us towards a positive change in both lives and at work.
 
What you will learn from this episode:
 
  • Discover how you can get through the struggle of finding the balance you need in life;
  • Understand why it’s a mistake when you’re trying to do too much; and
  • Find out what you can do to strengthen your decision-making muscle through valuable tips and resources given by the guest.
 
 
“Figure out what it is you want to do and the one thing that you can do every day to get there, and find ways to get out of your head and find people – and that might be following people on social media that literally you disagree with.”
– Christi Scarrow
 
 
Valuable Free Resource:
 
 
Topics Covered:
 
01:34 – Challenge is the struggle of finding balance within all demands from both personal life and at work.
 
03:05 – Trying to do too much, getting lost in our own heads, and not seeking the right alternatives: the common mistakes business women leaders make as they try to find that balance on their own.
 
05:06 – One free and actionable tip you can do to have more impact with less energy required: Figure out what it is you want to do and the one thing that you can do every day to get there, and find ways to get out of your head and find people – and that might be following people on social media that literally you disagree with
 
07:53 – Valuable free resource to help you strengthen your decision-making muscle: https://www.truthwarriors.ca/assessment.
 
10:42 – Q: What is the book title all about? A: Truth Warriors is a concept that I put together because it balances the idea of truth and seeking out information with warriors which is about strength. It’s that balance of those two factors and that idea of truth is actually for me, both fluid and personal, which means it can change, and our beliefs can and should change and have changed in history, and so we need to recognize that will still be the case. And warriors, of course, is very much about having the strength to listen and having the strength to speak up, and finding the right time to do either one of those things. And it’s all about finding that balance between them.
 
Key Takeaways:
 
“You’re not going to get to a strategy, you’re not going to be able to make the right choices in your life if you don’t get really clear on what gives you energy and feel your passion.” – Christi Scarrow
 
“We need to have this positive tension between us for change. We need to respect our diverse opinions and we need to feel confident in our voice.”– Christi Scarrow
 
“If you can start with self-awareness and what you want to achieve, find others that can offer the opposite of that. Find ways in which you can move the opposite of that because that’s how we’re going to grow. It’s knowing when we need to be more rational or more intuitive or more averse or more assertive in the way we come across.” – Christi Scarrow
 
Ways to Connect with Christi Scarrow
 
 
Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown
 
 
Full Episode Transcript:
 
Christi Scarrow 0:00
Figure out what it is you want to do – just the one thing that you can do every day to get there, and find ways to get out of your head and find people – and that might be following people on social media that literally, you disagree with.
 
Sarah E. Brown 0:20
Hello everyone. Welcome to The KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown.
 
Christi Scarrow has been helping individuals, teams, and organizations to make decisions for more than 20 years. She is a consultant, trainer, speaker, executive coach, and author of the book Truth Warriors.
 
As a Partner at Lighthouse Nine Group, she works with multinational clients and small businesses across many diverse industries. Christi helps leaders to find clarity from uncertainty and confidence in the choices they make. She is passionate about building a world based on truth.
 
Christi, thanks for joining me today.
 
Christi Scarrow 1:22
Thank you, Sarah. I’m really happy to be here.
 
Sarah E. Brown 1:25
What is the biggest challenge you help female leaders face in business today, and what might be some symptoms of that challenge?
 
Christi Scarrow 1:34
Yeah. One of the things I definitely find is that struggle with balance, right? How to balance – particularly for women – how to balance the demands of their own lives, how to balance the demands of their managers or clients and the needs of their teams, and it really causes them to kind of feel overwhelmed in making the choices they need to make.
 
And what I tried to do in helping them through that is to sift through that clutter, right? Help to understand the way in which they make decisions which are usually, there’s some definite strength in that, but how do they then think about– how they can shape that a little bit differently? How to make it more simple for them to make decisions more quickly or to feel more confident in them? And so I really try to help them with that balance.
 
I think some of the symptoms are that it just feels like we want to accomplish a lot of things and as leaders, we are motivated very much to try to accomplish things especially for entrepreneurs. I think even especially for newer leaders who are really getting thrown into this world of complexity and trying to figure out what are the right choices to make, and at the same time, they’re trying to navigate difficult conversations.
And so for me, it’s kind of finding that balance of how do I have difficult conversations, how am I– how do I become a better listener, and ultimately then helping to find that balance and declutter my life a little bit.
 
Sarah E. Brown 2:58
I see. And so, what are the biggest mistakes your clients make before working with you?
 
Christi Scarrow 3:05
I think one of the things that ends up happening is as women leaders, we try to take on too much, right? There’s a lot of things we want to accomplish, and in trying to find that balance, you end up trying to do too much and you have lots of priorities that end up sort of being noise in your life and they don’t always lead to your overarching goals. And sometimes, that’s because we haven’t defined those big overarching goals or the purpose of what we’re trying to achieve in our, in our lives or our business or careers.
I think the other thing that ends up happening when we’re in that space is that we get caught in our own head a little bit, and there’s a need to try to get out of that spin in our head that is kind of maybe telling us to go one way or having this react or even being maybe, you know, doubting our own abilities is often something I see in women leaders.
And instead, I think, if we can find a way to think about how we think – again, confident in the way that we think and get out of our head a little bit and seek other perspectives, that can really help.
 
And I think, some of the hard parts for leaders and frankly human beings is to be really clear on the biases and assumptions that are driving you and that’s a mistake. What often happens is these core beliefs that we hang on to that may or may not be valid and those could be limiting beliefs or those could be beliefs about where we need to go, we just need to think about ways to seek different alternatives and to be aware of those beliefs that are holding us back and find other ways to validate our thinking and to find those that can support us in this common purpose.
 
So I think that’s a big mistake. We try to do a lot, we sometimes get lost in our heads, and we don’t necessarily seek the right alternatives. Sometimes, we seek out validating as opposed to actually considering other perspectives.
 
Sarah E. Brown 4:58
I see. And what would be a free and actionable tip you can give our audience today to address this challenge?
 
Christi Scarrow 5:06
For me, I have a couple. I know one free, one actionable tip would be helpful, but I think they go together. Because I’m very focused on defining your purpose, I think that’s a starting point that’s foundational, and that is about, you know, really stepping back to think about, that you’re not going to get to a strategy, you’re not going to be able to make the right choices in your life if you don’t get really clear on what gives you energy and feel your passion. And then, once you can define that, it actually is, you know, do one thing every day that helps you live it.
 
And because I feel like it’s really hard to be able to bite off everything at once, if you know where you’re going, you can lay the stepping stones to get there and you can think about what those stepping stones are. And you have to think about what for you is the way in which you can, you know, what those stepping stones look like and how you can effectively do it.
 
So that might be documenting it or investing in an app that reminds you or having someone who holds you accountable. So you can find a buddy that says, “you know what? I want to make sure I do this one thing every day. Can you help me make sure I do?” And that one thing can change, right? Doesn’t have to be the same thing every day, but getting clarity to that can really help.
 
The other thing that I think is really important is that I always want to find them in finding the balance, again recognizing that you can’t do it alone and you need to look for clarity or advice from others. And specifically, the tip I would suggest is you need to find people who think differently. I think a lot of times, we even use the phrase “I’m looking for like-minded and I want to find people who can support me”, and although that’s absolutely true – we want to find people who support us, I think it’s really important to grow and to figure out where you’re going by finding others who actually see differently. And because instead of just validating your existing perspective, we all have friends who are amazing and go like, “yeah, you’re awesome” and you know, “you’re doing the right things”. And sometimes you need that person to go “well, have you considered this?” because they think so differently from you.
 
So to me, those are the key tips, which is figure out what it is you want to do and the one thing that you can do every day to get there, and find ways to get out of your head and find people – and that might be following people on social media that literally you disagree with. I think that’s something I’ve actually tried to do because then you’re like, it’s sort of, your natural tendency is to think they’re kind of crazy, but actually, it helps you understand them. Whether you agree or not, it helps you understand them and opens your mind to other things.
 
Sarah E. Brown 7:42
I love that. I love that. So what’s a valuable free resource you can share with the women who are listening today to help them understand this challenge better?
 
Christi Scarrow 7:52
So the one thing I have created as part of my book Truth Warriors is an assessment that I welcome anybody to complete for free. What it does is it helps identify your preferences at a point in time where, you know, you may be actually more of a rational decision-maker or you might be more an intuitive decision-maker which means, are you the kind of person that really likes to have a lot of information before you make a decision or are you the kind of person that can kind of go with your gut and move faster? And I do believe there are strengths in both of those and there are opportunities to leverage others.
 
I’d say with my husband, for example, I’m much more moving and go and he’ll be the one to hold me back and say, “have you thought about this?” So, he becomes my brakes and I become his fuel. And so both of those things have merit, but I think it’s about understanding where you sit in that spectrum of rational and intuitive.
 
And the other spectrum I look at in this assessment is how you move – what I call move within conflict. Because I believe there’s a benefit in more conflict and there’s a benefit in less conflict. Less conflict in terms of having, you know, disrespecting one another and disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing, but more conflict in that, we need to have this positive tension between us for change. We need to respect our diverse opinions and we need to feel confident in our voice. So again, just like decision making, we kind of have preferences and how we are within conflict.
 
I tend to be more assertive, and my husband and I fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. So I’m the person that’s going to be pretty good at speaking my voice but not always the best at listening to others’ perspectives. If you’re more averse in conflict, you’re probably maybe doing less willingly, you’re probably more introverted, less likely to share your voice, but probably a better listener and probably have very harmonious relationships. So, you know, there are extremes in both of those. We’ve seen people who are aggressive and conflict avoidant and that’s the risk.
 
And so, the assessment will actually help sort of pinpoint where you fall in that, some benefits of that, some opportunities in that, and ways to think about how you work with others in different ways. So that’s actually available for free, and as part of that, I also offer a half-hour debrief just to talk through the learnings and what might be some things that you can apply in your life to strengthen your decision-making muscle.
 
Sarah E. Brown 10:13
And I have taken this assessment and it is actually very insightful, so I recommend it to you. So Christi, just give us the URL for that again.
 
Christi Scarrow 10:23
Yeah. The best way to get to it is https://www.truthwarriors.ca/assessment.
 
Sarah E. Brown 10:30
And this will be in the show notes as well.
Christi, what’s one question that I should have asked you that will help our audience take action to address this challenge, and then please answer the question.
 
Christi Scarrow 10:42
Yeah. It’s a good question and you actually asked some great questions, so I could think about this one. What I thought was an interesting one, I get a lot of questions specifically about the book title and what it means and how it currently lives every day.
 
So, Truth Warriors is a concept that I put together because it balances the idea of truth and kind of, you know, seeking out information and enlightenment and insight with warriors which is about strength. So it’s that balance of those two factors and that idea of truth is actually for me, both fluid and personal, which means it can change, and our beliefs can and should change and have changed in history, and so we need to recognize that will still be the case. And warriors of course, is very much about having the strength to listen and having the strength to speak up and finding the right time to do either one of those things. And it’s all about finding that balance between them, because I think they’re, I did some work yesterday with the team on this and we did a team assessment, and we were able to see that the team actually fell into all quadrants
and then they use the time together to talk about how do we, you know, how do we support one another?
 
So if I’m a pensive scientist, I’m someone who’s averse and very rational in my thinking. I actually want to leverage somebody who can maybe, you know, help me share my voice, and those on the other side of the passion proclaimers who are more intuitive and more assertive, and like I need those other guys to hold me back. I need them to question me and actually provide the validation.
 
So the reason I just wanted to share it was because it was a question I get a lot about what the concept means and it really is about the balance for me. And that Ying Yang and a lot of the content of my book is sort of about the paradox that we live in, right? Why do we need more conflict and less conflict? Why do we need more information and less information? And it’s hard. I think it’s always a bit of a struggle to think about how do we teach that because it is, depending on where you are, you may need to think about the other end of the spectrum, and that’s my main message which is if you can start with self-awareness and what you want to achieve, find others that are can offer the opposite of that. Find ways in which you can move the opposite of that, because that’s how we’re going to grow. It’s knowing when we need to be more rational or more intuitive or more averse or more assertive in the way we come across.
And so for me, that’s I think a key piece in how leaders can really think about themselves, think about how to interact with their teams and be confident in it.
 
Sarah E. Brown 13:16
Christi, thank you so much for being with me today.
 
Christi Scarrow 13:19
Well, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be a part of it. I love the work that you’re doing to support leaders in this journey as well.
 
Sarah E. Brown 13:26
Thanks.
Thanks for listening to The KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you’re hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review.
And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to https://www.sarahebrown.com/. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes and learn more about our podcast guests, read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat.
Goodbye for now.
Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown

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