What Do You Think?

I remember preparing for my first television interview and feeling incredibly nervous.

The topic was the sugar content of breakfast cereals.

A current affairs program wanted to discuss new research suggesting the sugar content of some cereals was "dangerously high".

To prepare, I researched everything I could find.

Average sugar intakes.

Health consequences.

Consumer awareness.

Examples of lower-sugar alternatives.

I spent hours gathering facts, statistics and evidence.

By the time the interview arrived, I was overloaded with information. And while all that preparation helped me understand the topic, it didn't prepare me for the first question.

"What do you think about this?"

I hesitated.

I had all the data, research and facts but hadn't stopped to consider my own opinion.

What did I actually think?

In their book Think, authors Church and Cook suggest many of us have never really been taught how to think for ourselves.

At first glance, that seems hard to believe.

Yet I often see this challenge in technical professions.

We're trained to analyse, gather evidence, assess risk and interpret data.

And while these skills are essential, somewhere along the way, we can become more comfortable presenting information than expressing our own viewpoint.

The evidence becomes the message.

The analysis becomes the recommendation.

And our own thinking gets lost.

The irony is that influence rarely comes from repeating facts. It comes from helping people understand what the facts mean.

It comes from interpretation, judgement or adding our own perspective.

Technical expertise is critical. But expertise alone doesn't create influence.

People are often looking for more than information.

They want to know:

• What does this mean?

• Why does this matter?

• What is your view?

As technical leaders, our role is not only to understand the evidence.

It is to help others make sense of it.

One of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves is:

What do I think about this?

The data may provide the foundation.

But influence begins when we add our own thinking.