Why Do Some People Have Poor Judgment?

After making a bad choice, team members are often told by the leader that their judgment was “off,” suggesting they need to make a better decision next time.

When bad choices and decisions become a more regular pattern, then those team members are typically labeled as having “poor judgment.”

Such a reputation can be devastating both in perception and reality, as others won’t trust them to make critical decisions or to lead processes or projects toward fruition.

Over time, team members perceived to have poor judgment get looked over for assignments and often find their advancement stifled.

So beyond making some dismal choices and decisions, what does it really mean to have poor judgment?

Judgment, which is a critical stepping stone for making quality decisions, is reflected by two distinct skills: the ability to predict actions or responses as they unfold, and the ability to distinguish between high and low quality in assessing events, products, and ideas.

For those with good judgment, the skillfulness to predict future actions, outcomes, and responses suggests someone with deep experience and reasoning abilities.

The more accurate a team member is in predicting what will happen next in any unfolding situation, the higher the quality of their judgment-making.

Those who can’t anticipate what will likely occur in the near future are thought to be missing the experience or reasoning ability upon which judgment is founded.

Judgment is also dependent on being able to distinguish between good and bad and the increments in between.

When assessing a person, an event, a service, a product, or an idea, those with sound judgment can discern the attributes that give rise to quality or detract from its existence.

By analyzing these attributes and using standards from previous assessments, those with solid judgment are better able to select high quality and can describe what features prevent it from an even higher evaluation.

Developing these two skills of judgment is a long-term process and is often thought not to be very coachable.

Mental models, frameworks, and community standards can sometimes assist in catapulting the skill of quality assessment, and practice in reasoning through why events and episodes transpired the way they did can help with the prediction skill.

However, experience is usually the missing link to advancing judgment skill. And that can’t easily be attained in short order.

In many cases, it takes years to garner the experience needed to improve judgment, especially in a new field or endeavor the person has never encountered before.

Because judgment reflects our experience and knowledge, it quickly reveals what we don’t know. That’s why those with poor judgment stand out so quickly.