Welcome back to the third season of the Rotman Visiting Experts podcast - the series for leaders who are lifelong learners. 

This season we're tackling everything from better decision making to leading in an age of outrage to honing your people judging skills. 

We kick things off with author Richard Davis who joined us to talk about his new book Good Judgment: Making Better Business Decisions with the Science of Personality. He offers up a new way of thinking about how we approach making decisions about other people. 

Three take aways from this episode include: 

1. When faced with a decision about a person - say you're selecting someone to take lead of a new project, trying to hire for a crucial role, or even just deciding if you want to have an on-going relationship - don't look for emotional intelligence. Instead, you should look at whether their personality makes them a good fit for the role. As Davis says, emotions are fleeting, but personality is static. "While it's helpful for me to understand, for example, if you are angry, it's much more powerful for me to understand that you're an angry person," he says. 
2. Perceptivity is a talent you can develop. And judging others' personalities is something you can hone. So how do you do it? Richard has a five-box framework that asks you to evaluate others on their intelligence, sociability, emotionality, drive and diligence.
3. And to really understand people's personalities, you need to let them do the talking. He has some fantastic questions you can ask in almost any situation to really get a better read on people. (How are you, dispositionally, like your parents? Why do you have certain friends, and what's a turnoff in others?) 

Give the 19-minute episode a listen above, or on Apple, Amazon or Spotify! 

New episodes of Rotman Visiting Experts are released monthly on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon. Desktop listeners can also tune in on Simplecast.

Would you rather read than listen in? Check out the full transcript of the episode here.

Like this podcast? Check out Rotman's other audio series, Executive Summary, which explores the latest research and insight from our faculty.