Judgment combines personal qualities, knowledge, and experience for better decision-making.

AI reduces traditional judgment-building tasks, so organizations must teach judgment intentionally.

Leaders should "show their work" to help junior staff develop real-world judgment skills.

Think about a time at work when you had to make an important judgment call. Maybe a client sent an email that was clearly wrong, and you had to decide whether to correct them immediately or pause and consider the consequences. Maybe a colleague made a mistake that could affect a project, and you had to decide whether to raise it, how to raise it, and when. Perhaps you were asked to make a recommendation with incomplete information, or you had to decide whether to trust your instincts when the data seemed to point in another direction.

These moments rarely come with clear instructions. They require you to assess the situation, weigh competing considerations, anticipate consequences, draw on experience, and decide. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get in wrong; however, the only way you get better is by reflecting on what happened and learning from the outcome.

Today, AI is forcing organizations to think much more deeply about what judgment is and how people develop it. Judgment is a complex topic, and many organizations don’t know where to start. The goal of this post is to start with the basics: What is judgment and how can it be developed?

I used to think of judgment as a gut instinct or a feeling that developed over time to produce an insight or to recognize a pattern that others overlooked. While that may be part of it, my favorite definition of judgment comes from Sir Andrew Likierman, a professor at London Business School who has studied the skills and behaviors that create the conditions that allow........

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