BONUS: Captain David Marquet’s Guide to Becoming Your Own Best Coach

In this BONUS episode, we dive deep into Captain David Marquet's latest book "Distancing: How Great Leaders Reframe to Make Better Decisions." Captain Marquet, renowned for transforming the USS Santa Fe from the worst-performing submarine to the best in the fleet, shares powerful insights on psychological distancing and how stepping outside ourselves can dramatically improve our decision-making abilities.

Make sure you also check the previous episode with Captain Marquet, where we discuss the key lessons from his book: Turn The Ship Around! A very often referred book on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. 

The Genesis of Distancing

"What I really needed was people to think, not just comply, not just do what they were told."

Captain Marquet traces the origins of his distancing concept back to his submarine experience. After realizing that giving orders gave people "a pass on thinking," he developed a system where crew members would say "I intend to..." instead of waiting for commands. However, he noticed that officers would sometimes make decisions that were good for their department but not optimal for the submarine as a whole. This led him to ask different questions - like having the engineer sit in the captain's chair and think from that perspective. The breakthrough came when he started asking himself, "What would my six-month-from-now self want me to do today?"

The Three B's of Better Decision Making

"The problem with your decision making isn't gathering more market data. The problem is your internal, your egoic biases that just come from the fact that you view the decision from inside your own head."

Marquet introduces the "3 B's of better decision making": Be someone else, be somewhere else, be sometime else. These psychological distancing techniques help overcome the limitations of our "immersed self" - the version of us trapped in immediate pressures, deadlines, and ego-driven concerns. When we distance ourselves temporally (thinking as our future self), socially (thinking as someone else), or spatially (imagining being somewhere else), we access what psychologists call our "distanced self," which aligns more closely with our ideal self and core values.

The Jeff Bezos Example

"When I'm 80, when am I going to regret more? Am I going to regret trying this idea and failing or not trying the idea?"

Marquet shares how Jeff Bezos used temporal distancing when deciding whether to leave his Wall Street job to start Amazon. By imagining himself at 80 looking back, Bezos was able to see past immediate concerns like his upcoming bonus and rent payments to focus on what would truly matter in the long term. This shift in perspective transforms how our brain processes decisions - from viewing them as "scary change" to considering them through the lens of potential regret.

Practical Applications for Teams

"I want you to imagine that a team in Singapore is going to work on the same kind of project next month. What would we want them to know?"

The distancing technique has powerful applications for team retrospectives and decision-making. Instead of asking "What could we have done better?" (which triggers defensiveness), Marquet suggests reframing as helping a future team in another location. This approach employs all three B's simultaneously: 

• Be someone else: Helping another team rather than critiquing yourself 

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