[49] Developing Judgment: How Experts Think and Make Decisions in Complex Environments

In this episode of KeyLIME+, Adam speaks with Dr. Gary Klein about how people make decisions in complex, high‑pressure environments. Drawing on decades of research, Gary describes how expert decision making often looks very different from the step‑by‑step models many of us were taught. The conversation explores what intuition really means in expert performance and how judgment develops over time. Gary emphasizes that experience alone is not enough, and that learning depends on how people reflect on their decisions, notice what they missed, and adapt their thinking. He also discusses the ShadowBox method as a practical way to make expert thinking visible and to support learning through comparison and self‑reflection, offering a clear window into how decisions are actually made in practice and what that might mean for how we prepare clinicians to think and act in real clinical settings. Episode Length: 34:26 Resources to check-out [42] La Concordance de Script et la Formation par Concordance : Des origines aux nouvelles applications Books Seeing what others don't Sources of Power: How people make decisions Kahneman D, Klein G. Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to disagree. Am Psychol. 2009 Sep;64(6):515-26. White, M. R., Braund, H., Howes, D., Egan, R., Gegenfurtner, A., van Merrienboer, J. J. G., & Szulewski, A. (2018). Getting Inside the Expert's Head: An Analysis of Physician Cognitive Processes During Trauma Resuscitations. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 72(3), 289-298. Merrienboer_2018_getting_inside_the_expert_head.pdf Website: https://www.shadowboxtraining.com/ Contact us: keylime@royalcollege.ca Follow: Dr. Adam Szulewski https://x.com/Adam_Szulewski