Decision Making: What you need to know when making decisions as a leadr.

     One of the most important yet critical aspects of leadership is decision making. All leaders have to make decisions on regular basis. Their decisions not only reflect on them, but on the team as a whole. Scientists have spent decades trying to understand the key to decision making through studying the human brain and human behavior in the hope of finding more answers to the map that will unveil the secret behind why people take the decisions they take and what affects that process.

     Almost everything that we do in our life starts by making a decision; what time to wake up, what to wear, what to eat, etc. However, when making decisions on a managerial level or from a leading position, the whole concept takes a new perspective; such decisions may affect others from a small group of people to an entire nation. The human history is full of ups and downs, successes and failures, all of which were the results of either good or bad decisions. Successful leaders are those who learn to master the art of decision making and learn from their past decisions and the decisions of others.

     In this article I will discuss different elements and aspects that play a role in the process of decision making. I will also show that anyone can enhance the quality of the decisions they make by paying attention to all the different factors that may affect our decisions. Please bare with me the length of this article; the area of decision making is of great importance and that's why I would like to focus on certain aspects related to it.

The Mind at Work

     The main engine behind making any decision is our mind. It is very important here to differentiate between the brain and the mind. To simplify this difference, let us consider how any computer works; the physical parts inside the computer’s case (such as the mother board, the CPU, and all the other chips and circuits) would be the brain, however, the mind would be the dynamic visual result we see on the screen. 

     In his works, Sigmund Freud divided the mind into layers: the Conscious Mind (where we access information and memories at a level of awareness), and the Unconscious Mind (which contains suppressed information and memories that are inaccessible at the level of awareness and may or may not be recalled in certain cases). Contrary to what most people may believe, the conscious mind is not the only active part of the mind behind decision making; researchers have discovered that many of the decisions that we make are based on past experiences that have been suppressed in the unconscious mind and may or may not be available for recall under normal circumstances. Our subconscious mind works around the clock, however, it reveals itself to us when we least expect it; many of our most creative ideas and solutions to problems we have been facing come to us during times when our attention and awareness are not focused on that particular issue or problem. Our unconscious mind, or what professor of leadership studies - John Adair refers to as the “Depth Mind” works in mysterious yet effective ways. When it comes to decision making, the unconscious mind works as a separate entity that studies situations and suggests solutions and ideas based on past or acquired experiences. In his book Decision Making and Problem Solving Strategies, John Adair writes: “Many people are still not even aware that their depth minds can carry out important mental functions for them, such as synthesizing parts into new wholes or establishing new connections while they are engaged in other activities”. (Adair, 2010)

          Our modern life is full of information that comes our way every minute. The concept of information overload has become a normal part of our daily life. Our life has become based on TV, Cellular Phones, Wireless Media, Wireless Communication, and most importantly: the internet. While many people may look at all this luxurious technology and finding information in just a click as a good sign of development, there may be more effect to this overflow of information than just finding information in a few seconds or less; such large input of data may have an effect on our thinking ability in general and on our decision making patterns in particular. Looking back in time, we find that the amount of data and information that the average person received on daily basis is nothing but a fraction of the amount of data that the average person receives today.  An article under the title of: Welcome to the information age – 174 newspapers a day, that was published in the British Newspaper The Telegraph shows that recent studies found that the amount of information that an individual receives on daily basis has skyrocketed from the equivalent of forty 85-pages newspapers a day in 1986 to one hundred seventy four 85-pages newspaper a day in the year 2007. (Alleyne, 2011). This is the kind of information that I would like to refer to as raw information. Raw information is any information that hasn’t been filtered or tested for accuracy or clarity. When we are exposed to such a huge amount of unprocessed information, our subconscious automatically stores it and saves it for future reference. In most cases we are well unaware of the amount of data that has been stored in our deep subconscious. The human brain has a unique ability of recording images, information, and places that we see or visit. This varied data comes to the surface when our brain tries to solve a problem or make a decision. Considering the amount of information we receive on daily basis and the amount of data we store in our memories, the process of decision making may become harder and more distorted for if we do not pay attention to the thinking process and the information we depend on while making decisions, our decisions may end up being the wrong ones, and even disastrous ones in certain cases. Therefore, it is very important for us not to follow our impulse and to scan and filter the information we use while making decisions. By practice, we can train our minds to refine the selection process of any data or information that we may need to make decisions.

Culture and Language at Work

     One important factor that plays a role in the way anyone would make their decisions is the culture and environment that the person grew up in or is affected by. Each culture has its own set of beliefs, ideals, language(s), and certain ways of doing things. Studies of different cultures have shown that people from different parts of the world focus on different aspects of decision making. For example, European Americans tend to be influenced by the positive outcome of a decision, while Asians are normally more influenced by the negative consequences that may happen due to a certain decision. What is interesting about some findings is that ethnicity is not the only player in affecting the process of decision making; one other major player is the spoken language. A research commenced by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the title of: Titled Effects of Cultural Salience on Goal Pursuits: Implications for Behavioral Decisions and Judgments, shows us that the language spoken has a clear effect on the process of decision making. As part of the research, bilingual and bicultural participants from Hong Kong took part of a study that had them communicate in both English and Chinese. The results of the study showed that when the participants communicated in Chinese they tended to engage in a more prevention focused behavior than when they communicated in English. The reason of such behavior is attributed to the fact that when communicating with a certain language, the expectations and perceptions of the norms and values of the culture associated with language are automatically activated. (Briley, 2007)

Sleep and Rest at Work

     Several studies on the relation between decision making and proper sleep have shown that the ability of decision making deteriorates when there is a lack of sleep. A new work that was performed by experts at the Harvard Medical School and the University of California in Berkeley (UCB) shows the effects on the human brain when lacking sleep. Dr. Mathew Walker who took part in running a number of experiments on the mental abilities of people who were asked to stay awake for a whole night explains that unlike the well rested brain, the sleep deprived brain swings to both extremes of the mood spectrum instead of finding the happy balanced spot. This shift between the two extremes leads into wrong decisions being made. (Vieru, 2011)

      For some people in certain professions – such as doctors or surgeons – such decisions could be fatal. Therefore, individuals with high-risk jobs and those with jobs that require frequent decision making should watch their sleep pattern and make sure that they get the right number of sleep hours in order for them to avoid making wrong decisions.

    

Hidden Traps at Work

     Just like anything else in life, our decision making ability improves by practice. The more good or bad decisions we make, the more experience we gain for the next time we are about to make a decision. However, regardless of how experienced we get in making decisions, we should be careful not to fall into the misleading pitfalls of thinking. In their article: The Hidden Traps in Decision Making, authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Kenney, and Howard Raiffa, identified six major traps that anyone can fall into while making decisions:

1.      The Anchoring Trap: this is the trap that we fall into when we let the opinions, thoughts, comments, or suggestions of other people affect our decisions. Often times we fall into this trap by not filtering all the input we receive from others around us. Many times we end up blocking our own thoughts and simply going by what others think or suggest.

2.      The Status Quo Trap: we normally tend to stick to what we usually have or are comfortable with rather than trying something new or going through a new experience. Staying within our comfort zone seems to be the dominant behavior for most people. People who fall into the status quo trap can easily base their decisions on what they are comfortable with and not open the doors for the opportunity to change or try different methods and approaches. The best way to avoid falling into this trap once we are aware of it is to examine whether we are making our decision because this is the right thing to do or because we are simply comfortable with it as is and do want change.

3.      The Sunk-Cost Trap: this is when we make choices to justify previous choices even when those choices are not valid any longer or were wrong. When taking the wrong decision, it is very important for us to have the ability to accept that fact and admit it in order not to fall into the sunk-coast trap by making new decisions that are based on the old wrong ones. This is especially more important on a managerial and leaders’ level than it is on a personal level, since the decisions of managers affect the team as a whole and not just one person. For example, when hiring the wrong employee, many managers will be too proud to admit that they have done the mistake of hiring the wrong person; instead, they invest time and money on that employee and try to convince everyone that this person just needs some time to learn although deep inside they know the truth that they have taken the wrong decision when they hired that person.

4.      The Confirming Evidence Trap: people fall into this trap when giving more weight to any information that support their decision and less weight to contradicting or conflicting information. What simply happens here is that we normally know on a subconscious level which decision we want to take although we may not necessarily know why. We then tend to accept any information or arguments that support our decision and ignore or dismiss any information that clashes with it in spite of the fact that that information could be of a great value and may help stop us from taking the wrong decision.

5.      The Framing Trap: we make our decisions based on facts that we have or facts that we receive. There is more than one way of delivering these facts or information to the decision maker; facts can be framed to sound either positive or negative. We can react to the same piece of information in different ways based on how we receive it. Since people are normally more comfortable with the status quo of any situation, they tend to receive information exactly the way it has been framed and make decisions based on that. A good example that can be used is the way people reacted to the new car insurance policy that was announce in both neighboring states New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Both states have decided to cut down on car insurance costs by giving drivers the option of lowering their premiums by accepting the limited right to sue. Although both states wanted to apply the same law, they both framed it differently; in Pennsylvania, the law stated that drivers had the full right to sue unless they stated otherwise, while in New Jersey the law stated that drivers automatically had the limited right to sue unless they specified otherwise. The result was that 80% of the drivers in New Jersey chose the limited right to sue, while only 25% of the drivers in Pennsylvania chose the limited right to sue option simply because of the way the law was framed in each state. The large difference in the number of people who signed up for the limited right option resulted in the failure of the state of Pennsylvania to gain approximately over $200 million in expected insurance and litigation savings.      

6.      The Estimating and Forecasting Trap: We make different judgments and estimates about different variables in our daily life. The repetition of these judgments and variables calibrates our brains into a refined accuracy in making such calls. However, when making estimates or forecasts about uncertain events (e.g.: the stock market precise fluctuations, the price of oil falling or raising for a certain amount, etc.) chances are that unless we have a large amount of data and we have been studying the patterns of change for the item we are estimating or forecasting to the extent where we have become experts in the field, our estimate or forecast will be wrong.  

All of the traps mentioned above are traps that can affect the way we make decisions when we are faced with uncertainty, however there also a few more traps that can affect our ability to assess probabilities while making decisions based on forecasting. Some of these most common traps are: The overconfidence trap (being over confident about the accuracy of our knowledge and information without checking their validity in the given situation), the prudence trap (a trap that forecasters fall into while being overcautious when making decisions by adjusting their estimates just to be on the safe side), and the recallability trap (a trap that we fall into when our ability to estimate is affected by past dramatic or traumatic incidents that may have seen or witnessed ourselves).  (Hammond, Kenney, & Raiffa, 1998)

Attitude at Work

     A leaders’ attitude plays a major role in the quality and efficiency of the decision made; the need of making decisions arises when we are faced with a problem, a challenge, or uncertainty about any given situation. Positive leaders see every problem as an opportunity and hence their decisions flow from a positive mindset of seeking improvement, on the other hand, negative leaders see every problem as a difficulty, and therefore, the decisions they make will be based on a negative mindset and most probably be the wrong ones. 

     Our attitude is a personal choice that we control – we carry our own weather. The quality of any decision that we make depends on the kind of attitude that we had while making that decision. Leaders who are considered to be good decision makers are normally good problem solvers. Dealing with problems with the right attitude and finding the right solutions for them leads into a better decision making ability and fine tunes the judgment of any given situation. In addition, it is very important for us to accept the situation or problem that we are making a decision about rather than denying it or trying to find ways to make decisions that will hide or cover for the truth; successful leaders accept the truth, face problems as they are and take their decisions accordingly. In his book The 21 Indispensable Qualities of A Leader, leadership expert and author John Maxwell says: “People respond to problems in these ways: they refuse to accept them, they accept them and then put up with them; or they accept them and try to make things better. Leaders must always do the better”. (Maxwell, 1999)

Decision Making: A Skill to Be Acquired

     In conclusion, the process of decision making is a skill to be acquired through practice and full awareness of the available data and facts that are available to us. Acceptance and openness are two key elements that any good decision maker and good leader should practice. Where we are and how we are today are results of our past decisions; our decisions today can affect us and those that work with us for the longer periods of time to come. I believe that the best way to confirm that we are making the right decisions is to look outside the box and view the problem that we have at hand as if it was somebody else’s, would we still make the same decision then?