You're struggling to make a decision. How can you develop assertiveness in your decision-making abilities?

My best advice and this is something I do each time, I physically go to other leaders within my school and seek their advice and / or opinion whether this is an email ready to send or an initiative I would like to start. It is vital as this builds a strong and trusting workplace. When you ask for a colleague's opinion, this empowers them. In return they will come to you for similar advice.

You always have to take a 360 round trip before taking any decision. While keeping your target in front, consider all the available options with their up and down sides, strengthen your analysis, seek advice and take the most suitable decision. While doing it, never compromise on requirements spelt out by internal/external customers.

There is a very important truth: you can never be fully sure of a decision's consequences. Sometimes there are so many variables, it's a lost cause to be willing to accurately consider the best option. In those cases you need to decide based on what you know, what you have today. And one of the more reliable "anchor" you can hang on to is your values. Do something that aligns with your values. Do something that makes you proud. It might go wrong, but no regret, you couldn't predict it, and you stayed true to yourself. In that sense identifying your values and goals is crucial. Because your decisions should follow those.

Here's how to assertively make decisions: Identify Your Core Values: Know what matters most to you. This will guide your decisions. Use the 'Pro-Con' Technique: List the positives and negatives of each option. This helps you evaluate them objectively. Reflect: After deciding, assess your decision. This helps you learn and grow.

Getting the goal right for you is critical. It has been said (usually attributed to Einstein) if he had 60 minutes to solve the world's problem, he'd spend 55 minutes figuring it out and then 5 minutes solving it... or words to that effect. Defining the 'problem to be solved' will directly impact the goals and then the solution must fall within your values.

You need to analyze the decision's impact context: - What does it involves? - What are the dimensions/aspect? And keep only the ones that are trully important to you. You can also "weight" those aspects/dimensions, which ones are more important than others?

Practice Active Listening: Pay attention to details when people talk. This provides valuable insights for your decisions. Ask Open-Ended Questions: This encourages deeper thinking and can reveal crucial information you wouldn't get from yes-or-no questions. Set a Deadline: Having a specific timeframe for your decision process can encourage quicker, more efficient information gathering.

Gather enough that you can make an informed decision. If you have enough information to understand your options, then make the decision. You'll never have all of the information to make "the right choice". Just enough to make a decision that creates momentum to allow you to learn and make more informed future decisions.

I highly encourage anyone to not just research, but to consult with experts and mentors,as well as gather insights from peers who have faced similar choices. While gathering information is crucial, it’s equally important to avoid falling into the trap of analysis paralysis. To prevent this, limit the sources of your information to those that are most credible and relevant. Also, recognize when you have enough data to make an informed choice, rather than continuously seeking more and more details. We often won't have all the information necessary, but have to weigh the risks of moving forward.

I like to base my decisions on relevant data. I am not a big fan of the "gut feeling" decision. The best way to do this is to gather the information from the most relevant source in the field, mostly within my network or online.

As you would do naturally for simple decisions, you need to compare them based on your identified values, and impact of the decision on those values and other dimensions. For challenging decision, you can look up at multi-dimensional decision-making, there are tools that can help you put in writing you decision and calculate possibilities scores. Giving you math and logic based data point to help you decide.

With any decision you have to weigh up the pros and cons, but with this you can fall into the trap where there is no definitive option and you're left with no clearer view with what option to take. Sometimes you have to make a decision in order to reframe your mindset. I often make the decision to proceed with something with the mindset 'I am going to make this work'. And if it doesn't work then I can accept that I made the decision and I will learn from those, because at the end of the day we are human.

An innovative solution lies beyond simply weighing pros and cons. Our limited minds often default to choosing between two known options, when the best path may actually be a third option we haven't considered. To make a confident, effective decision, start by dumping all your thoughts, concerns, and negative feelings on the left side of a piece of paper. While these are valid, they can hinder the clarity needed to move forward effectively. Set this list aside and return to it after the proverbial dust from your old mindset has settled. Next, from each thought, concern or emotion, decide what you would rather experience. Each small decision will build a mindset that will support confident bigger decisions that lead to your goal.

It helps to walk all the way through 3 outcomes as a useful Thought Experiment: 1. It all works out as planned. Now what? 2. It partially works, but partially remains unfinished or unsatisfactory. Now what? 3. This did not work at all. Now what? Having walked through all 3 potential outcomes, do a gut-check about your readiness and your commitment. Then run it by trusted friends or colleagues and let them weigh in on the potential outcomes too.

You have to carefully weigh the pros and cons of the decision. You have to make the decision of the various facts that you collected and verified the source. Once the decision has been made and implemented you have to live with the consequences.

Trusting our gut is part of developing a well balanced mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical estate of being. While our frontal lobe is the foundation for our rational thinking, decision making, and intellectual memory center, our feelings also play an important role on making decisions. Brain and heart work together. Listen to both!

I lead with my gut instinct. If I think something is not going to work I actively look to follow that route in order to prove that theory correct, worst case is I am wrong and no harm, no foul. But most of the time my instinct is correct and going against it very rarely works out well!

Sometimes your intuition will tell you what the right choice for you is. Sometimes it'll tell you what doesn't feel right instead. In both scenarios, lean into why it feels right / wrong.

Write down your options, choose the ones that are resonating with you the most and pick the One by using your intuition that is combined with your knowledge and understanding of the situation at hand.

To further streamline the decision-making process, limit the criteria you use to evaluate your options. Identify a few key factors that are most important to your goals and values which will help in following your intution. This simplification helps you to focus on what truly matters, making it easier to compare your options and come to a conclusion.

Here's how to develop assertiveness in communicating your decision: Be Clear and Concise: Clearly state your decision. Avoid unnecessary complexity. This makes your decision easy to understand. Express Confidence: Believe in your decision. This helps others to trust in your judgment. Practice Assertiveness: Stand firm. Don't let others sway your decision unless presented with compelling reasons.

Being clear with your decision is crucial. Providing a clear decision, your rationale and how it aligns with the goals and values of the project whilst maintaining a professional approach will go a long way in building that relationship plus your confidence in making key decisions.

Decide. Then do. Or decide and then pass - for now. Sharing your thought process that helped you arrive at the decision can be helpful. It may also be necessary to keep your process to your self and have a simple response like" It sounds great, count me in. Or it seem like a good idea, but it isn't fit for me right now.

I've always tried to communicate the decision I have taken by explaining it. I am willing to listen to other's ideas but at this stage, I am not changing my mind unless there is a valid point I missed.

Don’t overthink! The most successful people make decisions quickly. When you trust yourself (an essential ingredient towards success in all areas of life), you know that your gut feeling / intuition doesn’t lie. When presented with an opportunity, your gut will immediately feel good/excited or bad/icky. Trust that feeling, and make the decision quickly before your ego kicks in and talks you out of it.

As I put in a previous comment. Sometimes you need to make a decision for the sake of making a decision otherwise you fall into the trap of over-thinking and begin to doubt yourself. Not every decision is going to work out in your favour and it's important to take lessons learnt from every decision you make, whether it works out well or not. "Every day is a school day" as they say. You never stop learning and you should reflect on those decisions and recognise any patterns and/or thought processes in order to evaluate how you can improve to decision making process for next time.

Sometimes you need to MADAMO - Make A Decision And Move On. There's never truly a 'wrong' decision if you make it consciously based on the information you have available AND you are willing to learn from it, pivot, change and grow as you go.

I think many a times the immediate decisions we take are based on Questioning the very PURPOSE and then answering those, and the most relevant answer which IMPACTs and takes us more closer to the PURPOSE is what makes us to take decision in that direction. Nowadays though DATA DRIVES DECISION but Still lies there the major part where HUMAN SENSE and QUESTIONING plays an important role before the final decision is made.

I think these are good steps if you're making a critical decision. If you spend a lot of time on non-critical decisions, I would say: 1. Consider the possible difference in outcomes between the best and worst choices. 2. Evaluate whether you have the resilience (mentally, financially, or otherwise) to bounce back from an accidental or unexpected poor decision. 3. Ask yourself whether the difference in possible outcomes is worth the time you are spending debating. 4. Assess the risk of your current choice - indecision/waiting. Embrace a decision and its consequences, even the occasional failure (inevitable even with endless contemplation). All decisions have some risks, but you are strong, will usually win, and will learn either way.

Go within: Inwards and Upwards. If you have a strong belief and connection to yourself and to G-d, you won’t falter in your decisions nor the ability or strength to implement them.

Sometimes you need direction, not decisions. If you’re not sure what to do, seek direction and guidance from people you trust and have more experience.