Emotion is not your enemy

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How are you making the decisions that affect your team? If you’re like most people I work with, you’d say you put emotion aside and focus on the facts. (If you’re like one executive I worked with, you’d yell that “our decisions are NOT emotional,” complete with red face and flying spittle.) It’s a great way to make ourselves feel better about the decisions we’re making; it decreases our anxiety. After all, if our choices are based on facts and data, how could they possibly be wrong??

But we live in the real world, and making decisions for you, your team, and your organization is more complicated than that. The best leaders develop both self-awareness and self-control, facing the fact that emotion plays a role in decisions... And it should.?

The best leaders learn to think differently about the role of emotion in decisions.?

Feelings are the fuel?

We make hundreds of decisions every day. Most are small, like where to eat lunch or what socks look best. These decisions are influenced by how we are thinking and feeling at the time. The same is true of larger, more high-stakes decisions as well. If you’re considering leaving your job, for instance, you may notice that when you imagine your future you feel panicky or that your hands feel clammy, which will certainly affect your decision. These physical signs of anxiety are unpleasant and humans want less of it. We often search for a choice that reduces that anxiety. It is a necessary and adaptive aspect of being human.

What is not adaptive is the denial of our anxiety, unease, and fear. Contradictory information, unfamiliar people, new experiences, ideas, and especially evidence that we are on the wrong track can ignite discomfort whether extreme or barely detectable. A good leader acknowledges their emotion while using a good measure of self-control. They don’t mistake their feelings for facts. Rather, they use emotion - their own or others - as a clue.?

Great leaders are skilled at integrating emotion rather than ignoring it. They are better at avoiding bad decisions because they don't follow up on nagging feelings but they also dodge the consequences of getting carried away by unbridled enthusiasm when it’s unwise.

Are your emotions in the decision driver’s seat?

Learning to synthesize fact and emotion takes awareness, self-regulation and practice. Great leaders intentionally, if imperfectly, try to strengthen their ability to synthesize. They know that dichotomizing is fast, easy, and can be reassuring, but it’s risky when the stakes are high.?

If you’re still developing this skill - and most of us are - use these questions to help you discern what you’re really thinking and what is really influencing you.

1. Am I ‘dead set’ on a course of action? If yes, why?
2. Is there something or someone I can avoid facing if I make a particular decision? If yes, how much does it matter?
3. Have I received advice that makes me over-cautious? From whom? How credible is their advice?
4. Am I being ‘egged on’ by others? Nagged? Pushed? Why?
5. Do I hesitate because I fear using my own judgment (which has proven reliable)?
6. Looking back on the major decisions I have made, what do the good ones have in common? What do my mistakes have in common? Who can corroborate my analysis?

Emotions are normal?

In business, too often we engage in black and white thinking; facts are good and emotion is bad. It’s tempting to try to manage how much emotion we allow into our decision making, but this fails to take into account our unconscious emotions, those that don’t seem immediately present. We are human, and feelings are normal. They are present whether we decide to acknowledge them or not. Better to accept that our emotions are ever-present and will have an impact. When we admit that we are more than thinking machines, the door opens to see what others miss and make the best decisions we are able.?

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