How to Be More Decisive in Your Life and Leadership
Gregg Vanourek
Personal development & leadership excellence. Helping you craft your life & work. Co-author, LIFE Entrepreneurs & Triple Crown Leadership. Author, TEDx public speaker. New book in the works on the traps of living.
“Should I stay or should I go?” -the Clash
We make many decisions every day. Many are trivial, but some are consequential and taxing. Which career to pursue (or transition into). When to make a big move. Who to live with, work with, or hire. Whether to start a new venture.
To live and lead well, we must get good at making decisions.
On the leadership front, do we want leaders who wallow and waffle? Or leaders who move forward despite uncertainty; home in quickly on the key issues; actively gather input before deciding; involve others in decisions; invoke their experience, judgment, wisdom, and gut instinct; and remain calm under pressure?
There’s a lot at work with making good decisions. The neurological mechanics of decision-making are breathtaking. When we make decisions, we’re using the brain’s prefrontal cortex for what’s called “executive function.” We’re drawing upon an array of cognitive processes, including: attentional control; cognitive inhibition; working memory; cognitive flexibility; reasoning; problem-solving; differentiation between conflicting thoughts; value determinations (good, bad, better, best, worse, worst); prediction of outcomes; and more.
No wonder so many people sometimes struggle with indecisiveness—wavering between different courses of action and having trouble deciding and moving on—and its related problem of “analysis paralysis.”
Truth be told, getting good at decision-making isn’t easy. This isn’t a new challenge. Even Aristotle mused about the absurdity of the idea that “a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death.” Indecisiveness indeed.
The challenge can be even more complex with making decisions in organizations. As expected, there’s much room for improvement here as well. According to a?McKinsey Global Survey, only 20 percent of respondents say their organizations excel at decision making. What’s more, a majority report that much of the time they devote to decision making is used ineffectively.
Clearly, we have work to do.
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The Problem with Indecisiveness
“Indecision may or may not be my problem.” -Jimmy Buffett
Indecisiveness has many drawbacks—and sometimes costly and painful consequences. For example, indecisiveness can:
“Indecision is the greatest thief of opportunity.” -Jim Rohn
When making decisions, we can experience “choice anxiety”: feeling distressed because we can’t seem to determine what’s right, with the fear of making the wrong decision shutting us down.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz talks about the “paradox of choice” and claims that the freedom to choose, while sounding nice, is actually one of the main roots of unhappiness today, in part because we live in such abundance. Choice overload leads to anxiety. We fear making the wrong choice or fear missing out on the “right” choice.
Schwartz cites an intriguing “jam study” in which a store gave one set of shoppers a range of six jams to consider, and another set of shoppers a range of 24 jams. In the end, shoppers were?ten times more likely?to purchase jam from a range of six jams than from the much larger set. 10x.
Choice overload can easily lead to not making a choice. We simply walk away. (See my article, “Choice Overload and Career Transitions.”)
Another big problem is second guessing—when we keep revisiting previous decisions and agonizing over whether we should change them. An unproductive and frustrating doom loop.
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Causes of Indecisiveness
There are many causes of indecisiveness. Here are eleven of the leading causes:
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How to Be More Decisive
Thankfully, there are many things we can do to become more decisive. Note that decisiveness doesn’t mean making hasty, impulsive, or rash decisions. It means making decisions quickly, firmly, and effectively. Here are 22 tips and techniques for developing our decisiveness:
“If you were omniscient and had a time machine, you would know everything you need to know about the [the results of your decision], but the problem is that we don’t have either of those things, so we don’t have perfect information when we’re making a decision.” -Annie Duke
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The key isn’t just decisiveness. What we really want is skills in making?good?decisions. It’s about both decision-making quality and decisiveness. Surely it’s easier to be more decisive when we know we have a good decision-making process. So what does that look like?
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How to Get Better at Making Decisions
A good decision flows from a good process for deciding. Here are several ways we can get better at making decisions:
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Final Thoughts
One of the keys to decision-making and decisiveness is learning to trust ourselves more. Without self-trust, all of this can fall apart quickly. We don’t need to be perfect. We just need to?apply ourselves consistently at getting better.
Once we make a decision, it’s important not to dwell and not to agonize. We must let go of the myth of the one perfect decision and focus more on making the best of the decisions we’ve made. Focus more on developing and using a good decision-making process instead of on whether any decision is “right” or “wrong,” and then trust in that process to serve us well over time.
Refuse to live in a state of regret:?take full responsibility?for our choices and move on. Make changes when needed. Give ourselves credit for doing our best.
Finally, consider this: If we can get good at making decisions and being decisive, it will help us with everything we do. There’s incredible leverage that comes from improving this. Wishing you well with it.
-Gregg Vanourek
Reflection Questions
Related Articles
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Resources on Decision-Making
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Postscript: Quotations on Decisiveness and Decision-Making
* Source: Erin Bunch, “Decisiveness Is a Learned Trait—Here Are 11 Tips To Master the Art of Decision-Making,”?Well and Good,?March 22, 2021.
** Featured image: photo by Jon Taylor on Unsplash.
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Gregg Vanourek?is a writer, teacher, speaker, and coach on leadership and personal development. He is co-author of three books, including?LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives?(a manifesto for integrating our life and work with purpose and passion) and?Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations?(a winner of the International Book Awards). Take Gregg’s?Traps Test (Common Traps of Living),?check out his?Best Articles, get his?newsletter, or watch his?TEDx talk. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!
(This article was originally posted on my Gregg Vanourek blog: "How to Be More Decisive in Your Life and Leadership.")
Vice President, Analytics
2 年Great article! Insightful with good practical suggestions as well?
Former business executive, leadership author, and speaker.
2 年22 tips for how to be more decisive and 8 ways to get better at making decisions. This article is like a graduate course in decision making.?Well done, son.
CEO & Founder, Heroes for All - a tax exempted youth focused Non Profit, Consulting Editor of Colors Business Magazine, Podcast Co-host of Limitless Leadership Lounge, Leadership Consultant
2 年Great article. Thanks for sharing. Effective decision making is so important and true more decisions we make … especially starting early in our lives… more we develop the muscle of decision making. And confidence comes from mastering , gaining more knowledge and also keeping an open mind to make informed decision . And if the decision was wrong… instead of being fearful , we should embrace the opportunity to learn from it to make things right next time.
Head of IT Planning & Project Development @ Tele2
2 年Thanks Gregg. Insightful indeed. I perceive that in this age of information abundance we are being more indecisive, ironically.
I help growing, family-run teams solve people problems, delegate smarter, and manage with ease.
2 年Great read, Gregg. I appreciated one of your closing statements, "let go of the myth of a perfect decision". Part of my journey as an entrepreneur has been embracing imperfections, mistakes, and failing forward.