Your Brain and Decision-Making. How it Makes Decisions is not How You Think it Makes Decisions. The Illusion of Logical Reasoning

Decision making is an important part of our lives, more so in positions of leadership and management. One can safely argue that as leaders and managers, decision-making is one of our key result areas because decisions determine the speed and direction of an organisation towards doom or destiny. There is no great leadership or good management from people who are pathetic at making decisions. There are many elements that comprise good decision making;

1.??????The first is being decisive or being able to make decisions as fast as they are needed

2.??????The second is making the right decisions for a situation or in a situation

3.??????Fourth is following through a decision action

4.??????Third is admitting when you have made the wrong decision

As leaders and managers, we want to be seen as logical and rational decision-makers who use logic and facts to make important decisions. This is great in theory; not in practice.

Exactly How Does the Brain Make Decisions?

The human brain, by design, is not as accurate as we think when it comes to making decisions. Its decision-making machinery is very much linked to the basic primitive needs for survival and dominance. These needs are managed automatically and unconsciously, meaning that they operate outside our conscious awareness. The three primary concerns of the human brain are;

1.??????Staying clear of danger

2.??????Personal survival and life perpetuity beyond the personal

3.??????Meeting the basic needs that support the two concerns above

In staying out danger, the human brain makes it assessments and decisions very fast and automatically, using a combination of inborn response systems as well as past experiences. In other words,

1.??????The human brain makes as much as 90 percent of its decisions, including in business, management and leadership, unconsciously and automatically using some kind of a preprogramed responses to information and situations. Most of these decisions, even though they feel relational and logical, are in fact irrational and illogical; they are not based on facts but on other factors such as past similar experiences, or emotions, or assumptions or self-generated or acquired beliefs. ?This is helpful in some situations but also misleading in many other situations.

When it comes to making decisions about people, we generally form some opinions or beliefs of about people and go on to make very serious decisions regarding them or in issues that involves them. Mistake assumptions abound for example;

·??????The assumption that if someone does not have a formal qualification in a discipline then the person cannot have good knowledge in the discipline, causing us to reject that person as an expert in that field.

·??????The automatic conclusion that someone, by virtue of wearing a suit and a tie is a gentleman worth trusting more than another person in jeans leading many into trusting the wrong people and mistrusting the right people.

·??????Most of our decisions are

A major of the human brain’s automatic and often faulty decision-making is the association of anything new with danger or threat.

·??????You avoid or are hesitant to embrace strangers just because they are new and the brain equates anything new with danger.

·??????You do not jump into try something new; you typically wait until others have tried it and you are sure that it is safe.

Wired to Mistrust

Generally we make most decisions out of mistrust. Most of our decisions are to avoid doing things that we have never done before. This is a typical preprogramed survival response. Doing something that you have never done before can lead to serious harm or even death. The problem is that the automatic brain processes cannot tell what new things are safe and what new things are a real danger. Even things that carry no real physical harm such as starting a new business, getting on the stage to speak to an audience for the first time carry the same weight to most brains. Mistrusting is more automatic than trusting.

Fear-Driven Decisions

Most of our automatic decisions are based on fear; not facts or information. The more we lack the facts the more we use fear in our decisions and the more we use fear the less we critically analyse our own decisions.

Categorical Decision-Making

I got this insights from Professor Nigel Nicholson in his book, “Managing the Human Animal.” Categorical thinking is a brain process by which the brain will first put people into categories before it goes go further process information. For you example, reading this article, you will put me into some kind of existing category maybe in either two of the following category;

1.??????People that you trust or

2.??????People that you do not trust

If you put me into people that you trust, you are going to proceed to trust the contents of this article regardless of whether or not the contents are true or false.

If you put me into the category of people that you do not trust, you will proceed dismiss everything in this article. You will most probably not even bother to cross check the contents of the article.

Do not take this insights lightly because they explains many aspects of leadership and politics. The most important success factor in leadership and politics is to ensure that as many potential followers as possible put you into the category (or basket) of those that they trust. The human brain rarely use facts to decide whether or not to put you in any of the two basket. This is why communication and speaking are key to leadership and political success because the human brain can make very quick judgments and decisions about whether or not to trust you purely based on what you say and how you say it. Remember;

If you are put into the wrong basket, it takes tremendous amount of effort to influence people to put you into the correct basket. This is exactly why first impressions matter. People will judge you and make all other decisions based on which category their brains have assigned you to.

Executives, Managers and Top Leaders

These same automatic, brain-level decision making process affect all people regardless of their education. They undermine effective decision-making and mislead top executives almost the same way as they mislead everyone else. The only way to minimise their negative impacts is through being aware of these unconscious processes and bias and invest effort in consciously managing them by thinking twice about our decisions.

Conclusion

1.??????We do not make decisions the way we think we do?

2.??????We make most of our decisions automatically and unconsciously using assumptions, summary judgments, impressions and automatic responses instead of facts

3.??????Most of our decisions are not as accurate and as correct as we think they are.

4.??????It is important carefully examine how we make our decisions to make sure we make our decisions as accurately as possible

5.??????The brain has a tendency to make short-cuts in making decisions

6.??????Fear-based decisions dominate the type of decisions that we make

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?Simon Bere, 2022