i am good at rational decision-making!

 i am good at rational decision-making!

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have discussed some of the myths of decision-making, most of us have one more misconception: "believing that i am good at rational or logical decision-making." 

In a professional environment, as a manager or leader, we firmly believe that we make decisions based on the facts, logical conclusions upon data analysis, and structured evaluation of pros and cons. It is not true, and many psychology studies proved that finally, emotions overdrive logic.

Our decisions are driven mainly by emotions which sometimes lead to mistakes or substandard performance.

For example, you might have encountered an experience when you wanted to purchase any gadgets or home appliances. You might have set the budget, decided the mode of purchase, browsed, verified with many people, and decided to buy a particular brand or product. However, at the last moment, that decision might have been changed just by one adverse information or news about the brand /model or even a solid positive opinion about an alternative brand or model by someone close to you. All your logical thinking and  decisions were collapsed just by one emotional feeling of "not to be on the wrong side."

I have a personal experience that one of my books was selling reasonably well on Amazon with positive reviews till one anonymous buyer gave an adverse comment about me and the content. Post that review; there was a considerable reduction in the sales performance. The reason could be the reader's buying decision is biased towards "not to be on the wrong side." Logically readers should go by the count of positive vs. negative comments, but reality would be biased to the latest negative comments. That is the power of emotions over any rational or logical thinking.

So, since emotion is so powerful in our decision-making process, we need to be aware of our state of mind when making important decisions in a professional environment like taking calls on people, business expansion, investment, reacting to customer's complaints. Any impulsive decisions we take in an extreme emotional state will lead to a wrong or negative consequence.

The next option is to defer the decision when we are highly emotional.

Awareness is required on emotional state when we make a decision!

Have a great week ahead!