Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..)

 Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..) 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Last week we discussed one of the methods to avoid impulsive decisions-i.e Going beyond the numbers or facts with example. Let us understand other methods to avoid impulsive decision making.


Taking timeout for responding:

Except for emergencies, not all business decisions call for immediate reaction or response. We can take time out to make the decision. One of the benefits of taking timeout is that the time makes us think about the alternatives or choices for solutions. When we are making decisions impulsively, we feel as if there is no alternative.

When we give time ourselves, we are thinking about both rationally and emotionally. We are in a position to generate the options and able to evaluate the pros and cons of the options.

Typically we come across situations when dealing through emails. We used to react to mail communication immediately as impulsive and later realized that we could have taken timeout to respond with different choices. Sometime back, i have shared my experience on impulsive way of reacting to email as given in the link.

https://lifeexcellenceinsights.blogspot.com/2019/05/lessons-learned-on-email-communication.html

It just needs the ability to distinguish which decisions call for immediate attention and which decisions can be delayed. Not all workplace decisions need the same level of urgency!
 
Getting the perspectives from elders or mentors:
 
The next practical method is to get a perspective from others or mentors on important personal or business decisions. The obvious reason is that when we are emotionally overwhelmed with the problem, we may not see it from the other dimensions. Others could see it from a different perspective because they are not emotionally attached.

Most of us might have experienced that when we were about to make an impulsive decision due to emotions, and when we discussed with others, they provided us simple, rational solutions to the problem.

It requires that we need someone to share the concerns and get different rational perspectives than making impulsive decisions and struggling with the consequences.

How to avoid impulsive decisions?

 How to avoid impulsive decisions?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed the importance of avoiding impulsive reaction in the conversation and making hasty decisions on any business aspects, now let us learn some of the methods to avoid impulsive decision making.
 

1.Going beyond the numbers or facts
2.Taking timeout for responding
3.Getting the perspective from mentors

 
Going beyond the numbers or facts:

Generally, we believe that "numbers or facts" are the real proof for making the right decisions. However, not in all situations, the facts or numbers will help us to make the right decisions. Instead, the numbers or facts lead us to make impulsive decisions and as a leader, we believe that we are taking logical right choices. We need to look at the scenario from the overall perspective.

For example,

In one of the client organizations, the worker's union put a demand to increase the compensation by quoting an absolute value per annum basis. By seeing that fact, the business head was immediately got angry and reacted to reject the proposal. Eventually, that decision led to the disturbance in the operations for some time. The disruption in the operations costs more than what the people put it as a request. Later, when the business head analyzed the demand in detail, he realized the impact was minimal daily compared to the losses they incurred.

The key realization is that the business head reacted to the mere fact rather than looking at the issue holistically in terms of the overall cost to the company, business continuity, and goodwill.

We may come across many situations in the workplace when we look at only on the number or facts, and we tend to react impulsively both positively and negatively. In either way, it would affect us professionally. It just needs awareness.

Let us discuss other methods in next week!

Impulsive reaction and decision making

 Impulsive reaction and decision making

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

  In continuation of channelizing the emotions for the positive outcome, one more emotional practice that needs attention is "Making Impulsive  Decisions or Reactions."

The impulsive decision means taking quick decisions without much thought about the consequences, implications to others, and self. Spontaneous reaction means quickly reacting to someone during the conversation without thinking about the consequence. It is simply all about "not thinking before speaking"

For example,

When a manager/colleague/ customer is asking for timeline commitment, without any thought or calculation, committing some timeline and realizing later that impossible to complete.

When somebody asks for your appointment tomorrow, you are agreeing for that, then later on realizing that you have some other commitments.

You can relate your experiences where you committed something without any thought and later troubled yourself to fulfill the commitment or asked for excuses.
 
Why do we make impulsive decisions? 

It is due to our inability to control our emotions, both positive and negative emotions in a particular moment or conversation. It is a state of mind, and it is challenging to be in a balanced state, but that is what most of the effective people use to display both in extremely happy or in extremely uncertain times. That we need to learn while growing up in the ladder.
 
Why should leaders not make impulsive decisions?

Taking an impulsive decision is not good for everyone, but especially it costs more for the people who are growing up and at higher positions. When you are young and make any impulsive decision, it would be seen as aggressive, over-enthusiastic, ambitious, and the mistakes are perceived from the perspective.

When at a higher level, when we react without much thinking and impulsive in making decisions in a business environment, it will affect most of the stakeholders.

I know one of my managers who had grown very fast in the early years of the career due to his impulsive way of making things happen. The same strength affected his reputation and growth when he was handling the managerial roles to manage both business and people.

We should not conclude that impulsive decision means taking decision slowly. It only means making decisions without thinking about the consequences.

But in reality, most of us are prone to impulsive reaction and decision making, and we need to strive to be conscious about it.
 
Let us discuss some of the strategies to channelize the impulsive reaction or decision making next week!

Misconception about empathy and performance

 Misconception about empathy and performance

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the responses for last week's discussion on "empathy or looking at the things from other's views" is that if we start looking at things from other's views, that leads into lenience and, in turn, mediocrity in the performance, particularly in a professional environment.

We need to understand the slight difference between empathy and being lenient.

Empathy means we listen to other's views and recognize the cause in it. That does not mean that we are accepting the consequences as such.

For example, let us imagine a typical scenario in the workplace,

One of your junior colleagues on a particular day left the office early due to personal issues. He/she may be the authorized person for a financial transaction, and he/ she had not delegated the task to anyone on that day. Due to his/ her absence, the important financial transaction did not happen, which affected your organizational performance.

In this scenario, as a manager/leader, what choices you had the next day when the junior colleague reported the duty?

Choice 1:

You might have displayed your dissatisfaction with the performance without listening to his/ her situation. In this process, both of you experienced negative emotions or hurt personally.No learning from low performance.
 
Choice 2 :

You might have listened to personal issues, and both of you felt sorry about the performance. In this process, you are lenient and accept mediocre performance.
 
Choice 3:

You might have listened to personal issues, acknowledged it and you might have assertively conveyed your dissatisfaction and his/ her lack of delegation to the work. You made him/ her responsible for not completing the task.He/she might have learned from the mistakes.
 
Choice 3 is the appropriate method of understanding others and ensuring the right management process in place.

Most of the time, we are witnessing either choice 1 or 2 in which mediocre performance is encouraged.

 i recall an incident that happened to me some years back. I drove my car first time in a new city and violated the signal as I was not familiar with the signal points and free left etc. A traffic policeman stopped me and got my license. I briefed him about my first-time driving and lack of awareness about the signal points. He listened to me and advised me to be careful in city driving. But he was firm to charge me fine as punishment and I also paid. In my view, the policemen were very empathic about my ignorance but, at the same time, firm on his duty. That is what required for the people who are at the commanding level as a manager or leader. Just imagine if the policeman displayed choice 1 or choice 2  behavior, then we both were not doing justice to ourselves as humanity consideration or duty consciousness.!
 
The point is being empathetic does not lead to lenience; you need to be firm on your role as a leader in a professional environment for ensuring performance!

Looking from other's view

 Looking from other's view

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have been discussing the method of channelizing or regulating the emotions in the workplace, one more effective approach is "looking at the things from other's view."

In most human interactions, everything is right or wrong from the person's standpoint, exposure or experience, context, and timing only.

When i am considering my decision is right, that is based on my experience, my today's context and that decision may be proven wrong by some one's point of view from their expertise, background, and timeline perspective. When we realize this truth, we can develop the ability to look at things from other's views.

This ability will help us to channelize or regulate emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy from competitiveness into positive emotions.

For example, you may get momentarily anger with your junior colleague's quality of work, say preparation of the presentation. When you understand his/ her background, experience, you may realize their weakness, which will help you to cool your emotions and divert into compassion to develop him/ her.

I am not advocating other's mistakes to be accepted as such, but for every error of others, if you suffer from negative emotions, it is not going to help you. Instead, if you develop the ability to recognize the causes for the mistake or low performance from other's perspective, at that moment, that will make you be in positive emotions.

Some people are good at look at things from other's perspectives, and it is a skill to be developed!

Channelizing Anger

Channelizing Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

We are aware that anger in the workplace affects the self and the environment as well. It is an outcome of our inability to cope up, non-acceptance of reality, and high expectation.

Some people are developing the capability to channelize the anger for positive turnout. Let me narrate one incident which i have witnessed some time back, and i learned a new insight as well.

I attended a public seminar in which all the age group people attended along with the family, including kids. The speaker is known for the "family wellness" subject, and he was invited to deliver a lecture. So i could see many married couples along with the kids in the hall.

The speaker was delivering the lecture. At some point in time, there were noises from the group of kids. There were chatting, playing, laughing despite their parents tried to control them. The interruption continued frequently, and some audiences got distracted towards the disturbance, and some people got irritated.

Having noticed the disturbance and initially got irritated with it, the speaker turned the audience and said," Let us focus on our objective." He then continued his speaking with enthusiasm and finished the lecture successfully in amidst of the disturbances.

In this incident, the speaker had choices to get angry with the parents like other audiences or asked them to move out of the hall. Knowing the targeted audience background and his purpose of delivering a lecture to them, he channelized his energy to convince the disturbed audience. He went ahead with high energy whenever he countered disturbance.

He put the purpose on a high level than on spending energy on low-level activities even though he has all the power to execute the choices at those moments.

The key lesson for me is that when we focus on petty things, we get angry frequently as the world is not perfect. When we divert our focus on higher purposes, some of the insignificant things cause anger can be avoided and channelized towards higher goals.
 
How can we apply this learning in professional life?

Whenever we are about to get angry with someone in a professional environment, we need to be aware of whether we are going to battle for petty things or shifting towards a higher-level purpose.
 

Dealing with Anger

Dealing with Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we outlined the importance of channelizing each emotion for positive turnout in the workplace and each emotion needs different strategies, now let us understand more about dealing with anger as an emotion.
 
When do we get angry at the workplace?

Most of the time, we do get angry when things are not going as we expect. Typically, the following are some of the scenarios we lose coolness or normal state and get into the agonized mood.

1. When someone repeatedly says something against our views, and we are in a situation neither to accept others' opinions nor in a position to convince others to our views.
2. When someone is pointing us for fault with or without logic, and we are in a position not to accept our failure openly. Also, not in a position to defend our case.
3. When we have higher expectations or standards on something or someone and, in reality, when we face less than expectation or standard, suddenly, the anger burst out.

You can think and relate some of your experiences where you get the anger.

In all the above situations, you can see some typical patterns as follows.

1.NON -ACCEPTANCE of the reality in a particular moment
2.Our INABILITY or lack of courage and skill to face (Helplessness)
3.Lack of patience to get the full picture
 
The internal pattern manifests outside either by way of shouting or abusing or hitting physically or going out of self-control.

Whether anger is bad all the times?
 
Anger is one of the natural emotions, and we can not outrightly say it is wrong. The anger becomes worthless only when it is used for silly reasons with the inappropriate people.

When anger is used for higher purposes with the right people, it turns out to be positive and the right people also perceive it in a proper perspective.

One of the best examples of converting the anger into the positive turnout would be Mahatma Gandhi's life as we read when he faced the humiliation by the British which turned out as anger. Instead of directing the anger to give it back either by way of verbal or physical violence against the British, he channelized the anger into a nonviolent momentum and created a new history.
 
When we read such a historical incident, we move on as extraordinary incidents.

But in a  day to day life, some effective people are good at channelizing their anger into a positive experience and let us discuss those real examples next week.!

(Appreciate your personal experience of how the anger impacts you at the workplace!)