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Know Your Decision-Making Style

Each of us tends to have a favorite decision-making style. After all, we have been making decisions our entire lives! Most of them have been personal decisions about our own lives, but they are decisions nonetheless and we are comfortable making them.

However, our personal decision making styles may work well for us, but not for our organization. Beware of applying your personal style to your organization. It may not work very well.

For example, some of us are “thinkers.” We want to think through a problem or challenge and arrive at a decision based on evidence, facts, and so on. Others of us are “feelers.” We make decisions emotionally based on how we feel about a situation, problem, or challenge.

Quite frankly, neither of these styles alone are appropriate for an organizational decision. Certainly thinking and analyzing are fine techniques, and we all have emotions that are applicable to most situations. But using these alone is inappropriate. Just thinking about a problem does not get you input from others, and emotions should not play a role in organizational decisions.