In class, Professor Feinberg told us decision-making is an important part for a leadership, and he also indicated that if you want to be a good leader, make good decision. After class, I kept thinking about how to improve my decision-making skills in order to help myself to become a good leader in my association.
Larina Kase helps to answer my question in her article, Great Leader are Great Decision-Makers, by offering three qualities that can take the paralysis out of our daily decision analysis.
These three qualities are:
- Emotional Intelligence
- Managing Uncertainly and Choices
- Trusting Your Intuition
In emotional intelligence part, Kase mentioned emotional intelligence is an ability is one of the most important qualities a leader must possess, a leader’s emotions are contagious, which means a leader’s mood will resonate with others and set the tone for the emotional climate in the team even the whole organization, that is why resonant leadership is so important. Since leader’s emotion will easily affect others surrounding, further it might affect leader’s decision-making, thus emotional self-control skill will be more important for leader to improve. Great leaders are well aware of their emotional state and pay more attention to it, in the meanwhile, they are able to manage intense emotions which helps them to make smart decisions.
For the second quality part, Kase tells us to learn to accept the uncertainty. One of the main reason that people cannot make a good decision is that there are many uncertainties shows up when they try to make decision, since the majority of people are always want to avoid as many uncertainties as possible, as a result, they are paralyzed by uncertainty and end up basing their decision on things that are not even related. The thing I have learned from this is that, when we git stuck or investing too much time or other resources on something we are working on, the first thing we should do is to ask ourselves that if these uncertainties we are facing is resolvable. If the answer is No, it is important for us to accept these uncertainties, then leave it and move on.
The last quality Kase brings up is my favorite part. She points out that intuition leads to satisfaction with decision. Intuition is described as a nagging little voice inside us, but unfortunately our own intuition is always not being listened by ourselves in our daily life. It is all because in our non-stop, busy world, we keep missing out on opportunities to notice and listen to our own thinking and feeling, try to build a period of quiet into our life and we would be surprised at what we hear.
Through my personal experience, I will say intuition plays a big role in my decision-making process. When I trying to make a decision in front of many uncertainties and options, I will always tell myself to trust in my own intuition, I am doing this is because I know this is my decision to make, and I am the one who can really decide my way to great decisions, so it is important for me to believe in my judgment. In the same way, I think is also important for leaders to believing in their intuition, since if leaders do not willing to trust in their intuition and capability to make a decision, then what is the reason for those followers to work for these leaders.
CARPE DIEM 