4 Steps to Emotionally Realized Rational Decisions
Should rational decision making of intelligent business leaders include their gut feelings and emotions?
As a business leader or manager you generally learn that decisions and actions based on rationally considered criterion are important for business success.
Identifying a problem and evaluating and weighing various options, clarifying goals and objectives, assessing resources and alternatives, qualifying potential outcomes and developing an implementation plan are all logical and rational steps in an effective process.
Does Rational Decision Making Include Emotions?
The definition of rational includes phrases such as in accordance with reason or following from logic. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines rational as being agreeable to reason or understanding and based on facts or reason and not on emotions or feelings.
If you examine a rational planning model the process involves many steps that are sequential, logical and systematic.
For example, a rational decision-making process could involve the steps of:
- Identifying a problem or opportunity
- Gathering information
- Analyzing the situation
- Developing options and alternatives
- Evaluating these options and alternatives
- Selecting the preferred alternative (including an A and B plan)
- Taking action to implement the decision
This is a fairly straightforward and effective process. And, in fact, it is an appropriate process. Nowhere in this process does it say to stop and consider your feelings or emotions.
There are many business leaders who act based on the presumption that a logical decision should not involve personal emotions; that a rational decision maker puts aside emotions to focus on the information, options and facts.
For a long time that is just what business schools trained leaders to be able to do; to step back and objectively evaluate the information and then take logical and rational steps to act. And indeed, this is a good process to follow.
While it would be fair to think that good business plans and decisions put aside emotions in most cases that thinking would simply be wrong.
While it may be true that the most logical of people take steps to remove emotions from a decision the bottom line is that for almost all people it is simply not possible to remove emotions from the process and, in fact, decisions that include emotions such as empathy are often highly effective ones.
A Hunch and A Gut Feeling
Whether or not you are aware of them all most all people’s thought process always involves emotions.
There are very successful business leaders who report that they had a hunch or a gut feeling when deciding. Those hunches and gut feelings may be the result of practiced reasoning and experience but those experiences were filtered through a lens of emotions and the decision to listen to and trust those hunches and gut feelings also includes emotions.
Let’s take a look at where a hunch or gut feeling comes from.
A hunch is often considered to come from one’s head (brain) and a gut feeling from the visceral sense or autonomic nervous system.
A Hunch:
Your brain, that seat of decision-making and behavior control, is not a calm and rational place.
Within your brain are many systems including your limbic systems that are constantly impacting how you process the world around and within. Your limbic system resided in your brain, but it is tied into your emotions, behavior, motivation, long-term memory and even smell. If you smell a familiar scent a brief emotion associated with that event seep into your brain and your rational decision-making process.
When making a decision and evaluating past experiences and learning you are tapping into that limbic system to recall the information.
When you consider your reasons for a decision you are connecting to what motivates you and that is based on many factors including your personality, early socialization and past experiences.
A Feeling:
Your Gut Feeling probably is experienced when your autonomic nervous system acts or reacts to something.
This is an unconscious control system for your important visceral functions such as heart rate, digestion, arousal, breathing, salivation, sweating, pupil dilation and more. Your body reacts to a situation both externally and internally and sends signals into that limbic system and throughout your cognitive processing system that almost certainly seeps into your rational decision-making.
For almost all people the information you process in your brain is impacted by the information you process in your body. You may be taking the steps to make a rational decision, but you cannot easily escape the impact that other factors such as your emotions regardless of how much you try to repress or ignore them.
This information applies to leaders who make and implement both successful and unsuccessful decisions. It is almost impossible for anyone to make a rational decision without the influence of emotions whether or not there is an awareness of these emotions
Emotionally Rational Decisions
Our brains evolved to be efficient.
This efficiency included developing a number of cognitive biases, a limitation in our thinking processes that causes us to think a certain way about a situation and not be aware that we are bringing this bias into the situation.
One example of a cognitive bias is the negative bias (the need to look at situations as inherently bad or dangerous so as to fight or take flight when faced with danger). Most people, even those people with a healthy brain, focus on the negative because our brains are still wired for that bias.
Our brain is constantly scanning for threats and processing what it finds based on our experiences and positioning.
This is true whether you are faced with a dangerous stranger or slick marketing campaign from a key competitor. This cognitive bias can cause you to home in on danger and lose your view of the bigger picture.
Your awareness of the role your emotions play in everything from evaluating, planning and making decisions and more, is an important consideration in your rational decision-making.
Since you cannot avoid this emotional input, you can consciously consider your emotions as in play and take steps to weigh, measure and monitor them as part of the process. Many of today’s leaders and a growing number of business schools recognize the importance of tapping into Emotional Intelligence as a component of business leadership.
4 Steps for More Emotionally Realized Rational Decisions:
- Be Mindful That Your Perspective Includes Your Emotions:
Awareness of the fact that your emotions impact your rational decisions allows you to consider what role they could be playing.
- Identify the Emotions in Play:
When you become mindful of the full range of factors impacting the rational decision-making process you can improve your odds of managing all factors.
For example, if you recently had a personal health scare or suffered a business loss or success your risk taking or risk aversion emotions may be more prominent in your decision-making.
- Manage Your Emotional Reactions:
Once you are aware and can identify your emotions you increase your ability to manage the role your emotions play.
In practice this step may involve walking away from a decision when you realize you cannot manage or counterbalance your emotions. For example, making an important decision hours after you received personally bad news may not always make for the most rational of decisions no matter how much you try to deceive yourself that it will.
- Do Not Go It Alone:
Bring others into the rational decision-making process.
Although everyone brings their own irrational perspective to the table when you include the perspective of people with diverse experiences and emotions and really listen to them you can minimize your own sampling bias errors. Diversity is an important consideration.
Diversity of perspective means not selecting only those who share similar experiences and perspectives. A diversity of age, gender, culture, belief and perspective can provide a counterbalance to individual emotions.
Every day your biases, past experiences, feelings and emotions play a role in how you perceive the world and how you act upon it.
The emotionally intelligent business leader takes steps to learn to identify and manage emotions. This takes practice and awareness of how you think and what impacts your rational thinking is the first step in implementing this practice.
Related content:
4 Questions for Perspective and Balance
