Effective decision making is a craft that takes skills of observation, communication, and consideration of alternatives before setting upon a course of action. Decision making is a reflection process where you deliberately select the best courses of action based on what you observe, know and predict. Its process is a selective type of analytical thinking gleaned from trial and error. The type of thinking required in decision making refines with years of experience. In having experience, decision making is learned from past outcomes, including those that we may think of as supposed “failures,” when you were on that steep learning curve in your life or your profession.
Understand your Problem
What exactly is it you’re facing and needing to change in the situation? To make a clear effective decision, understand its aspects and gravity. Feeling your feelings on the situation as it currently stands and coupling that with what you rather experience helps you make a clearer distinction. Consider the good of the whole when you consider the change and implement it.
Identify your Core Values.
What is most important to you? Focus on reality a bit and then see if it fits with your highest ideals. If your decision calls to making a right a wrong or make conditions better for people, look at what you value the most.
Weigh the Pros and Cons.
Think through the benefits of a decision, and the not-so-great side effects of each choice in front of you. If pros outweigh the cons, still consider what adjustments are required and do your best.
Remember to Make a Decision.
So, as you span your own knowledge and listen to the array of options that are worth pursuing, still know that effective decision making is a constant work in progress. It is a reality-based process that cannot be rushed and needs to utilize everything you’ve got. In making beneficial decisions and weighing the pros and cons, consulting the values for the good of the whole is invaluable. If there were a rule of thumb to make each decision an effective one, I would choose based on what is good for people. So, what is required to become a good decision maker? By becoming a person who can think and pursue logic and be aware of the consequences for the good of the whole, you can learn to make effective decisions and be a leader.
The best you can do can always be better than you expect, and as with mistakes, you can only learn. Remember that not making a choice is still a choice.
Empathy is Poetry 