Executive Coaching for Decision Making: The Brain Science of Bad Decisions

Executive Coaching for Decision Making

Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders develop their decision making capability?  Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for high potentials and high performing and leaders?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I make good decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for decisive leaders at all levels of the organization.

Decision making is a critical function in our personal and professional lives. None of us would be in positions of authority without demonstrated abilities to discern issues and make good choices. Our reputations and livelihoods depend on it.

Each day, however, intelligent people make mistakes, with devastating consequences. Why do good leaders make bad decisions? How can we reduce our margin of error?

Our daily decisions are generally small and innocuous. Others are incredibly important, affecting people’s lives and well-being. The daunting reality is that smart people make enormously important decisions with the best information and intentions, and they sometimes go terribly wrong.

Even great leaders make bad decisions:
• President Kennedy is famous for the Bay of Pigs blunder.
• President Hoover failed to inflate the economy after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
• Jurgen Schrempp, CEO of Daimler-Benz, led the merger of Chrysler and Daimler-Benz and was forced 10 years later to give Chrysler away in a private equity deal.
• Lee Kun-Hee, CEO of Samsung, pushed his company into a disastrous investment in automobiles.
• An Wang insisted on a proprietary operating system for his company’s personal computer, even after it was clear that the IBM PC would become the industry standard; his company is now history.

Authors Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead and Andrew Campbell have studied how smart leaders make catastrophic decisions. In Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You (Harvard Business School Press, 2008), these experts show how the brain’s thinking processes can distort judgment. Think Again identifies four errors of thinking and four safeguards to help us avoid bad decisions.

Some outcomes, of course, are the result of bad luck because we must take calculated risks. But there’s a big difference between flawed decisions based on erroneous thinking and calculated risks that turn out badly.

Neuroscientists and experts in decision making now understand more about how the brain works and how we are prone to several types of faulty thinking when faced with a set of circumstances that require a decision.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help company leaders learning how to become better decision makers. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision and mission of your company or law firm.

I am currently accepting new executive coaching and career coaching clients. I work with both individuals and organizations. Call 415-546-1252 or send an inquiry e-mail to mbrusman@workingresources.com.