The Brain Science of Decision Making
Are you working in a company or law firm where executive coaches help leaders become more competent decision makers? Does your company or law firm provide executive coaching and leadership development for trusted and transparent leaders?
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Am I recognizing emotional tags when making decisions?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching and leadership development for leaders who make decisions at all levels of the organization.
The brain uses two processes that enable us to cope with complexities:
• Pattern recognition
• Emotional tagging
Both help us make excellent decisions most of the time. They have survived evolutionary selection precisely because they give us distinct advantages over lesser animals in the food chain.
But in certain conditions, these processes can mislead us, resulting in poor judgments and bad decisions.
Emotional Tagging
Emotions are essential in decision making. While most of us pride ourselves on our ability to be analytical and rational, our brains simply do not work this way. We depend on emotional input to focus our thinking and make choices.
Emotions primarily work on our bodies in unconscious ways, and we cannot eliminate their effect, as hard as we may try. Most of the time, emotions are helpful, but they can sometimes lead to disaster. We need some way of anticipating when our emotions may cause a problem.
If we are forewarned and can identify potentially misleading emotional tags, we can strengthen the decision-making process while combating the influence of emotions that worry us. Our decisions will ultimately be more sound.
Here are four sources of emotional tags that can interfere with sound decision making:
1. Intense emotional experiences: We may have powerful memories of successes, failures, fears or pleasures that we’ve experienced in the past. These emotions usually help us, but strong memories can also mislead us. Remember that our brains use pattern recognition, matching previous memories with current situations. Our brains fill in missing information and gaps, but there’s plenty of room for misleading experiences to influence current thinking.
2. Previously made judgments and decisions: We can tag previous judgments and decisions with strong emotions. When these judgments are sound, our emotions help us focus. But if the judgments are misleading, our emotions can cause us to cling to them.
3. Personal interests: We often have personal interests at stake in the decisions we make. If these decisions affect only ourselves, our emotional tags will help us reach the right answer. But when our personal interests conflict with our responsibilities to others, our judgment can be unbalanced.
4. Attachments: As social animals, we are designed to become attached to other people. We can also become attached to a group or tribe, places and even possessions. If the decision we’re about to make is likely to affect one of our attachments, the emotions generated can impair our thinking.
We tag our memories with emotions. These tags, when triggered by a pattern-recognition match, tell us whether to pay attention to something or ignore it.
Emotional tags enable us to decide and act with speed, but they can cause red-flag problems that disrupt our thinking and convince us our erroneous point of view is sound:
1. Misleading experiences
2. Misleading prejudgments
3. Inappropriate attachments
4. Inappropriate self-interest
We require clarity to identify these issues and rethink our position.
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 recognize emotional tags and improve their decision making capability. 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.
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