One of the many facets of leadership is our
Emotional Intelligence, which in management of resources and people is as
important as your intellectual intelligence in terms of making level- headed
and thought-out decisions. Prof. Baba Shiv of Stanford University explains that emotion is decision-making. (Shiv, B., 2011) Emotion plays a crucial role
in the decision-making process by allowing us to resolve decision conflict. Our
emotional system allows us to reliably take a particular course of action and
emerge feeling confident about the decisions we have made. It is critical to
evoke emotion from the decision-making process because of the virtues that
accrue from that. Those virtues include passion
that is persuasive, confidence that
is contagious, and extraction of
utility from the experience. (Shiv, B., 2011) Therefore in Prof. Shiv’s
opinion; confidence and over-confidence in decision-making has been vastly
underrated. That being said, I want to share two examples demonstrating the
difference confidence can make to reinforce or detriment my own decisions in my
past.
Positive Confidence:
One great example in the Positive Role of
Confidence is in relationship to my military training and subsequent enlistment
period in the Air Force Special Operations Arena. Successes or failures in the battlefield can
be linked directly to our preparation and training, and I can remember one
mission that we had rehearsed and practice for a few weeks prior to the go
ahead. We planned out escape routes and
secondary contingency plans to ensure that we anticipated the myriad of
possibilities or changes that affect the fluidity in a battlefield environment. When we did execute the mission a few weeks
later, we did have some setbacks, but because we trained with these in mind, our
confidence was unchallenged, and we charged through successfully making each
choice at each pivotal moment. Each
successful phase was attacked with more charge and more confidence as we seem
to be unstoppable and "in the zone" as we liked to put it. I remember reflecting on the fact that each
discussion or choice we faced was met unchallenged, and without harm. I remember the emotional elation and joy of
returning to base without any casualties on our team, nor any loss of our
assigned objectives we set out to accomplish.
In fact successful missions were often met with
emotional reactions, and in terms of this mission my first one was a joy in not
getting shot or dying in the field. I
also felt relief and pride at the same time.
Relief of not dying or getting shot, and pride knowing the successful
missions our teams completed saved lives, and led to positive changes to these
Middle-Eastern Countries we operated in.
One fourth emotional reaction to the decision to be in a combat
profession, and to make these choices to go into harm's way; I experienced many
years later, when I was in dealing with PTSD related to my combat experiences, and
dealing with fear and anxieties that came with it. I learned that even when the events in our
lives are far over, we can still have emotional connections that affect our
current mental states.
Negative Confidence:
In terms of an example of a bad decision where
confidence was put into question, I can relate to one of my recent automobile
purchases where my wife Tina cautioned me from rushing into the sale too
quickly, in fact she as against the purchased, but because it would be my car,
gave in to my own emotional roller coaster of wanting a new car, and my new car
became a serious of visits to the Dealership to fix and repair many items that
should have been red flags to me not buying the car in the first place. The impulsive personality that I have found
dominates some of my financial decisions, often sees past my own hesitations
and mental cues in my head that express concern. I get it in my head that I want something,
and I throw caution into to wind to get it.
These types of choices are often reacted too with my own mental thought
of I won't do that again, but really, we should be saying "I am glad I
didn't choose that car" instead of dealing with the regrets of the
purchase. It's funny sometimes when I
reflect on the emotional reactions to this decision, and many more like
it. We often feel stupid, hurt, and
embarrassed when we find out the true extent of our decisions which were warned
against by our wives, parents, or close friends.
I remember my own car sales days when I was
younger, and the Dealership trainer teaching us that the typical car buyer is
subjected to 10 or more emotional stages when buying a car. My own experiences started when I was much
younger as an Airman in the Air Force, suddenly faced with the ability to go
out and buy whatever car I wanted, which often meant whatever car I did not
need or could not afford. We replace
this bad decision making process as we get older with cost cutting strategies
that we rationalize our purchase with statements such as " I can do away
with the Leather Seating or the Satellite Radio - which save a few dollars from
our payments, but we still buy more car than we need, and we use our cutting
frills as the rational for our purchase.
Now that I am much older, and supposedly wiser; I find myself just
saying I can afford it now, and I want it and I deserve it, because I have
worked so hard to get here. Of course
reality sets in to replace my new Porsche 911 with a four door family car that
Tina "is" in agreement with - and so are my girls.
I find myself sharing the sentiments of
Professor Baba Shiv; which are also echoed in our textbook, where according to
Hoch and Kunreuther (2001) “There is now a growing body of evidence that affect
and emotions play and important role in people’s decision processes” (p. 269).
I am always looking for ways to be more confident in my decision-making
process. I will start looking to and learning from the virtues of emotion.
It is also funny, as I also found this theme across our discussion
board this week, as many of my team cited examples of informational cascades
linked to excessive passions or confidence, and while this is seen as positive,
we can find examples of jumping on the band wagon that result in letting our
emotion attachments get the better of our rational thought process that results
in a financial loss or emotional upset.
In fact, sometimes our emotional involvements
can backfire on our good intentions in terms of reaction with passion and
confidence, which directly ties into our recent readings and discussion about
information cascades. For good or bad, a
very confident person can cause an information cascade where people are so
struck by his confidence that they go right along with what he says or does
without conducting their own research to make decisions. This ability can be very beneficial for
someone who is looking to get people onboard with an idea, like investment
opportunities.
References:
Goleman, D. (2013). Focus, The Hidden Driver of
Excellence. New York: Harper Collins.
Hoch, S.J. & Kunreuther H.C. (2001).
Wharton on making decisions. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons.
Shiv, B. (2011). Brain research at Stanford:
Decision making. Retrieved from YouTube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRKfl4owWKc
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