In my personal and professional life, I have observed a pattern with regard to how decisions are made…anatomically.
Starting with the Southern part of our body and heading North…
- Especially in the heat of the moment, the “knee jerk reaction” is very common. This technique employs minimal insight and information when responding to a given situation.
- From there, we may opt to the more sophisticated “seat of the pants” approach, where we use our limited personal experience and judgment to come to a conclusion without considering procedures, planning, or other available technology or input.
- Then, we may advance North to “gut feeling.” At this stage, we utilize intuition, both our own and that of others, coupled with additional data in order to come to a conclusion on how we believe things will turn out.
- Improving upon this practice, we might continue upward to “listen to our heart,” wherein we now allow our deepest emotional inclinations to have a stake in determining next steps.
- Finally, we can move to the final stop in this anatomical journey…where we “make decisions with our head.“
Incorporating the aforementioned components of personal experiences, available information and technology, valued input from many prudent sources, and then mixing in the proper amount of emotion and logic, we arrive at the “best decision:” one derived from your brain’s coordination of all available data points.
This fact-based decision making may take a little more time and discipline, however, our entire anatomy will thank us later.
Leadership Strikes 