Decision Making For Dummies

Part II

Knowing and Growing Yourself as a Decision-Maker

Five Things Skilled Decision-Makers Do

• Regulate their emotions: Regulating your emotional state gives you access to your intuitive and intellectual intelligence. Try deep breathing to reach the inner calm.
• Ask powerful questions: Asking powerful questions helps you illuminate what you’re taking for granted or overlooking. Ask questions like, “Why are we doing this?” and “If a new CEO walked in today, what decision would she make?” Powerful questions always pose queries the mind can’t immediately answer.
• Listen deeply: Listening to what isn’t expressed can deepen your understanding of the situation and sometimes reveal the solution.
• Step back to gain perspective: Stepping back gives decision-makers the capacity to link decisions to goals and long-term vision.
• Engage in personal and professional growth: Such growth converts what you don’t know about yourself and turns it to an advantage. When you ask, “What can I learn from this experience that can help me moving forward?” you turn your experience into knowledge that will be useful later on.

Learn why your ego is a key factor in your decision-making and how to use it to your advantage at http://www.dummies.com/extras/decisionmaking.

In this part …

• Find out how fear and failure ...