Weeding out emotions from business decisions

The famous motivational writer Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People wrote, “When dealing with people, lets us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices, and motivated by pride and vanity.”

Well, logically speaking this fact does not only refer to other people. It perfectly describes you and me. When dealing with ourselves, when making decisions let’s remember that most of our decisions are emotional and not logical.

Mostly, we make emotional decisions and justify them logically.

This is one of the reasons why we regret some of the decisions we have made in the past. Whereas some may have been based on knowledge and circumstances of the time, majority of them are purely emotionally driven.

The catalogue of businesses that have suffered or even failed due to emotional decisions made by owners is long. Most affected are sole proprietors and partnerships where one or two people can easily make a spontaneous decision and implement it immediately.

How then do you ensure you weed out emotions from most of your business or personal decisions?

First, invite a few other people when making key decisions like hiring staff, making huge commitments, preparing plans such as expansion, and engagements with external parties. Such people could be your able staff, auditors or friends.

Such people will be able to subject your possibly emotional decisions to logic and moderate you to avert blunders that may arise from emotional decisions.

Secondly, write down your decisions on a notebook. Studies show that when you write down your decisions you intuitively reduce their emotional intensity and bring in some appreciable level of clarity. This clarity helps see things in a more analytical, logical manner.

Thirdly, delay making key decisions. Emotions are mostly transient. As emotions fade with time, logic takes over.

If you think of resigning from your job or starting or ending a relationship, doing a major project or even giving up in life, don’t rush. Take your time to take action regardless of the apparent opportunity cost.

If your boss, your customer or a colleague has offended you and you are angry, you are likely to respond emotionally and escalate the conflict. But if you chose to respond later, you will have cooled down to see your own contribution to the conflict and make sober decisions.

Finally, consciously strive to improve your emotional intelligence through self-awareness.

Self-awareness is the ability to identify and understand your own emotions and the impact you have on others.

Therefore, purpose to know yourself and things that affect your judgment and behaviour in different circumstances.

Emotional intelligence, defined as a set of skills that help us recognise, understand and manage our emotions as well as understand and influence the emotions of others is one of the key pillars of success in life.

We are all emotional beings and the ability to control your emotions is perhaps the greatest leverage you will ever have over people around you.

Mr Kiunga, Author of ‘The Art of Entrepreneurship: Strategies to Succeed in a Competitive Market’