America's trusted voice on money and business, Dave Ramsey is a personal money management expert and extremely popular national radio personality. His three New York Times best-selling books - Financial Peace, More Than Enough and The Total Money Makeover - have sold more than 6 million copies combined. His latest book is EntreLeadership: 20 Years of Practical Business Wisdom from the Trenches. |
Improve Your Decision-Making (and Critical Thinking) SkillsBeing a leader means facing problems that don’t have easy solutions and making decisions that feel way above your pay grade. But if you want to win big in business, you’ll have to face uncharted territory time and again-even when it comes to decision-making. Hey, welcome to leadership! So, how do you get the confidence to see challenges as opportunities and make hard calls? You develop decision-making skills. When your decisions aren’t complicated, your automatic decision-making process kicks in so you can choose quickly, almost instinctively. But often in business, the stakes are higher-leasing or buying a building space, making the right hire, or expanding your market reach-and you could lose a huge chunk of change, time or trust if you make the wrong decision. That’s when it’s time to call in these critical decision-making skills: Reasoning - This is when you analyze details and weigh the pros and cons logically with emotions in check so you can stay neutral. Intuition - At the other end of the logical, facts-based spectrum, you’ll find natural instincts. Intuition is less about analyzing deeply and more about following feelings and gut checks. As you gain more experience, you can give more weight to your instincts. Problem solving - If you’re feeling overwhelmed by a big problem, try breaking it into smaller ones. It’s easier to unravel issues one knot at a time. Creativity - This is problem-solving’s best friend. Creativity leads you to new ways of thinking and better ideas. Emotional intelligence - The best decision-makers are cool, calm and collected folks, who are aware of their emotions and express them in healthy ways. That’s emotional intelligence. And when you use it, you’ll manage stress better and process decisions easier. Time management - Time is your friend when you manage it well. But it’s your worst enemy when you don’t. That’s why it’s so important to know when to slow your roll, and let a decision simmer and when you need to charge ahead. Make sure you control the timing of a decision instead of letting it control you. Teamwork - Your best bet for making a complicated decision is to call in a special operations team. When you get the right mix of personalities and experiences beside you, you’ll learn more, come up with better ideas and conquer challenges faster. How to Improve Decision-Making Skills You’re not wrong if you’re sweating a little at the thought of how much practice it takes to develop these skills. Great decision-making takes work, and these do’s and don’ts will help you improve your decision-making ability and raise your critical-thinking skills: Do:
Don’t:
It has been said that tolerating a problem has the same consequence as not identifying it-disaster. But mastering decision-making skills gives you muscle to weigh your options wisely and make hard, brave choices. Read other business articles |