Decision Phobia Will Stymie Your Career

Do you suffer from decision phobia? Do you avoid making decisions? When you are forced to take on the task do you worry about the outcome?

You have plenty of company. How many times have your projects been brought to a grinding halt by someone failing to make a decision? How many people do you know who avoid making decisions?

Good decision-making is necessary for organizations to succeed. Therefore, opportunities are available for those who are willing and able to come to grips with decision-making.

Why People Shy Away From Making Decisions

Management psychologists Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann say people tend to be reluctant decision makers because we are be set by conflict, doubts and worry. They explain that we seek relief by procrastinating, rationalizing and denying responsibility in making choices.

All decision-making encompasses some degree of irrevocability. Once a decision has been made there is no returning to square one. There is a price tag attached to every decision. Important decisions can be breeding ground for conflict. There are bound to be winners and losers.

Decisions draw attention on those who make them. Decisions mean accepting the risk of being wrong and paying the price of embarrassment or worse. Decisions put us in the hot seat.

We may lack confidence in our ability to make decisions. We dont think we know enough about the question at hand, and we havent learned to trust our intuition. Besides, we are not sure anyone will follow us.

We may not know how to make decisions.

These facts of life breed the kinds of stress that make some people so uncomfortable they had rather let others call the shots and take home the rewards. Some are willing to stick their heads in the sand and let the issues go unresolved.

How To Make Better Decisions To Earn Career Success

Success with the process depends on being confident and reasonably comfortable. Of course, success also requires a good batting average of right decisions. That doesn't mean you have to be right all of the time; it means be right more often than wrong.

You can improve your tolerance for making decisions and do a better job at it by embracing a few common sense ideas.

It is important to realize that no outcome is likely to be the raging success or the unmitigated catastrophe we tend to imagine.

Nobody should expect to be right 100 percent of the time. Besides, you dont always have to be right in order to come out an overall winner.

You cant afford to be defensive about decisions that turn out to be wrong. When you are wrong, admit it and go on. Dont look back, except to learn from your mistakes.

Dont get hung up waiting for all of the facts before coming to a conclusion. Satisfy your self that you understand the issue and have weighed all of the options. Test the alternative solutions among those who know the situation and will be impacted by the decision. Decide. Act.

Learn to trust your intuition in decision-making. Hunches are not random bolts out of the blue. They are rooted in all the knowledge and experience one has accumulated in general and with regard to the issue at hand.

Decisions surrounding major issues should be broken into smaller, manageable parts. Take the parts one at a time; solve them in sequence.

Resist making a decision before you are ready to decide and act. All problems do not require immediate answers. There are times when issues just go away or solve themselves.

Be sure that all decisions meet your values. The question is simply, Does this decision square up with my own moral and ethical values?

Career Tip: Make Decisions To Grow

Organizations succeed only to the extent that good decisions are made more often than not by their managers.

Therefore, ambitious organizations need and will pay to get men and women who can make good decisions. People who have that ability are in limited supply. This means there are opportunities to gain positions of leadership and earn material rewards waiting for those persons who have the ability and courage to make decisions.