Decision-making is part of assuming leadership in any work environment, especially when performing work under pressure. Regardless of the work environment, unexpected situations require you to act immediately and decide with intelligence and intuition to solve a problem.
During the day, business decisions are part of any job’s regular logistics. Still, unexpected events test anyone’s leadership and management skills.
A moment of crisis can destabilize even the safest leader. Without a doubt, he probably carries the greatest weight in any work context for being at the head of a group of people, a company or even a movement. When it comes to making labor decisions, it is the leader’s figure who somehow has the challenge of having the last word, which may or may not define the resolution of a conflict.
Making the right decision in a leadership position implies various characteristics, which go beyond professional experience or years of experience. It will also depend on certain values, skills, attitudes and temperaments while working under pressure and not always in the same scenarios.
Considering the current high competitiveness in the labor market and the speed with which operations take place in any environment, everyone, in any function, faces circumstances that require decision-making in critical situations. The ability to perform under pressure is usually a characteristic of people considered an advantage or skill, even taken into account when choosing an employee for a specific position.
It is essential to understand that working under pressure should not be the norm and that, in a healthy work environment, working in these conditions is not necessarily the most effective or the best evidence of the talent of the employee or boss; however, at any time circumstances will arise in which time will be limited to decide, testing the competence of the person, especially in leadership positions.
Working under pressure should not always be taken as something negative; on many occasions, circumstances like these bring out many skills and aptitudes from each person or an entire team that would probably not be evident if it were not for the moment. These situations can be a great way to assess yourself or the staff you work with for future promotions.
For decision-making in crises, it is important to consider certain guidelines, which help resolve the event safely and consciously, as well as avoid hasty decisions, which can trigger irreparable consequences that put risk to the team or the company.
Table of Contents
Clear The Mind
Staying calm is the best way to gain clarity when making decisions under pressure. Generally, those in leadership positions face circumstances in which their decision to manage it can affect the company, the employees, and even the customers. For this reason, it is necessary to generate calm both in your environment and in yourself.
The immediate and impulsive reaction can be harmful, so it is advisable to take a few minutes to visualize a positive scenario, even if all the negative consequences are considered, but do not work from anguish but optimism. This is also an excellent way to build trust in the entire work team and the clients.
Analyze The Desired Result
To act in these critical situations coherently, it is necessary to be aware of the event presented and analyze the expected result; in this way, it is possible to find the action to be carried out to reach that result.
It isn’t easy to find the way if the destination is unclear. For this reason, it is important to be clear about the objective to be achieved to understand what must be done to achieve it.
Part of analyzing the desired result is considering that there is probably no single solution to the problem, nor does it consist of a single decision. In most cases, the result is achieved thanks to several choices, one after another, which will emerge as all the objectives are defined.
Assess The Key Factors
Labor decisions, especially if it involves work under pressure, consists in taking into account different factors that will undoubtedly influence each action used. One of the most important factors is knowing all the necessary information and data about the problem and making sure you have the tools and instruments to be able to carry out the decision made.
It is essential to know what, how, when, who, where, and why within the circumstance presented to give a diagnosis and have a broad view of the event before making a decision.
In many scenarios, to make labor decisions, it will be necessary to have the management of another department, personnel from another area, a subordinate, or an agent external to the company, which will become one of those key factors. However, the definitive solution lies on the shoulders of the leader.
Trust In Intuition
After talking about analysis and evaluation, people may think that reasoning is above intuition in making work decisions; however, it is not necessarily so. Many studies have shown that relying on intuition when working under pressure can give positive results, especially when there is very little time to resolve the event presented.
When making decisions in extreme situations, we rarely have all the elements needed, and we usually face problems that are not clearly defined; so it is more common than you think to use intuition.
Intuition, even when it may seem like something purely emotional, can become a great alternative since it is built based on previous experiences, memories or through the example of other situations or people. Applying intuition in a job under pressure depends on factors related to behavior, such as the ability to analyze and understand, interpersonal intelligence, and their level of awareness of their strengths, weaknesses, and role in the event.
Take The Consequences
As mentioned, any decision taken may entail risks for both the company and its employees. It is not always possible to guarantee an exact result, so it is always recommended to consider each action’s effect to find a solution. The solution, and thus be prepared for the consequences, whether positive or negative.
Those who hold leadership positions are generally the ones who bear the responsibility for decision-making, with a high probability that they may affect not only the leader but an entire team, third parties and even the reputation or heritage of the company. Business.
Part of accepting the consequences is keeping in mind that any decision-making affects everyone in one way or another. The actions taken may be a positive or negative example for the rest of the team and possible future company leaders. The process of accepting the consequences also highlights certain human values, such as humility to admit mistakes in cases where the results are not what was expected, gratitude for the collaboration and support of the parties involved, as well as the maturity to receive praise in positive scenarios and calls for attention in unsatisfactory results.
You are never prepared for the worst-case scenarios, but you can do better if you know and list all the probabilities of each of the decisions to be made.
Generate Odds
Once you are prepared to face the consequences, a very important technique for making sound decisions is to consider all the probabilities to predict the results. This is possible by making lists of pros and cons, listing all possible scenarios and ruling out actions that lead to a less satisfactory result than expected.
Without a doubt, there are more possibilities to make a better decision by concentrating on quality and not quantity. By this, we mean that it is easier to simplify the actions by generating all the probabilities. A better result is expected with a single forceful step than with a series of scattered actions or decisions.
Establishing pros and cons helps rule out not-so-effective actions to apply a more successful one. Depending on the situation and context, this simplification could mean significant savings in time, energy, working hours, meetings, resources, and even costs.
Listen To The Opinions Of Others
Leadership goes beyond a position of power, and it also implies involving your team in actions and decisions, although as a leader, you have the last word. It is common to lose perspective during work under pressure, so listening to the rest of the team and nurturing yourself with other points of view can determine the right decisions.
The ego can be an intelligent agent capable of hindering decision-making in leadership positions. The leader is not only qualified with numbers, percentages and figures achieved, and there are also qualitative characteristics that involve values such as empathy and humility, which humanize his management and thus be able to take into account his work team, without losing the notion of your responsibility and position as boss.
Being a leader does not mean doing all the work, and it is also important to delegate and not give an impression of individualism. On the contrary, it is a great opportunity to let the team know that their opinions are valuable and important. In this way, it is more likely to count on the voluntary support of the team in the following crises, to prepare them by example for upcoming events and thus to train future leaders in them.
Making sound decisions under pressure is not a finite skill. It is a continuous learning process, a skill that can be learned and improved while gaining experience in any work environment. Probably during any person’s career, the right decisions will be easier to make over time and after a series of wrong choices that, without a doubt, are part of professional growth.
It is important to understand that decision making is not a process that culminates in a positive or negative result; It is from that moment that a new method of reviewing these results must begin to document the correct strategies and decisions, and in this way, use them as a reference in possible scenarios that may be repeated or in unprecedented situations.
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