Feelings: The Overlooked Factor in Business Decisions

Text Pete

In this enlightening episode, Pete Mohr delves into the often underappreciated role of emotional intelligence in decision-making. You might find it tempting to focus solely on the hard facts and figures while making important decisions for your business. Pete, however, convinces us that feelings, biases, intuition, and personal values, just as much as rational thinking, play a critical part in shaping effective business choices.

Here are a few things Pete covers:

• The significance of aligning team values with your business purpose.
• Understanding and mitigating common cognitive biases in decision-making.
• The role of intuition in business decisions, especially when data is limited.
• The power of active listening in decision-making and building a culture of trust.
• Empathy's role in validating stakeholder emotions and experiences.

It’s time to take action:
After listening to this podcast, it's time to reflect on your own decision-making process. How much importance do you give to emotional intelligence? Start by fostering an environment that encourages open communication, empathetic understanding, and active listening. Moreover, acknowledge the cognitive biases that might exist in your decision-making and strive to mitigate them.

Click to download your copy of the Decision Activator Worksheet.

Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

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Book a no charge Freedom Call with Pete, to see if you’re a good fit for his business coaching or talk to Pete about speaking at your next event head over to http://speaktopete.com to find a time that works for you!

Pete's Websites:

Pete-Mohr.com
The Exit Ready Business
Kolbe Coach
Simplifying Entrepreneurship

LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/petemohr/
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Episode Transcript

Pete Mohr (00:03):
What's the most important thing you do as a
leader of your business? Well,you make decisions, and it's all
about the steady progression ofmoving from operator to owner in
your business. Ultimately,decisions should be made at the
lowest possible level of yourorganisation. And if you're
making all of the decisions,you've got some work to do. And
in this six part series, we'llgo through the five F's of

(00:27):
better decision making, theframework will help get the
craziness out of your head andonto paper so that you can
reduce procrastination andadvance the ideas you have even
faster to download a PDF copy ofdecide already the five apps of
decision making, as well as adownloadable worksheet on the
subject so that you can makefaster and better decisions in

(00:48):
your life and business. Slide onOver to simplifying
entrepreneurship.com five apps,that's simplifying
entrepreneurship.com forwardslash number five, the letter F
and the letter S, just asidealready, which I'm loving this
little series on better decisionmaking today. It's the fourth F,

(01:09):
all around the feelings, right?
It's the emotional intelligenceof decision making. And in this
episode, we're going to explorea little bit around feelings,
while the first three F's focuson objective factors, like the
future impacts, the facts andthe figures. The feelings
component really acknowledgesthe importance of emotional
intelligence and the subjectivefactors of decision making. It's

(01:31):
important, and it's one of thebiggest hold backs on making
decisions, right. So we're goingto discuss the roles of values
and biases and intuition anddecision making. Because it's
real, as much as we have thefacts as much as we have the
figures, these sorts of things,the feelings around the
decision, the people involvedare often what make us

(01:53):
procrastinate, have us haveexcuses for not moving ahead all
of these different things. Butthe role of values and biases
and intuition and decisionmaking is really quite crucial.
And let's kick it off with alittle bit around the personal
values. And, you know, from thefive Ps formula, if you've been
listening to me for a while,it's all around the alignment.

(02:16):
And when you really have peopleon your team that are fully
aligned with your promise,they're probably aligned with
the values of your business towrite. But if they aren't,
here's where we can get intosome problems, right? The
personal values, you want yourpersonal values and those of
your teams to be somewhat ormostly aligned with, of course,
what your promise is for yourbusiness and your values of the

(02:37):
beliefs and principles thatguide your actions and
decisions, right? Aligning thechoices with your values really
ensures that your decisions arenot only rational, but also
resonate with a sense ofintegrity and purpose. And if
that sense of integrity andpurpose for the individual is
not the same as for the purposeof the business. There's a
disconnect there, right? So weneed to take time and reflect

(03:02):
and understand that everybodyinvolved in this decision needs
to be in alignment with thepurpose of the decision and
moving ahead so that theirvalues are in alignment. And,
you know, the next piece is thebiases. Because we all have
biases that can influence ourdecision making. And most often,

(03:23):
it seems to happen unconsciouslyrecognising and acknowledging
some of these is just such acrucial step, not only
acknowledging them for yourself,but acknowledging them within
the team that's helping you makethe decision. And I don't want
to get too into the weeds here.
But there's a few differenttypes of biases that I think are
important to bring up. And thefirst one really is the

(03:46):
confirmation bias. And it'sreally where you're seeking
information that confirms ourbeliefs. And next one is the
anchoring bias, which whenyou're relying too heavily on
the first piece of informationthat we encounter, whether
that's the facts or the figures,we're fully relying on that,
that's anchoring, right. Thesunk cost fallacy is another one

(04:07):
where it's like, Hey, we'vealready put this much money into
it, we can't let it go now. Butbeing aware of these different
biases, you can really work tomitigate their influence and to
make decisions that are betteraligned with the best interests
of the business and the promiseright as we take our customers
from that place, where theydon't want to be with our proven

(04:29):
process of whatever it is we do,and move them to a better life
because everybody buys a betterlife, right? But understanding
those biases really is going tohelp you and help your team make
the best decision. Intuition isthat gut feel and we talked a
little bit about gut feel in thepast episodes as well. But you
do need a certain amount of gutfeel around these sorts of

(04:51):
things because that goes back toyour wisdom and your innate
knowledge around what it is thatyou're trying to do here and
developing your intuition andlearning Due to trust your gut
can really help you make thesebetter decisions, especially in
situations where data andanalysis might be limited. As
much as we want those facts, wewant those figures in the last

(05:11):
two F's. Sometimes we just don'thave maybe as much as we would
like. So what are you going todo, you're probably going to
trust your wisdom and your sortof innate knowledge that you
have within yourself as theprimary decision maker and
within your team, right? Thefeelings we can take back to the
five P's right, the five P's,understanding your promise
aligning your product, yourprocess your people, in order to

(05:34):
have the right amount of profit,the five F's overlays that in
this particular one with afeeling, it's all around that
fourth P, the people, right,your ideal client, your ideal
teammates, and your the othersuppliers that help you deliver
your promise. And part of thatis active listening. You have to
as the leader, you have to makean active effort, right? to

(05:55):
genuinely listen and understandthe concerns of all of those
people involved in thisdecision. They're your
stakeholders, right? You have tolisten, you can't just boil
ahead. Because chances are, ifyou do, the best decision isn't
going to be made. Ultimately,demonstrating active listening
can really make the stakeholdersfeel more valued and respected.

(06:15):
And I think that's the importantyou're empowering your team,
right with open communication.
It not only allows you to gathervaluable input from them, but it
also helps create a culture oftrust and collaboration. And
isn't that where the bestdecisions are made in a culture
of trust and collaboration.
Empathy is such a big part, youknow, put yourself in the shoes

(06:38):
of your stakeholders and try tounderstand their feelings and
concerns and perspectives.
Because when you empathise withthem, you can make the decision
more likely to resonate withthem. Empathy and authority,
right, those are two key pieces.
As we move the ball ahead tomake a better decision. He needs
to demonstrate empathy for allof those people involved in the

(07:01):
decision. It really involvesrecognising and validating the
emotions and experience ofothers, even if you don't agree
with their perspective, justhear them out, right? By
demonstrating the empathy youcan really build stronger
relationships and foster a morecompassionate and understanding
work environment. And that'swhat we're trying to do here.
Because especially if we'remaking decisions that involve

(07:22):
several people, because we needto balance the perspectives of
it all. It's really the ideaaround considering the
stakeholders opinions andfeelings, to balance the
perspective with the facts andfigures, right and the future.
So we take those first threeF's, and we're bouncing them
here and striving to strike theright balance between the
emotional intelligence and thedecision making process. In any

(07:46):
sort of feedback mechanism orany sort of feedback talks, we
always have to deal withconflicting opinions. And it's
just natural to encounter avariety of conflicting opinions.
It's healthy, right? And whenyou have that trust, and you
have that belief, and the valuesare in alignment, people are
okay with conflict, right? Andyou're working through focusing

(08:07):
on finding the common ground andunderstanding the concerns for
each of them. By integrating thefeelings part of the decision
making process and takingstakeholders opinions and
perspectives into account, youcan really make more informed
and well rounded choices thatbetter serve your business and
its stakeholders. Isn't thatwhat we're trying to do with

(08:29):
decisions? It's decide already,right? It is hard to make
decisions when there's feelingsinvolved. But we still need to
push through. And we still needto work through the final f of
the package here too, which isthe feedback because if people's
feelings are hurt, and if theydon't feel trusted, and they
don't feel as though they'retruly empowered to help make the

(08:50):
decision, the feedback isn'tgoing to be as good and that's
what the next episode will beall about. It's around the
feedback of the decision. Sothink about all these different
pieces. I know I've talked a lotabout variety of different
emotional intelligence thingshere today, but which one do you
want to improve to make evenbetter decisions within your

(09:12):
business? Think about thefeelings and go and make it a
great day.

Unknown (09:23):
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