Some Ways to Make Emotionally Intelligent Decisions

Introduction

Several strategies to improve managerial decision-making:

1. Raise Awareness of Heuristics

• Teach managers to recognise the shortcuts and biases influencing their decisions.
• Facilitate peer discussions to share experiences, compare heuristics and identify which are helpful or misleading.
• Make peer learning a structured process focused on insight, not advice-giving.

2. Help People Notice When Emotions Drive Decisions

• Provide techniques for pausing and recalibrating:
  • Purposeful reflection: “Am I reacting or deciding?”
  • Perspective-shifting: “Would I make the same decision if this involved someone else?”
  • Peer calibration: “Here’s what I’m planning and do my reasons hold up?”
• Encourage reflection, without judgment, to normalise emotional awareness.

3. Provide Reliable, In-the-Moment Resources

• As managers will continue to turn to peers, give them support tools that offer balance and reflection:
  • Digital guides, checklists, short how-to resources, videos.
  • AI chatbots or conversation simulators that help rehearse responses.
• These tools help managers pause, reflect and make more thoughtful choices — without removing the social value of peer support.

Summary

• Managers make emotionally influenced decisions more often than they realise.
• Peer consultation helps but can spread bias, if unstructured or critically evaluated.
• The goal isn’t to suppress emotion but to balance it with awareness and structured reasoning.
• Organisations should support managers with tools; reflection prompts and peer learning frameworks to turn everyday emotional challenges into better decision-making opportunities.

(main source: MindTools, 2024a)