LeadEtics®’ Leadership Decision-making Factors and Models

What is a Decision?

Decision is the conclusion derived from the process of examining and validating the veracity, effectiveness, and utility of the essential factors of a problem or situation.

To decide is to make a choice between or among two or more possible outcomes, actions, or inactions.

For one to decide he or she has to have at hand a gross minimum of two different factors in impulses or particles. The factors may be derived or resultant of the physical environment, dynamic events, or another person or people.

Should I attend the LeadEtics seminar holding at Lagos or the one holding in Enugu?

Such a choice is necessary to make a decision.

No decision can be available to someone who does not have any choice.

Decision, the Human Mind, Leadership and Sanity.

Leadership, we must understand, is a form or type of sanity. It is also the only tool available to create sanity. In the presence of leadership sanity reigns. In the absence or inadequacy of leadership insanity becomes the lot of the sphere.

The human mind is the custodian of the sanity processes of human beings. The mind works out and identify the problems a person needs to resolve be survive and thrive. It also works to identify the prospective solutions to survival or unrelated problems with which a person is faced in life.

Now, the mind processes the factors that relate to the identification of problems and solutions by 1) acquiring impulses and particles from the internal and external environment, 2) storage of so acquired factors, 3) comparing the attributes of the new factors to older similar ones, 4) derive identities, similarities, and differences therefrom, 5) forming a conclusion.

A mind that could not do any of the above items will generate problems and solutions that do not assist the survival of the individual. This is called insanity because of the deviation from rational course.

Rational course is survival and sanity. When a person derives rational, sane, or survival problems and solutions, he or she, and their spheres are well, creative, productive, successful in their endeavors, and happy.

Irrational course is that which leads one to have unwanted and undesirable things and conditions such as psychosomatic illness, poverty, quarrels, criminality, etc.

Why is Decision a vital necessity for leaders and  managers?

Although, this is inconclusive, we could say that leadership and decision making are almost synonymous.

There is no leadership or management without the burden of joy of decision making. Decision making in the absence of some key aspects of leadership will result in unwanted and undesirable conditions.

Leaders and managers are always called upon to make one decision or the other.

A greater proportion of the decisions leaders of any spheres make do have a great impact on the lives, survival, and harmony of people beyond the person of the leader making the decisions.

Therefore, it is vital that leaders are competent in the principles and process of decision making.

Elements of Decision making?

The seven steps listed below are the elements of decision making a person or leader can utilize to decide on the best, rightest, and most beneficial decisions for self and one’s spheres.

Such a decision will be for the greatest benefit to the greatest numbers of the constituents in a sphere or situation.

1. Awareness of the three spheres.

Awareness is the primary requisite to making a valid and valuable decision. An individual who is not aware of self and their environment or sphere, and every factor therein will be incapable of making any decisions, or the decision made will be injurious or ineffective to every constitutent in the sphere or situation.

Awareness sums up the basic essential of the life of any human being. This is the foundation upon which every other thing, secondary perception, thinking, etc., is based.

There is one awareness. It is a “sense”of as close to every factor in a person or sphere as possible. It is sensing, knowing, being without the use of the sensory organs of the mind and the body.

Some people are only aware of things in their environment that are not farther than one meter radius, and some could sense things over a much wider environment. This is the quality of being alive, big, and pervasive.

Without awareness, no one can make any decisions.

2. Thinking pattern using life philosophy.

To think has two ranges. There is a primary thinking faculty that a person utilizes to derive a solution, usually on an emergency or intuitive basis.

Then, of course, there is the mechanism of the mind which processes data called memories to decide on the best possible way to actualize a goal.

A factor which overrides every thinking pattern or system is the primary philosophy of life that a person has decided upon as the veritable means to address themselves to the people and other factors in their environment.

What is life philosophy?

Simply put, it is the way a person sees themselves surviving. How does a person survive? This is the most critical of all questions in life.

Some people assume that for them to survive (happy, wealthy, popular, loved, etc.), they have to deceive, steal, rob, rape, etc., other people.

Some people think of life as a war where they either kill others or other people kill them.

Some others think that there is nothing one can do about life because it is vanity and useless.

Usually people learn these sort of destructive philosophies from other people, especially parents and teachers.

If we take anyone with either of the three philosophies mentioned above and ask them to make a decision for the benefit of as close to everyone in their community as possible, it is very unlikely that they will. Why is this?

The criminal mind things that when another person is successful, healthy, happy, they will be unsuccessful, I’ll, and unhappy. Do you expect such a person to assist the success of another?

What if you employ such a person into your business? Or marry such an individual?

Well, you know what kind of decisions the person is going to make with regard to your survival, health, and success.

Therefore, to assist the survival of as many people as it is possible, one must have a life philosophy that aims at ensuring that one survives for oneself and other people. The fact is that no one can truly survive alone, in the absence of other human beings and symbiotes.

It is only such a person that can make decisions that can benefit themselves as individuals and as many of every other people in their spheres as it is feasible.

To make decisions, one must have the life philosophy that supports the survival of everyone.

3. Clarity of perception of impulse and particles in the three spheres.

Perception is the competence with which a person obtains a secondary awareness of the ruling factors in their environment.

What are the reigning smells, tastes, sounds, etc., in your environment right this moment?

Your being able to tell is resultant of your competence in utilizing the sensory organs of your body and mind to acquire, store, process, and determine the conditions of the particles in your environment.

Your body’s eyes, the optic nerves, and other physical mechanisms that aid the acquisition and transmission of visual particles in your environment must be functional to above average for you to perceive through the sense of sight.

The nasal cavities, the nerves, and other mechanisms of smell must be close to topnotch for you to tell whether the smell you feel is of fried chicken or cooked beans.

This must happen for every sensory organ of your body, and the mental faculty that processes perception and memory before one is able to know what is happening in one’s environment, including within one’s body and mind.

This is perception of the physical cum mental plane.

There is a bundle of perception that is better classified under awareness that human beings utilize to discern the factors of the environment.

This sense is singular. However, like a cloth with multiple weaves of threads, it is said that we have upward of 57 different perceptics.

To examine a few, let us look at the wall in front of us. Now, this is only one sense organ in use – the eyes. Let us pay close examination to these other factors. What is the color of the wall? How close or far is the wall from where you sit or stand? How tall is the wall? What is the depth relative to other objects in your view?

We could go on.

Do you know anyone who is color blind, who cannot tell the differences in colors, from one to the other?

Do you know anyone who only hears sound but cannot tell how loud the sound is, or the tone of the sound, and so on?

Do you think these kinds of people can make good decisions?

We are yet to get to such fine things as spoken communication, whether the person hears correctly, understands the tone of urgency or affinity, or hears at all. We are yet to examine written communication, whether the person understands the words and symbols used in the message.

The competence or incompetence of a person in acquiring, storing, processing, and utilizing the outcome of perception is a great factor in whether or not they can make a decision or make sane and survival decisions that benefit them and the constituents of their spheres.

4. Mental perception process

We have already touched upon the factor of the mind earlier. But let us examine it a little closer.

The mind is the computer the individual uses to compute potential survival problems that need resolution and the solution to so derived problems.

Let us take an example. Let us say you wanted to get a job. If you think of the kind of job that your qualifications and interests call for well enough, clear enough, persistent enough, you are likely to be surprised by the flow of people and opportunities that can assist your obtaining the job than otherwise.

Your mind will be turned on to your environment, scanning for needed factors that could assist you to obtain your desire without your obvious participation.

Once you feed your mind with the data of your aspirations, and consistently too, you are half way to obtaining your aim.

In making any decisions, the role of the mind is not only important but critical. If your mind is filled with unnecessary, disruptive, sensual data, it is going to compute and direct your movements to those items.

It is said that in virtually every crime case, the victim always calls the criminal to them. We would not think that this is incredible if we examine the above sentence again.

If you fed your mind with ills, diseases, tragedies, deaths, accidents, injuries, poverty, hate, etc, your obedient servant in your mind will oblige you these unwanted conditions without fail.

And let it be known that anyone with foul mental condition cannot make any beneficial decisions that will assist their success, happiness, and good health.

Therefore, your mind has to be in the best possible condition, and operates on the best possible data to assist your favorable decisions making.

5. Alignment of the conflicts of desire, need, and want.

To align is to make two or more things that seem different to be more harmonious, functional as one, be amenable to the outcome of one another.

To bring two or more related or unrelated things to be side by side.

I’m life there are so many factors that do not belong together. There are some that belong sequentially, consecutively, or as far off as possible.

Virtually everyone, except for the police officer, would want to be as far away as possible to a criminal.

Almost everyone would desire to have very close to hand an inexhaustible  amount of money.

A business person would want to be as close as possible to interested, buying, and paying customers for their products or services.

The factor of bridging the divide between two items of need, want, or desire is at the heart of decision making. Actually, we could say decision making is selecting factors of a situation or condition to be in the right sequence of acquisition.

In making a choice between two similarly desirable items, say two beautiful, brilliant, and loving women, a man has to labor to find those seeming differences that can never be bridge between himself and the optional woman. It could be her sense of fashion, tone of voice, the way she walks, one or so of her likes or dislikes. Otherwise, a decision would never be made.

Do you buy the real estate agency business or the infrastructure development business? Do you hire the guy with the foreign education or the local expertise?

To align two or more factors one can be able to perceive their related and unrelated factors better, and therefore make a better and cleaner choice.

Bridging two or more factors in any situation or condition can aid a favorable and beneficial decision making.

6. Acceptance and rejection of incompatible factors.

Let us say we have lined up and align our several factors that are essential to the environment or condition we want to make a decision on.

The next step we should take is to do an accept and reject choices on the several factors.

Let us say we have ten items on our list. Remember that we have lined them up in their respective alignment or similarity to one another.

So, taking an item after the other, we ask the question, “How vital is this item in my decision making about (whatever)?” We the scan downward on the list questioning the validity of our answer to the question. If no other item spring to our awareness as more vital, we move on.

If we feel the item is more viral than every other, we mark it “acceptable”.

We do these steps for every item, twice. If our choices remain the same, more or less, we accept or reject based on the seniority of the items on the list.

Eventually, we settle for the one or more items to use in our decision making.

7. Validate the accepted desire needs, and want

In doing validation step for those items above that you have accepted, you need to ask these questions.

1. Does affecting the outcome of this item add vital values to the decision I’m to make?
2. Is there or isn’t there any better option to this item that can aid me to effectively and swiftly deliver on my expectation?
3. What is the time frame knowledge, knowhow, finance, etc., wherewithal required for me to effect the outcome of this item?
4. Do I have the means to affect the deliverables of this item?

Decision making models

1. SWOT Analysis: Identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
2. PLPC Analysis of the Potentials, Limitations, Prospects, and Challenges inherent in a situation or an individual that requires resolution and alignment
3. Marginal Analysis: Evaluating incremental changes in a situation or an individual that requires resolution and alignment.
4. Vital Factors Analysis: Identifying the most important factors in a situation or an individual that requires resolution and alignment.
5. Process-Oriented Approach: Leveraging organizational processes to produce the best, most qualitative, and highest quantity of output.
6. Leadership and Team Collaborative decision-making, to ensure that the most vital and essential part of an organization, the human beings, align their values, interests, aspirations, and effort to attain the same goal for the organization.
7. Balancing the mental, emotional, and social factors of individuals in the group, thus ensuring their sense of Safety by providing both product and establishment services to enable effectiveness and efficiency.
8. Communicate and Reiterating the vision, sub Goals and vital Purpose of the organization, thus ensuring the alignment of the personal purposes of the people with that of the organization to bring about harmony of purposes and efforts.
9. Communicate and Reiterating the vision, sub Goals and vital Purpose of the organization with the entire team to ensure the alignment of the plan of the goal to the key objectives and thence to the small steps that bring about the obtainment of the goal.