MANAGEMENT SPECIAL Why Mindful Individuals Make Better
Decision
Mindfulness
is practiced in board rooms from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. But just how
much does it improve the quality of your decision-making?
Five
years ago when I introduced mindfulness to my MBA decision-making class it was
perceived as something completely esoteric; there were maybe two or three
students who could relate to the concept. Today, not only have most of them
heard about it, many are practicing it. More and more corporations are offering
mindfulness training to their employees. It’s being incorporated into
negotiation techniques and leadership manuals, in fact every area of business
where strong decisions are required.
While
it’s generally accepted that mindfulness helps decision-makers to reach
conclusions, there’s growing evidence the positive influence goes much further,
impacting the way decisions are identified, made, implemented and assessed.
Close
analysis of the latest mindfulness research, with Jochen Reb, Associate
Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Singapore Management University, for a
chapter in the upcoming book Mindfulness in Organisations,
suggests that mindfulness techniques can have a positive effect on all our
widely-recognised stages of the decision-making process.
1.
Framing the decision
Mindfulness
can assist in being proactive and identifying when a decision should be made:
clarifying the objectives, generating options, avoiding irrational escalation
of commitment to a previous bad decision (the sunk cost bias) as well as recognising the
ethical dimension of the choice to be made. Research shows that people who are
more mindful are also more aware of their ethical principles and make decisions
aligned to those values. This links mindfulness with authenticity.
Before
making any decision, mindful individuals take time to pause and reflect and
listen to their inner selves assessing their own values and objectives.
Decision-makers who fail to link decisions with their major goals may find
their choice takes them somewhere they don’t necessarily want to be.
In
some cases, mindfulness can even help in identifying whether a decision is
really necessary. Newly-hired managers, for example, are often under pressure
to take action, make changes. By bending to social pressure without listening
to their inner voice they may find themselves making decisions they are not
comfortable with.
2.
Gathering information
Once
the decision is identified, the decision-maker must set about identifying
information necessary to make the right choice. The two important aspects of
this stage relevant to mindfulness are the quantity and quality of information
being collected and processed.
It’s
been argued that mindfulness can narrow the decision-maker’s scope of focus,
limiting the amount of information under their consideration. While this
could be true, and more studies have to be done in this area, we believe that
given the heightened awareness of their own values and objectives, the
information considered by a mindful individual is potentially more relevant to
the decision at hand.
Mindful
decision-makers are also more likely to recognise the limits of their knowledge
and to objectively assess uncertainty. In fact, independent research taken as
part of our study found people who are more mindful have a greater tolerance of
uncertainty and are more decisive when faced with making a choice despite many
unknowns.
3.
Coming to a conclusion
When
choosing a course of action, good judgment requires both intuition and
systematic analysis. Sometimes these differ, and this is when many decision-makers
get stuck. Mindfulness can help individuals examine and quantify these
discrepancies. Their heightened understanding of their own values and
priorities means they are better able to identify which of the trade-offs are
more important in a given situation.
By
standing on a metaphorical “balcony” – that is, by distancing themselves from
their emotions and thoughts, mindfulness has the potential to help
decision-makers make clearer, better quality choices. Mindful individuals have
a better ability to separate relevant from irrelevant information and are
likely to rely less on stereotypes when making a decision.
Importantly,
coming to conclusions also includes implementing the decision. Once the choice
of action has been made, studies show more mindful individuals are less likely
to fall victim to the intention-behaviour gap, that is, the disconnect between
knowing what you need to do and actually doing it.
4.
Learning from feedback
This
final stage of decision-making is arguably the most important for improving
one’s decision-making prowess in the long run, but is often neglected by
decision-makers. Because of heightened awareness, mindful individuals may be
more likely to learn the right lessons from experience. They are more likely to
recognise when feedback is missing and, importantly, they are able to disengage
from ego-concerns making them more open to negative feedback.
Mindfulness
helps decision-makers learn in an unbiased way. It’s a well-known phenomenon in
psychology that we often attribute our past success to our own skill and our
past failures to some external circumstance. This can lead to overconfidence;
which can be quite disastrous in organisational or entrepreneurial situations.
Accepting that you made a mistake is not easy. It takes courage, especially in
the corporate context where you are being judged by others. Mindfulness,
through its demonstrated link with lower cognitive defensiveness may help to
sincerely appraise the outcome of a decision, even when this outcome is less
positive than expected or desired.
Proceed
with caution
While
mindfulness may improve many aspects of decision-making, managers should be
cautious and consider its potential adverse effects. As noted, while
mindfulness is likely to increase the quality of information considered for
making a decision, it may also reduce the quantity of information screened, and
may lead to overlooking important considerations.
Focusing
on personal values rather than socially desirable objectives can be a good
thing, but taken to the extreme can lead to egotistical decisions which may be
particularly dangerous if the decision-maker doesn’t have very ethical values.
There
is also the potential danger that paying heightened attention to present
long-term objectives may mean not enough weight is given to past or future
factors.
Finally,
making a mindful decision takes time, so if a decision has to be made quickly
then the process may be less advantageous. However, evidence suggests
while the decision-making process is often slower, once a choice has been made
then, because of the consideration already given, the implementation will be
faster.
Savouring
the decision-making experience
The
extra time taken can also be seen as a benefit. It ensures decision-making is a
more pleasant experience. Research shows that when you pay attention to things
you are more capable of savouring the experience. The more focus given to
making a decision, the more facets of it are exposed and the more surprising,
rich, and revealing the experience will be.
Discovering
the new and amazing in ordinary things is just one of the consequences of
mindfulness.
Natalia
Karelaia is an Assistant
Professor of Decision Sciences at INSEAD
Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/why-mindful-individuals-make-better-decisions-3479?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=04cfe90be8-31_July_mailer7_31_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-04cfe90be8-249840429&nopaging=1#T5uSxufm4JGofYm3.99
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