Automatic or conscious decision making
In the sea of daily pressures and tasks, we may get a little lost. The stress, burnout, and overload impair our ability to make the right decisions, and to work mainly according to our habits, and according to automatic mechanisms, because it is familiar and known and feels safe. What do we lose by doing so? New possibilities, surprising opportunities, acquaintances that can advance, solutions we have not seen before.
It is clear to us from our daily personal conduct that decisions made in situations where we are in a good mood, at a certain ease, on a day of kindness, take us to different places than decisions made in situations of anger, frustration, rage, or confusion. It is clear that we would like more days like this.
Do we have control, or the ability to create emotional states that are good for us even in days of anger, confusion, and frustration? Can we influence our thinking? And will this allow us to make better decisions? The answer is yes. Yes, we can influence our thinking, and yes, it will allow us to make better decisions, and the most appropriate process for this is executive training, personal training, coaching.
Why positive thinking?
If positive thinking was once a spiritual expression that was not suitable for the material world and business, science has proven otherwise. Studies show that positive thinking enables more creativity, breadth of vision, communication, collaboration, and more. In one of many studies, the effect of exposure to images representing positive, negative, and neutral emotions was examined. It turned out that images that evoke positive emotions produce a wider range of responses that are expressed in words, feelings, new thoughts, and possibilities, compared to images that represented negative emotions or images that did not evoke emotion at all, in which the text was short and simplistic.
As the saying goes, exposure to positive images affects us and creates a different physical state than exposure to negative ones. The positive state creates in us openness, a broader view of possibilities and solutions, which means more creativity in the face of problems and challenges, more options for solutions, a greater ability to share with others, and more trust.
Positive thinking as a management tool
Positive thinking really opens us up and expands our consciousness to create new possibilities. (You can read or hear about studies of this type under the heading of the science of happiness, brain studies, and in lectures by Professor Barbara Dickerson, brain researcher Dr. Andre Vermeulen, and many others who deal with the subject). And all of these will ultimately affect the solutions found and the quality of the decision that will be made.
Positive thinking is at the heart of the personal training process, coaching in general, and executive training. It creates the infrastructure that allows managers and executives in the process to think differently, expand their perspective and possibilities, and make better decisions. It is true that some words like personal empowerment and positive thinking have become part of clichéd speech, but if we ignore that for a moment, science proves that the impact of positive thinking and encouragement is real. They have a chemical effect on the brain and on communication and the transmission of messages in the brain’s connections.
But, how can one "see" differently when one is in this situation, when it is overwhelming?
This is precisely the problem and the challenge. When we are in a “mode” of flooding resulting from stress, fear, confusion, anger or frustration, we are unable to think of other options, and this is also proof that when the brain chemistry is negative we cannot see possibilities. We are stuck. Many times we claim that this is a sober worldview and refuse to hear about other possibilities. But this is only one possibility among many, and what does not allow us to see other ways is, among other things, the state of our brain. To what extent is it flooded with negativity (negativity is expressed in hormones that block communication and slow down the speed of movement in the brain). But if we want to be somewhere else, if the price we pay for this flooding is too high and creates problems in us that we would like to solve, it would be worth stopping and starting to think anew about how to change our way of thinking.
To change our way of thinking, we need to work on our thinking mechanism and worldview, and you can also use the personal guide I wrote to get out of meltdowns.
A quick recipe for positive thinking
What can you do immediately to fill your mind with a positive atmosphere as if you were on a nice, pleasant vacation right now, without any of the worries of the day? In the process of executive coaching, we also deal with the search for goodness as the right infrastructure that allows for open and creative thinking. But if you are in such a process right now, this is what you can do quickly:
- If you’re alone, make a quick list of 10 things that worked well for you in the last 24 hours.
- If you are around people, stick close to the optimistic person in the room and talk to them about the good things that are happening right now. Try to listen with the understanding that this positivity will help you and affect the atmosphere in your mind and, accordingly, the way you behave.
- And if all you have is your cell phone in hand…go to Facebook pages that have videos about cute dogs, cats, and babies, or pages that are about people doing good deeds in the world, cool vacations, and give it a few minutes to flood and soak in.
- Put on your headphones and listen to music that puts you in a good mood, that makes you happy.
Don’t be afraid of clichés, sometimes they just work! Staying in positive spaces will create healthier, more creative, enabling, innovative, sharing, and expanding perspectives and ways to solve problems.
Ultimately, it’s up to you. Even if reality doesn’t change at any given moment, the only real choice we have is how we look at things. In development workshops with management teams, part of the process is invested in creating the right atmosphere, an atmosphere that will allow for open-mindedness and a willingness to take a broader view.
Why should managers use the coaching process to advance and succeed?
One of the most significant elements in management work today is the ability, speed, flexibility, and ease with which managers can move in response to new changes and different realities, even in situations where it is not possible to rely too much on old knowledge. The term VUCA has been widely used in recent years to describe the complexity and dynamism in which we operate.
Volatility – everything can change in an instant without the possibility of organizing
Uncertainty – the difficulty in predicting and planning the future, and dealing with an unclear present
Complexity – everything is connected to everything and everything affects everything else
Ambiguity – It is difficult to distinguish the different components. Things are not completely clear.
In the organizational and managerial environment, this expression represents the challenge of a complicated, chaotic, volatile, and complex reality, and the human difficulty in general and of managers in organizations in particular in dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity. The greatest human challenge that managers face today is how to remain competitive in a distorted reality that requires dealing with:
Change – when things become completely different
Adaptation – when adjustments are required
And flexibility – the ability to move quickly and easily.
And another aspect that arises from this is what managerial skills are required from managers in order to meet this challenge.
10 Skills Required of Managers in the VUCA Era (According to Dr Andre Vermeulen)
Brain skills – 1. Complex problem solving, 2. Critical thinking, 3. Creativity, 4. Cognitive flexibility, 5. Decision making.
Emotional skills – 6. Emotional intelligence, 7. Collaboration with others, 8. Tendency to be helpful, 9. Communication and negotiation, 10. People management.
Brain flexibility is extremely important for increasing flexibility, options, and solutions to all the challenges facing managers today, and allows for better control, both cognitively and emotionally.
In order to deal with the challenging reality in a better and more competitive way, managers need both mental skills and emotional skills at the same time.
In addition, the question will also be asked of any new candidate who joins a team or organization – who is the more flexible candidate who will be able to adapt most quickly to a new and unknown reality that he has not been in before.
How does the process of executive training, coaching, help managers deal with pressures and changes in a way that minimizes disruption to their functioning and enables better decision-making?
Studies have examined how stress affects hormones. In stressful situations, there are more hormones that block communication between cells in the brain, essentially slowing down the ability to make decisions, see the big picture, and find creative solutions.
Negative feelings and emotions that are not managed properly can create mental and behavioral disruptions and affect the way you work and make decisions. It’s like driving on bad fuel. The result will be accordingly. Slowing down, ineffectiveness, less flexibility, less competitiveness and more problematic communication.
On the other hand, positive feelings and emotions help maintain high concentration, creativity, collaboration, and better communication, which enables better functioning and results accordingly, and it’s like driving with the right fuel.
So how does executive training, coaching, even help in dealing with this challenge?
First, in executive coaching, we work on the way of thinking and examine it:
- Is it correct?
- Does it serve the path you want to take?
- Is it real or a perception that has been established and it is time to let go, and more.
What is important in this investigation is to challenge, to engage in critical thinking, to break down the challenge, the truths, and to examine the assumptions that lead to this thinking.
Then we create and examine alternative solutions:
Coaching, personal training, executive training, assists in inquiry by asking questions that allow you to get to the root of the matter and examine beliefs and perceptions with a new and broader perspective. For example, questions such as:
- What do I really think about the situation, why do I think this,
- Is this the truth, what if it’s exactly the opposite?
- What will it look like in reality, what will happen if I’m wrong,
- What are the consequences?
- Why why and again why….
In the work process, we delve into the thinking mechanism and how we can change our way of thinking in order to achieve different results.
Exploring reality and examining new possibilities in the process of executive training, coaching, allows you to see new alternatives. In addition, creating a positive environment allows for higher level functioning in creativity, problem solving, interpersonal communication, and more.
Knowing how to create a space that allows for positive dialogue in the workplace is a top-notch management skill, as the number one cause of employee turnover in organizations today is relationships with the direct manager. Brain research and the science of happiness that examine how emotions and thoughts affect our behavior allow coaching processes, personal training, and executive training, to be more effective and conducted from a place based on science and knowledge, thus producing better and proven results for people and organizations.
