Over the past few months, one thing has become clear: As the coronavirus pandemic continues to affect nearly every facet of daily life, entrepreneurs everywhere are facing some of the toughest decisions of their lives.
Most business owners are currently operating out of a sense of survival. When you combine this with the raw emotions associated with letting employees go or potentially not having a safe and secure way to provide for their own families, it means that many entrepreneurs are making decisions out of emotional desperation instead of using logic. And they're doing it at a time when it could hurt them most.
How we really make decisions
Jeff Bloomfield, founder and CEO of Braintrust, is a neuroscience expert who uses his knowledge about trust and decision-making to help companies improve their marketing and messaging. Contrary to what you might think, Bloomfield has found that all the decisions we make are made instinctively and emotionally. He says, "Only after we've made our decisions do we justify and rationalize them by seeking the facts, data, and information that will best support them."
Even if you think you're making a completely rational, calculated decision--chances are, it's coming from a place of emotion. Only after we make the decision do we validate and justify it with logic.
In a normal environment, this "inside out" decision-making process actually works extremely well. Emotion can be a great driver for making decisions. But under duress, we become greater risk takers and allow emotion to activate decisions with little to no oversight by the logical part of our brain. And that's a problem.
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