Competency Focus: Decision Making

How Decision Making Influences my Leadership Success
Making decisions is a common practice in daily life, outside of leadership as well. However, Decision-Making in leadership is a much more prudent and deliberate process as a whole. In the leadership setting, one must consider the potential costs and gains, stakeholders and other individuals who will need to be involved. One of the ways that I have learned to make good decisions as a leader has been by involving my team where necessary: “One common pitfall of leadership is thinking you must make every decision yourself. While you may have the final judgment call, enlisting others to work through challenging decisions can be helpful” (Cote, 2024). Leadership is not a one-woman show, and I have learned that by involving others in the decision-making process, more equitable and positive outcomes can be achieved. Learning this skill has allowed me to make more informed and accurate decisions in a variety of situations- as a recruiter, I have learned to involve hiring managers and trainers in the decision-making process as to what qualities and skillsets to look for in applicants, leading to a richer and more effective hiring pipeline. 

Why is it Important for Professors to teach Decision Making Skills?
It is important for professors to teach proper decision-making skills to students because of its immense impact on not only the students’ professional lives, but personal lives as well. The organizational decision-making process and skills are highly effective in a variety of situations and fields because of its focus on gathering the best possible information needed before proceeding forward. Not only is this useful for students making decisions about careers and classes, but it is also incredibly useful for students who are making practical decisions such as finding apartments, buying a new car, or even moving to new cities. Decision-making skills are an important life skill to teach outside of the corporate environment as well. 

Personal Growth & Development at Arizona State University
Throughout the last four years, I have grown not only as a student but as a leader outside of the classroom. I have had the incredible opportunity to serve in leadership positions for a variety of extracurricular organizations with ASU, and also within the professional roles I’ve taken on outside of ASU-adjacent organizations. I have learned about leadership through decisions, learning skills such as collaboration on big projects, and learning how to weigh the costs and benefits of a decision before making the final call. 

Personal Artifact: Academic Research Development + Implementation
One of the most impactful projects I’ve led has been my communication major capstone project. Last spring, I worked in a team of five to design, test, and formulate an academic research project that benefitted real-life people. My team and I studied the way managers communicate with employees on safety information, and how those communication styles impacted perceived and reported safety within the food service industry. This project had many different decisions that had to be made as a group- we first started with deciding the industry and topics that we wanted to focus on, and then made decisions about outlining ethical considerations and population. After outlining the general study, we then had to make decisions on the type of questions we were going to ask, how we were going to collect data, and how we were going to aggregate the data in response to out thesis and research questions. This was one of the most academically challenging projects I ever worked on, and was incredibly rewarding after our presentation. 

Reference 

Cote, C. (2024). How to Enhance Your Decision-Making Skills as a Leader. Harvard Business School. https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/leadership-decision-making