Why We Struggle with Tough Decisions: Overcoming Doubts and Dilemmas – Course Code H1357SP

Formats:  Self Paced, Live, Guided Learning

How You Will Benefit

According to Dr. Sheena Iyengar, author of The Art of Choosing and one of the world’s experts on choice, a person makes an average of 70 choices per day.  Many of these decisions are easy and don’t require any deep thought. But others are difficult, and we struggle with the decision-making process, wondering whether we’ve made the right choice and worrying about the cost of the wrong choice.

In the workplace, some people get stuck over-analyzing all of their choices—they want a spreadsheet packed with data before proceeding with any decision. Others swear by their intuition and have no data to back up how they arrived at a particular decision.

So how can you make a high-impact decision that is effective, practical, and successful? By having a clear objective, gathering and evaluating information in a structured way, avoiding common decision traps, and by using your intuition to confirm or question your decision. This course will enhance your confidence and skill at making—and implementing—tough decisions, allowing you to increase your value to your organization and actively contribute to its success.

Course Objectives

Successful completion of this course will increase your ability to:

• Understand the role that emotions play in decision-making.
• Describe how to make a decision effectively, recognizing key steps to take before, during, and after the decision-making process.
• Identify your values in order to guide your actions, behaviors, and decisions.
• Put into practice various methods for collecting and evaluating information.
• Recognize—and avoid—the most common traps that complicate tough decisions.
• Develop strategies to overcome your concerns about making and implementing tough decisions.

Key Topics Covered

This course explores the following subjects in depth:

• What makes a decision “tough,” and how tough decisions differ from important decisions.
• The connection between emotions and decision-making, examining several breakthrough studies about the significance of emotions.
• Key steps of making tough decisions, including defining your values and objective.
• Structured approaches to gather and evaluate data, with a focus on weighted criteria and decision tree analyses.
• Five common traps that interfere with making good decisions.
• Strategies to overcome your concerns about delivering a difficult message, to deal with a fear of failure, and to implement a change.