How Do You Make Better Decisions?

By Linda Fisher Thornton

How do you make decisions? Do you consider a series of important questions? Do you find out the needs of the people involved? Do you consult a diverse group of advisors? Or do you just wing it? Some of the ways we may be tempted to think through our challenges (how to stay within budget or how to be most profitable, for example) leave ethical values out of the equation.

Ethical thinking helps us make good leadership decisions. When we use intentional ethical thinking, we make decisions based on ethical values. Using ethical thinking doesn’t just help us do the right thing. It also helps us resolve our most difficult leadership problems by broadening our awareness.

Ethical thinking keeps us grounded in values, and on track to reach for shared solutions. That helps us make better decisions.

Here are some of the many challenges that ethical thinking helps us resolve:

How to deal with new situations/issues/people
How to make tough decisions when multiple stakeholders are involved
How to be consistent
How to lead based on positive ethical values
The need for the time and space to figure things out

While there are many different ways to make decisions, not all them lead to ethical outcomes. The beauty of ethical thinking is that once we learn and practice it, we take it with us, and it becomes the basis of our decision-making (no extra time and space required).