The truth about emotions and decision-making. 

We’ve all had moments where our emotions have taken over and made it hard to function. In business, there seems to be a perpetual belief that emotions cloud our judgement, and we should strive to shed ourselves of emotions when making decisions. 

I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Chantale Lussier, Ph.D., MPC, to get the real deal about emotions and decision making.

Find Chantale online: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chantale.lussier/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantalelussier/ 

Website: https://www.chantalelussier.com/ 

Q: Do emotions cloud our judgement? 

A: So, as a rational being, I'm interested in collecting as much data as possible, and I'm going to use my researcher language here, but quantitative data and qualitative data.

And there's a lot of different industries that, sport included, but certainly business as well, that are very interested in certain ROI, certain KPIs, certain data analytics of different kind that are trying to determine in sport and business and whatever “have we achieved our goals? Are we successful? Are we succeeding?” 

Well, why are we only looking at quantitative metrics when the qualitative matters as well? 

For example, if an industry is experiencing a lot of high turnovers and losing a lot of employees, well, again, you could look at all kinds of quantitative metrics. But, you might want to have some qualitative exit interviews to try to find out what could we have done different to retain this great talent?

And this is where sometimes, in the name of being rational or in the name of being rational or tactical, et cetera, we've looked at only a small piece of the data rather than looking at as many different perspectives.

At the end of the day, we are human beings. Whatever our craft or domain of excellence is, emotions are coming to work with us every single day. I think it's artificial to think that we can remove that; therefore, I think it's to our advantage to become more fluent in the language of emotion.

So then we can better understand what that data is trying to tell us in that business meeting.

We could talk about having an instinct. That business person who somehow always managed to get the sale, or they somehow always managed to close the deal. And, if you ask them, I bet you they're going to say they had an instinct somewhere along the way.

There's some embodied physiological data that's coming through our emotions, an embodied experience. Cognitively, there's a feeling, a cognitive interpretation about what that [emotion] is telling them, that goes above the pie chart on the PowerPoint. So, can we take in all of the data instead of trying to quiet some of it and only look at a piece of it?

Emotions Are Valuable Data

When we try to make decisions without listening to our emotions and treating them as data, we may be missing important information that can help us make better decisions. Emotional intelligence is an asset in every field, and as business owners, we need to begin to tap into our emotions to be better leaders, business owners, and humans. 

To listen to my recent podcast episode with Dr. Lussier on all things emotions, click the link below and be sure to subscribe! 

https://hustlelessprofitmorepodcast.com/ 

 - Hey Mickey Anderson