How to Improve Your Decision-Making Skills

When you apply for a job and interview, the hiring manager will look for the type of workplace skills you possess—like decision-making—along with your education and experience. You likely use these skills in everyday life, and you need to apply them in the workplace to ensure you can work with your colleagues, accomplish complicated tasks, and do your best possible work. In this article, you'll learn what decision-making skills are, why you need them, and how you can improve yours.

What are decision-making skills, and why are they important?

Decision-making skills are the strategies you use to make a choice between two or more options. In the workplace, the choice you need to make is often important and can have a big impact on your job, your colleagues, and the organization for which you work. These decisions may not be as simple as your everyday decisions, like what to have for dinner or which shirt to wear. 

You may have to choose which person to hire, which marketing campaign to implement, which strategy to use to meet a goal, or which person to delegate a certain project to. If you make the wrong decision, it can have consequences that can impact other people's lives. This is especially true if you are a manager or in another leadership position.

Improving your decision-making skills can help you, too. The more you improve, the better you can understand a situation, analyze it, and develop the right solution. This can make you a more productive worker overall because you aren't wasting time going back and forth between various options. An employee, whether you're working in an entry-level position or as a leader, can benefit from good decision-making skills for other reasons, too. Some of these benefits include:  

• You inspire your employees and colleagues to respect and trust you. 

• You motivate those around you to work on their own skills when they need to decide.

• You can help your team, department, or organization reach certain goals faster. 

• You can show your bosses that you would make a good leader if you're not one already, which may eventually help you land a promotion.

• You'll be stronger in an emergency situation. 

• You can help prevent conflict if employees or colleagues are debating a decision.

What are some of the skills you need to make good decisions?

The decision-making process at work usually includes five main steps: 

1. Defining the problem: First, you'll identify the problem that requires you to decide. 

2. Identify possible solutions: Next, you'll develop several potential solutions. This might include research, looking at data, analyzing information, communicating with colleagues, and other tasks that help you gather what you need to create informed solutions.

3. Analyze the options: Once you do that, you'll weigh the options by analyzing the pros and cons of each solution.

4. Choose a solution: Once you've looked at the good and bad that can come from each potential solution, you'll choose one. You may possibly make some slight changes to it or even combine it with another. If necessary, share your decision with your team or supervisor.

5. Assess the outcome: Finally, you'll evaluate the results of your decision to determine if the problem is solved. You will note what went well and what can be improved to address the problem further or make future decisions. 

As you might have noticed, the steps you take to make a decision require you to use many other workplace or human skills, like:

• Research

• Investigation

• Teamwork and collaboration

• Creativity

• Adaptability

• Analysis

• Active listening

• Logic

• Reasoning

• Willingness to learn 

• Critical thinking

• Problem-solving

• Time management

• Emotional intelligence 

Most workplace tasks and activities will require a combination of these and other human skills, which further proves why these are just as important as your technical skills, certifications, degrees, and work experience. Some employers even state that demonstrating these skills can give a job candidate a competitive edge over another applicant. 

How can you improve your decision-making skills?

Fortunately, like any other skill, you can improve your decision-making skills when needed. You can take steps during the decision-making process to make it easier now and in the future, and there are things you can do every day that will help you improve your skills overall.

While making a decision 

If you're in the process of making a decision, try to do the following to help improve this important human skill: 

• Think about the reason for making a decision—who will it benefit? 

• Reflect on the outcomes of past important work decisions for any lessons you can glean from them. 

• Ask for an opinion from a mentor, supervisor, trusted friend, or an expert in the field.

• Set deadlines so you aren't stuck in an open-ended situation, but also give yourself enough time to make a fully formed decision.

• Be flexible. You may have a solution, but you may also have to compromise with a colleague or supervisor. 

• Identify problems that inhibit decision-making, like too little information, too many people involved, emotional attachment, too much information, and no interest in the outcome.

• Rely on logic rather than emotion, but trust your instincts. 

• If you have too many solutions, narrow them down to the few that make the most sense. 

• Re-evaluate your choice once you decide to ensure there's nothing you missed.

Everyday tips 

If you want to improve your decision-making skills for the future, you can do some things every day to help sharpen your mind and your human skills in general. Try the following: 

• Practice making pros and cons lists for minor decisions in your life. 

• Spend time with people of all ages and cultures.  

• Experiment—learn to cook a new food or speak a new language. 

• Take time frequently to reflect on your past decisions, what went wrong, and what went right. 

• Indulge the creative part of your brain by participating in artistic and cultural endeavors. 

• Work on improving your other human skills that will help you make decisions, such as problem-solving, creativity, communication, and time management. 

• Consider taking online courses that help improve your human skills.

Next steps 

One great way to improve your decision-making skills is to take online courses from some of the top colleges and universities in the world. Not only do they look great on your resume, but they may help prove to a future employer why you're the right person for the job or your current employer why you're the right person for a promotion. 

On Coursera, consider options like the Effective Problem-Solving and Decision-Making course offered by the University of California at Irvine, or the Decision-Making and Scenarios course offered by the Wharton School of Business as part of their Business and Financial Modeling Specialization. You can also consider completing the Advanced Models for Decision Making course offered by the University of Minnesota, and the Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress offered by Yale.