Invisible Factors

Decision-making and the Dark Matter of Knowing

As a leader, you know sometimes decision-making can be difficult. The reason making decisions can be difficult is because very often, we know there’s a logical, rational way we’re supposed to approach a choice, a way that can be diagrammed and outlined with absolute logic.

And then there are those moments when we make a decision based purely on gut instinct.

Let me tell you about my daughter and me.

For about three years, my daughter didn’t speak to me. Now, as you can imagine that was a pretty difficult time. You don’t need the details other than to know that she has asked me for something that I couldn’t say “yes” to. I do need to share that saying “no” was extremely difficult for me. I battled internally, because on the surface the logical response was to agree. After all, this is my daughter. I love her. I wanted her in my life. I wanted to be there for her. I wanted things to be good between us. But, instinctively at that gut level, I knew I had to say no.

The result was that my daughter was really hurt and for reasons that made perfect sense to her at the time, she cut me out of her life and didn’t speak to me for three whole years. During those years I spent a lot of time and a lot of energy in self-doubt, wondering if I’d made a mistake in following my gut…