3 Reasons to NOT Keep Emotions out of all Decision Making

How often have you heard this statement in a boardroom or a meeting, ‘Keep emotions out of it’? Over the years, we have made emotions the villain in all decision making and all things rational. It was decided that the corporate meeting room is not a place for emotions. In fact, if there were people who brought an element of emotion into the decision making, whether it was anger, frustration, excitement, or fear, it was considered to be a bad thing. When women started entering the workforce and brought a little bit more of this villainous aspect of emotions into the boardroom, it was ridiculed as a ‘female thing’ or ‘it must be that time of the month’.

Why Emotions Were Kept Out of the Decision Making Process?

For centuries, and especially in some cultures, emotions have been branded as a bad thing. They have been considered as something that hijack logical thinking abilities and lead to rash and foolhardy decisions. The basis for this association is not completely off the mark.

Teenagers who are more emotional due to the surging hormones are prone to making stupid decisions that they repent later. Women often seem to be more weepy, depressive, and sulky (especially during menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause). We have also seen many males act aggressively and self-destructively in a fit of anger.

In many cultures and societies, emotions were considered as a base and animalistic. A gentleman was someone who could behave appropriately at all times, irrespective of what he was feeling inside. A lady was some who could be absolutely poker faced even if she was going through some crazy emotional turmoil. This was mainly because emotional behavior or exhibition conveyed a week mind that is unable to control emotions.

Such observations and beliefs led people to keep emotions away from any serious conversations and definitely any kind of meaningful decision-making.

In many ways, emotions are still considered to be an enemy of the rational mind. They are still not acceptable in a boardroom or a meeting room. However, research shows us that it is time to give emotions and emotional intelligence the status it deserves in the decision-making process.

Why Emotions are Necessary for Decision Making

Recent research has shown with proof (something that the rational mind so seeks in order to accept any statement) that emotions are absolutely necessary as part of the decision-making process. Below are 3 very convincing and compelling reasons why we should make our decisions emotionally!

1. Emotions are data – Yes, emotional are data in the form that the cognitive mind, the frontal cortex, or the neo-brain does not understand. However, it is data, nevertheless. Emotions are coded into our bodies and our cells to be retrieved when we need to make decisions are things that are important to us. If we keep emotions out of decision-making, we are making decisions with less data than is actually available to us to use properly.

2. Emotion suppression backfires – Enough and more research has shown this and you are sure to have observed this in your life too. When you suppress or ignore emotions, they do not go away. In fact, they become more intense, simmer right under the surface, and are ready to blow up in the face if not addressed. In fact, the very reasons for emotions to be branded as ‘illogical’ are these kinds of explosive behaviors that emanate when we ignore emotions. Ignoring emotions also lead to a reduction in happiness, an increase in psychological stress and significant issue in clarity of thought and decision making. This means that ignoring emotions leads to bad decisions!

3. Emotion links what we know and what we think – You may thing that what we think and what we know are the same things and that what we think is based on what we know. What we know is information pertaining to the problem at hand and facts about the situation. However, we also know a lot more in the form of emotions; information that we completely miss out on when we leave them out of the equation. Research has shown that patients who lost their access to past emotional knowledge made poor decision even though they had their reasoning powers in intact. Past emotional data guides reasoning and ads on to numbers, decision trees, and other cognitive data that is present.

Why Emotions are Necessary for Decision Making

Emotions do not cause any disruption in the decision-making process. In fact, they help in guiding us towards better decisions. The issue is the suppression of emotion that causes the explosion or inappropriate behavior. The issue exaggerates when emotions are ignored and all the data is not taken into account.

It becomes extremely clear that managing emotions is a skill that every one needs to learn. Here are some tips of how you can start to gain some mastery over this aspect of ourselves that we have not acknowledged, respected, and applauded enough!

Emotions are a part of us and the first step is to accept the positive role they play in our lives (and decision-making)
Pay ken attention to the emotions you feel and do not make the mistake of ignoring or suppressing them
Increase your emotional literacy and learn words that convey the difference in emotions subtly (an easy example: rage and anger)
Treat emotions as data and understand the signal being conveyed
Learn to decode the emotions physically and cognitively
Use this understanding to make more informed decisions combining the power of rational thinking and emotional decoding

Emotional intelligence is a skill that you can acquire and become smarter with feelings. Emotions and feelings are not going to go away anytime soon. The sooner we stop pushing them down and creating that pressure, the sooner they will sop exploding at the most inappropriate and inconvenient of times.