What are the three factors that account for a teams ability to make accurate and effective decision?

1. Career development
2. Decision-Making Skills: Definition and Examples

By Indeed Editorial Team

Updated June 10, 2022 | Published February 25, 2020

Updated June 10, 2022

Published February 25, 2020

This article has been approved by an Indeed Career Coach

 

The ability to make decisions is a valuable leadership trait and it demonstrates your capacity to think objectively and weigh different options. In addition, your aptitude to make a quick decision can help establish a strong bond of trust with other employees that can strengthen your company's culture.

In this article, we discuss decision-making skills and how to improve them, and we offer advice on how to highlight these skills when applying for a job.

Read more: Setting Goals To Improve Your Career

What are decision-making skills?

Decision-making skills are those skills that aid in your ability to choose solutions to challenges. With these skills, you can make informed decisions once collecting all the relevant information and data and considering multiple viewpoints. In order to strengthen your ability to make decisions, It's important to identify all of the skills that can help you weigh options and make the best choices.

Read more: What is Strategic Planning? Definition, Techniques and Examples

Examples of decision-making skills

You actually incorporate a wide variety of skills during the course of making decisions. The following skills contribute to decision-making and are good things to highlight on your resume:

• Problem-solving

• Leadership

• Reasoning

• Intuition

• Teamwork

• Emotional Intelligence

• Creativity

• Time management

• Organization

Problem-solving

Problem-solving skills are an important part of decision-making. You need to be able to factor in different viewpoints in order to make a thoughtful decision. It's also important to observe challenges and solutions from a neutral and non-emotional viewpoint, whenever possible. Strong problem-solving skills can also help you focus on relevant details and form decisions more quickly and effectively.

Read more: Problem-Solving Skills: Definitions and Examples

Leadership

Strong leadership skills can help motivate employees to reach their goals and aid in promoting teamwork. Make sure you take the time to build strong relationships with your coworkers, so you can get to know them and they'll feel comfortable speaking freely around you. The more engaged and approachable you are, the higher the likelihood you'll be able to work cohesively with your team and make productive choices with long-term impact.

Read more: Leadership Skills: Definitions and Examples

Reasoning

Reasoning is one of the main skills needed to be effective at decision-making. Make sure you take into account all the benefits and disadvantages of every possible solution before you make a selection. Consider all available and relevant points of data to help you guide your decision-making.

Related: Inductive vs. Deductive Reasoning

Intuition

Intuition is about trusting your instincts. Your instincts come from the experiences you've witnessed in the past and the core values that drive you each day. The sum of the experiences and the lessons you've learned from them factor into your decision-making. You need to associate your instincts with the potential actions you can take to see if your decision is logical and actionable.

Teamwork

At some point, you may want to collaborate with coworkers to achieve common goals. For example, you may want to collaborate with your marketing manager on the best way to approach an important client. Teamwork can help you brainstorm the best options to solve challenges and help you with decision-making by showing you different perspectives.

Read more: Teamwork Skills: Definitions and Examples

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence means you are aware of your emotions and can express them in a way that's healthy, informative and motivating to those around you. Your emotions can inspire solutions to challenges and help you express your goals to others. Emotional intelligence can also guide your analysis of challenges and solutions.

Read more: Emotional Intelligence: Definitions and Examples

Creativity

Your creativity can harness logical and emotional thinking and generate a slate of unique approaches and solutions. You can also use creativity to frame the conversations you have with employees during meetings and encourage everyone to contribute their own unique solutions. Consider having weekly brainstorming sessions to maximize employees' creativity and increase employee participation in problem-solving.

Read more: Creativity Skills: Definitions and Examples

Time management

When decisions need to be made quickly, you may benefit from time management skills that will help you keep track of important deadlines. Time management will also help you delviver timely status reports so that everyone is keep updated on challenges and solutions. If you have complex issues with multiple decisions to make, time management can help you stay organized during each stage of the decision-making process.

Read more: Time Management Skills: Definitions and Examples

Organization

Organizational skills are vital in decision-making. This skill helps you to prioritize challenges and solutions so that you're always addressing the most-needed issues first. Organizational skills can also help you assign tasks to team members and stay on top of multiple projects and deadlines.

Read more: What Are Organizational Skills?

How to improve decision-making skills

Check out this guide to aid you in improving your decision-making skills:

1. Identify the situation.

2. Note potential solutions or actions.

3. List the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

4. Choose the decision you want to proceed with and measure the results.

1. Identify the situation

Problems can be recognized by any member of the organization. They should be reported to a department manager or human resources representative depending on the seriousness of the situation. Schedule a meeting with all parties involved first before proceeding with informing the rest of the organization.

2. Note potential solutions or actions

Document all possible solutions for the problem in front of you and keep a record of them. Relay them to your team during a meeting, so they can actively participate in this process. They should also be sent an email to keep a record of it for themselves. Once you have the solutions listed, list potential action items to all team members to execute the decision agreed upon.

3. List the advantages and disadvantages of each option

Discuss the pros and cons extensively to see which options can proceed to the decision-making stage. Take your time and calculate the pros and cons wisely to see if it matches your goals and KPIs that measure its success.

4. Choose the decision you want to proceed with and measure the results

Think of the decision you make as one with a short and long-term impact. The good news is that you'll always learn from the decisions you make, so track the performance of this decision to align the outcome with the pros and cons you listed.

Read more: 10 Best Skills To Include on a Resume

How to highlight decision-making skills

Take a look at three ways you can showcase your decision-making skills on your resume:

Use applicable verbs shown in the job description

Word association is key to properly displaying your skills to a hiring manager. Verbs like selected, decided, strategized and executed all exemplify a decision-maker. The caveat is that you need to expand on substance within the description to earn an interview.

Underscore the metrics you earned in different roles

List the top-performing metrics at each position you held to get the interest of the recruiter. Including quantifiable results that you have achieved in your prior roles will help a hiring manager see how you can benefit their company.

Check out examples from job posting websites

Since you're tailoring your resume to the company in your targeted industry, browse multiple job posting sites to compare the experiences of other applicants and see if you can showcase your decision-making skills in the same way.