Learning to be Decisive

I think that people gravitate towards those who are decisive because it shows a confidence in their own knowledge and abilities. We choose a leader whom we have confidence in because we like the safety and security of being around someone who seems to be in control. We want a leader who has the confidence to get us to the place where we want to go. This is why decisiveness is important as a leadership trait.

There have been times that I felt that a lack of decisiveness on my part has caused me to miss out on many other advantages that I might have had in life. There have also been times when I may have made a decision too quickly which resulted in a serious mistake.

I have made both of these mistakes in business when making retail decisions. As a retailer you have to choose products to purchase which people will buy. This is never easy to do because it is next to impossible to judge the thoughts and reactions of others. I have seen new products which I knew would sale quickly only to find out that the opposite was true. I have also seen products which I wasn’t sure about. I lost many potential sales on many of these products when I was slow to add them to my merchandise.

You won’t be right all of the time but the successful person is the one who is not afraid to make a decision and stand by it. You must use all of the knowledge that you have available to you to make an educated decision. Granted your knowledge may not be much at times so you may have to rely on experience. Use whatever you have to use to come up with the decision. The most important thing is that you have to execute your decision. If you are confident in your decision you will execute it more fervently. Many times a bad decision will work with enthusiastic execution. Sometimes the way that you perform can make a wrong decision right.

Don’t remain caught up in the decision that you have made. Make a good one and then make it work. You won’t always make the best decision possible, but if you are reasonably intelligent you will make a good one and a good one is all that you need in order to succeed.

You can more readily accept the consequences of your decision if you feel that you made the best decision possible, but I will tell you here that if you violently execute a good decision it will do just as well.

There is not much difference at all between you and another person who may seem to have made better decisions in life that you have. The difference may be that that person has made better decisions than you have or he or she just may have made the decisions that they did make work out by wholeheartedly applying themselves to the execution process.

Don’t be discouraged if you are facing a choice that seems to be hard. You just need to work that much harder to make it work. If you made a decision and quickly determine that it was not the right one you may be able to change your course of action if you have not gotten too far into the execution process. Don’t make changing a decision a habit though. If you can make it work, stick with it and make it work. Riceland Enterprises