This chapter includes a discussion of leadership decisions and stress. Many leaders are daily exposed to stress when they must make decisions, and there are often social reasons for this. Social standards suggest that a leader must be proactive and make decisions and not flee the situation. Conflict often creates stress in decision-making situations. It is important for leaders to understand that it is not stress in itself that leads to bad decisions, rather, bad decisions may be the result of (...) time pressure in the sense that leaders have not been able to gather enough relevant information. Thus, it is worthwhile for leaders to be able to prioritize properly in order to cope with stressful situations. In some situations, a leader chooses to delegate the decisions to his/her team and then it is important to guard against «groupthink», a phenomenon where members of a team put consensus before anything else as a result of the peer pressure. A number of methods are presented that enable leaders to avoid this phenomenon. Often leaders are involved in decision-making situations where they are forced to navigate between objectives that are in strong conflict with each other. We are talking about «decision dilemmas». These are characterized by the existence of a conflict between the top leadership's desire to control the activities and their wish to give autonomy and independence to the various units. It is important for leaders to be able to strike a balance in different dilemma situations and understand how to best manage conflicts when they arise -/- . (shrink)

In this chapter it is pointed out that leaders who make decisions normally rely on both their intuition and their analytical thinking. Modern research shows that intuitive thinking has the potential to support the analytical, if used properly. Leaders must therefore be aware of the possibilities and limitations of intuition. Fresh thinking and innovation are key elements in leadership analysis, thus creative problem-solving is an important complement to traditional leadership thinking. Creative leaders work extensively with both intuition and logic. They (...) also often work with metaphors, analogies, images and imagination to create dynamism in the analysis of a problem. Many leaders come in daily contact with problems that are not necessarily self-generated. It is therefore important that they have the opportunity to take an outside perspective on the situation. They must be able to define the problems which are of strategic importance for the activity. Leaders should not allow themselves to be stressed too much by various everyday problems, but be aware that they usually cannot just ignore them. After delineating a problem a leader should think through what trials ought to be conducted to test a given hypothesis about reality. This can be done by showing how different problems are related to each other. When analyzing various problems it is useful to clarify what kinds of decisions theyrelate to. Some decisions must be made directly, while others canbe postponed. Some decisions are reversible in nature while others are irrevocable -/- . (shrink)