The Importance of Wise Decisions: How to Increase Your Happiness and Personal Success at Home and in the Workplace

By Robert Ackerman and J. Ibeh Agbanyim

The Importance of Wise Decisions has a great lesson for the reader starting with the title in Robert Ackerman, and J. Ibeh Agbanyims new book. Decisions simply are the process of deciding between different paths of possible courses of action. Buy the book, read it, and it will teach you the importance of making the right decisions.
Don M. Green, Executive Director, Napoleon Hill Foundation

This is a book full of solid, essential advice.
Foreword Clarion Review


Decision-making is inevitable in life. Whether we like it or not, we make decisions on a daily basis. The results of some are subtle, while others have pronounced effects. Either way, our decisions have consequences. Even when we decide not to make any decision, we have just made one by not deciding.

In The Importance of Wise Decisions, authors Robert Ackerman and J. Ibeh Agbanyim outline steps on how to be conscious of our decision-making. They offer a collection of real-life examples and explore how they permeate the world of work and relationships. You can learn how to make healthy decisions, embrace leader humility, and promote shared leadership through decision-making. Faulty decisions might lead to making poor judgments that reverberate throughout our lives. Our decision-making abilities determine our course of action personally, at work, in our interactions with people, and our relationships.

This guide provides a practical approach to improving the quality of decision-making and thereby succeeding in every area of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532021558

Robert Ackerman

Dr. Robert J. Ackerman is the author of Perfect Daughters. A professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, he lives in Indiana, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Kimberly, and their three children.

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Copyright © 2017 ROBERT ACKERMAN AND J. IBEH AGBANYIM.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2154-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2156-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2155-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017907711

iUniverse rev. date: 05/04/2018

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Life Is …

2. It’s a Brand-New Day

3. Things Happen

4. Intentional Acts of Kindness

5. Humility in Leadership

6. Grit Is the New Normal

7. Ask—The Art of Discovery

8. Who Endures Conquers

9. Relational Poverty

10. Peace of Mind

11. Find Good in Every Situation and Others

12. Running through the Mud Puddles

13. The Art of Listening

Closing Thoughts

About the Authors

We dedicate this work to readers, organizational leaders, communities, and all who hunger and thirst for new beginnings. We dedicate it to those who are courageous in translating transformational decisions into actions and results.

PREFACE

The quality of our decision-making abilities determines how far we go in life. Our decision-making abilities determine our course of action personally, at work, in our interactions with people, and our relationships.

Relationships are the most critical component of human existence, and our decisions to maintain healthy relationships with people have blessed us in unimaginable ways. We notice the consequences associated with making poor decisions and the unyielding benefits of making positive, healthy decisions. Overall, our ability to make decisions whether good or bad creates our world.

No one is immune from making poor decisions, but we can all learn from and avoid repeating them. Choosing to have healthy human relationships is always our hearts’ desire, and we endeavor daily to live lives that reflect those values.

Healthy relationships are not necessarily determined in terms of financial success but in terms of our need to feel relevant, heard, and understood and be looked upon as contributing and participatory members of society. This mind-set transcends organizational hierarchy, spiritual hierarchy, and financial might. It has everything to do with respecting ourselves and treating people the way we want to be treated ourselves.

Human relationships start to struggle when people feel ignored, underestimated, looked over or down upon, or that they simply don’t matter. Mother Teresa said, Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Feeling important is a universal quest. Everyone wants to feel relevant regardless of social status, intellectual ability, professional status, or religious choice.

As executives who have backgrounds in organizational psychology and executive coaching and have traveled extensively and interacted with multicultural individuals, we understand the importance of decision-making in our lives.

We have also learned that decision-making in life and leadership influences how people perceive us especially if we are in positions of authority, and this applies to almost all our relationships. We tend to conform to or want to feel accepted in every environment—in our marriages, social settings, and wherever we work. The awareness of our conformities and need for acceptance should make us realize how we make decisions or relate with one another because that will influence our environments directly or indirectly.

For example, in the workplace, people conform to avoid being singled out or labeled as not team players. Dr. Jerry B. Harvey calls it the Abilene paradox. When managers agree with their bosses even knowing that their boss’s observations are wrong, they pass on the misguided message to their subordinates that that’s okay to do. Eventually, the work environment becomes polluted with role ambiguity—everybody is misguided without saying it aloud. When that happens, people trade their self-esteem for social esteem; they live their lives and play their roles through the lens of outward praise while ignoring healthy internal experiences.

In relationships, if partners dwell on constant pretense and don’t engage in honest conversation about their issues and feelings, their relationships can become shallow and phony. Honest conversations in all areas of life bring people together and increase performance and healthy relationships. It takes reexamination of the quality of our decisions to do the right thing.

Since we cannot run away from making decisions daily, we must examine our decision-making patterns regularly. As we do this, we learn to better ourselves and share those ideas with others at home and at work. Eventually, friends, family, and coworkers start to encourage us to share our ideas in print.

This book is the result of our many decades of personal and professional experiences and our research into what works and what doesn’t. It’s not a comprehensive analysis of life and leadership experiences but a collection of real-life examples and how they permeate the world of work and relationships.

References

CRM (2014). The Abilene Paradox: Keep your team from ‘goin’ to Abilene, http://www.abileneparadox.com/.

Goodreads (2016). Mother Teresa, http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/33359-let-no-one-ever-come-to-you-without-leaving-better.

Valentiner, D. P., Skowronski, J. J., McGrath, et al. (2011). Self-verification and social anxiety: Preference for negative social feedback and low social self-esteem, in Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 39(5), 601–17, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1352465811000300.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Life is a series of relationships and events that combine to make our personal stories. I’ve been blessed with so many impactful and rewarding relationships that have taught and touched me in the writing of this, my first book. I thank all my colleagues who throughout the years have encouraged me to put my thoughts in writing so I could share them. I hope this book in some small way meets their expectations.

I thank my classmates, teammates, and workmates for making my life so much fun.

I thank my friends and family—present and past—for teaching me what’s important in life and for being my inspiration every day.

I give a special thanks to my dear friend and coauthor, J. Ibeh Agbanyim, who believes in what I have to say and has given me encouragement and help in putting those words to paper. I’ll be eternally grateful to him.

INTRODUCTION

Studies show that decision-making is a very important function in everyday life (Brand and Markowitsch 2010). Decision-making is a critical factor in human existence in personal and professional relationships alike. The quality of our decision-making is determined by how self-confident we are. Researcher Teri J. Helper’s (2016) study concluded that self-efficacy is a significant and positive predictor of first-option quality, final-decision quality, and final-decision confidence and has marginal significance on final-decision speed.

The quality of our decision-making matters. It’s the cornerstone of how we do business, socialize, and promote our personal relationships. If we want to measure our successes in any area of our lives, we should check the quality of our decision-making in that area. For example, if our personal lives aren’t improving in terms of feeling happy or grateful, we should check how we make decisions in that regard. If our relationships with our spouses are not flourishing, we should check the quality of our decision-making in terms of communication and commitment. If we aren’t doing well in class, we should check our mode of study and the company we keep in that regard.

If our social lives are dwindling, we should check how we relate with others. If our businesses are suffering, we have to question our decision-making approach and make the necessary adjustments. If our relationships with our teenagers are not harmonious, we should consult our