Why Women Need to Understand Decision Making

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When a man faces a hard decision, he only has to think and focus on making a judgment. But when a woman faces a similar hard decision, she has to think about both making a judgment and she also has to navigate being judged. Teresa: There are two pieces of advice that i think can back fire for women, even though they work really well from men. Women tend to do a lot more analysis and double check their data before they go with a decision um.

There’s a lot that goes into making a good decision at work: figuring out priorities, coming up with options, analyzing those — and several steps later, planning for what to do if you’re wrong. If you’re a woman, you are also factoring in how your colleagues expect you to ask for their opinions so you can create consensus. And if you do, they’re still likely to see you as indecisive and lacking vision.

We talk with Therese Huston, author of the book How Women Decide, about our strengths as decision makers and how to work around double standards when we’re making decisions and communicating them to our team.

Our HBR reading list:

“Research: We Are Way Harder on Female Leaders Who Make Bad Calls,” by Therese Huston

“Women and the Vision Thing,” by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru

“Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

“Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement,” by Alison Wood Brooks

Get the discussion guide for this episode on our website: hbr.org/podcasts/women-at-work

Email us: womenatwork@hbr.org

Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.