What’s Your Decision-Making Style?

Sixty-one percent of managers say at least half the time they spend making decisions is ineffective. At a typical large company, that translates to about 530,000 wasted days per year. I read that figure from a McKinsey study and immediately thought of the twenty minutes I spent last week deciding which new desk chair to order. The problem is rarely a lack of options or intelligence. It is the unconscious pattern we use to sort through them.

Yet speed itself is not the enemy. The same McKinsey research found that fast decisions were nearly twice as likely to be rated high-quality as slow ones. The trouble is that only 28% of executives believe their company’s strategic decisions are generally good. We are bad at deciding, and we know it.

Researchers have mapped these patterns for decades. Alan Rowe and James Boulgarides at USC identified four core decision-making styles back in the 1980s, plotting them on two axes: your tolerance for ambiguity and whether you focus more on tasks or people. Your dominant style is not what you think you should do. It is what you default to under pressure, whether you’re hiring someone, choosing a strategy, or buying a chair.

This default has a cost. Gartner estimates poor operational decisions alone cost firms more than 3% of their profits. The stakes are different for women. A meta-analysis of 95 studies found that while others rate women as more effective leaders, women rate themselves lower. This gap in self-perception appears in how we approach decisions. The colleague who pauses to consult her team can be labelled indecisive. The one who acts fast is aggressive. Knowing your ingrained style gives you the language to describe your process, not apologise for it.

You have a dominant style. Research by Rowe and Boulgarides, involving over 10,000 individuals, confirms most of us rely on one primary and one backup method. The question is whether yours is working for you or against you in your current role. Eight questions. Under two minutes. You might not love the answer.

More Quizzes

What Your Result Means

Analytical
You landed here because you prefer thorough analysis and seek the optimal solution. Your high tolerance for ambiguity means open-ended problems energise you, and you trust hard data over gut feelings. The real-world cost is time. In a fast-paced environment, your quest for the perfect dataset can be seen as paralysis. Kathleen Eisenhardt’s study of microcomputer firms found that fast decision-makers actually used more real-time information, not less, but they did so efficiently. Your challenge is knowing when 80% of the data is enough. This week, time-box your research phase for one decision. Set a 30-minute timer, gather what you can, then decide.

Directive
You prefer clear facts, rules, and quick action. You have a low tolerance for ambiguity and a focus on tasks. This is effective for routine decisions and crises. The cost is in situations that require nuance or buy-in. Your colleagues may see you as rigid or dismissive, especially if you override social considerations for speed. Daniel Kahneman’s work on System 1 thinking shows that this fast, intuitive processing is powerful but prone to cognitive biases like overconfidence. One concrete action: before your next quick call, explicitly ask one person, “Is there a people-factor I’m missing here?” Write down the answer.

Conceptual
You are a big-picture thinker comfortable with ambiguity and focused on people and creative solutions. You explore many options and are drawn to compelling narratives about the future. The cost is that you can overlook immediate, practical constraints. Your team might perceive your vision as ungrounded or frustratingly abstract when they need a clear directive. Rowe’s research notes that purely conceptual thinkers can struggle with implementation. This week, take one of your ideas and force yourself to list the first three concrete, logistical steps required to start. Who does what? What is the budget? Email that list to yourself.

Intuitive
You are group-oriented and seek consensus and harmony, relying on feelings and social cues. You have a lower need for cognitive structure and value the welfare of the team. The cost is that you may avoid necessary conflict or delay a decision to preserve feelings, which can be perceived as indecisiveness. Research by Jennifer Lerner at Harvard shows that emotions like fear and anger systematically alter risk perception. Your intuitive read of a room’s mood may be accurate, but it can also be clouded by your own emotional state. For one upcoming decision, separate the question “What does the team prefer?” from “What is the most effective option?” Write down one answer for each.

How to Work With Your Style, Not Against It

Identify your backup style. Rowe and Boulgarides found that effective leaders rarely use just one style; they have a dominant style and at least one backup. Your quiz result is your default. Look at your second-highest score. That is your fallback under mild stress. Know what it is. If you are Analytical, your backup might be Conceptual, letting you zoom out when the data is inconclusive. If you are Directive, your backup might be Intuitive, prompting a quick check on team morale. This self-awareness stops you from getting stuck in a single gear.

Schedule high-stakes decisions for the morning. Research on decision fatigue shows that our cognitive resources deplete over the course of a day. A study published in the Journal of Financial Economics found that analysts’ forecast accuracy declined and they herded toward consensus more in the afternoon. Your Directive style may become more autocratic; your Intuitive style may become more conflict-averse. If you must decide later in the day, build in a five-minute break first. Drink a glass of water. It sounds simple, but it provides a cognitive reset.

Build a personal council of opposites. If you are deeply Analytical, deliberately consult a colleague known for quick, pragmatic calls (Directive) and one who excels at reading team dynamics (Intuitive). Eisenhardt’s research on fast strategic decisions found that effective leaders relied on experienced counselors with diverse perspectives to speed up and improve their thinking. You are not seeking a vote. You are collecting discrete inputs that your own style would naturally overlook. Tell them, “I’m in my data mode on this, what’s your gut feel?” or “I’m ready to decide, talk me out of it in two minutes.”

Practise making small, low-stakes decisions in your non-dominant style. This builds cognitive flexibility. If you are Conceptual, force yourself to make a snap decision on where to have lunch today. If you are Directive, spend fifteen minutes researching two different routes for your evening walk, comparing their pros and cons on paper. The goal is not to change who you are. It is to stretch the muscle so it’s available when you need it. Gary Klein’s research on expert intuition shows that pattern recognition is honed through repeated practice and feedback. You are practising a new pattern.

Audit one past decision. Take a decision from last month that did not yield the desired result. Analyse it through the lens of a style that is not your own. If you are Intuitive, analyse it purely on the numbers: what was the expected return? What was the actual cost? If you are Analytical, analyse it through the social lens: who was affected? Was there sufficient buy-in? This is not about finding blame. It is a diagnostic exercise to reveal blind spots. Kahneman emphasised that understanding our systematic errors is the first step to mitigating them.

Consider your career stage. Research using the Driver Decision Style Model analysed over 120,000 managers. It found that decision profiles often flip with seniority. First-line supervisors typically favour decisive, rule-based styles. Senior executives shift towards more flexible, integrative approaches. If you are a new manager scoring high in Directive, this is normal. But know that the expectations will change. Start practising your backup styles now. If you are in a senior role but still defaulting to a rigid style, it might be time to consciously develop your conceptual or intuitive muscles.

Sources

De Smet, A., Jost, G., & Weiss, L. (2019). Three keys to faster, better decisions. McKinsey Quarterly.
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/three-keys-to-faster-better-decisions

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Making Fast Strategic Decisions in High-Velocity Environments. Academy of Management Journal, 32(3), 543–576.
https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256434

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Paustian-Underdahl, S. C., Walker, L. S., & Woehr, D. J. (2014). Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis of Contextual Moderators. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(6), 1129–1145.
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-a0036751.pdf

Rowe, A. J., & Boulgarides, J. D. (1992). Managerial Decision Making: A Guide to Successful Business Decisions. Macmillan Publishing Company.