The Science Behind Why Good People Make Bad Decisions

I once watched a senior leader make a hiring decision in under four minutes.

I was sitting across from her in the debrief where the focus was on three finalists that were all strong candidates. Within minutes of the conversation starting, she had landed on one person and spent the rest of the time building a case for why she was right.

When I asked what she knew about the candidate that drove the decision so quickly, she paused and said, “She reminded me of myself at that age.”

That is where leadership gets interesting. This leader is not careless. She's a brilliant, experienced, and deeply committed leader. Was this a rash decision or a good decision?

• The leader wasn't wrong to trust her experience and instincts.
• The challenge was that familiarity drove the decision before discernment had a chance to enter the conversation.
• Intuition alone is only right about 15–20% of the time.
• Strong leaders slow down, regulate their nervous systems, and align intuition, emotion, experience, and logic before making high-stakes decisions.

Most leaders have never been taught how their brains and bodies work together make decisions. We talk about strategy, data, performance, culture, and outcomes, but we rarely talk about the nervous system state we are in when we are making decisions.

The Wise Mind framework from Dr. Marsha M. Linehan shows us that our Emotional Mind is driven by feelings, urgency, fear, and desire. Our Rational Mind is driven by facts, logic, data, and analysis. When we rely heavily on only one or the other in a reactive way of decision-making, we are losing the opportunity to regulate ourselves into analysis that helps us look at the big picture as our whole selves.

Wise Mind is where both the Emotional and Rational approaches to decision-making are integrated. It is the grounded place where we can access information, intuition, values, emotion, and evidence at the same time.

A Your Nervous System Regulation Determines Your Ability to Make Decisions

Mary Jo Walker’s nervous system regulation work reminds us that when we are activated, overwhelmed, defended, or operating from threat, our capacity to think clearly narrows. We may move too quickly, become overly certain, avoid necessary discomfort, or cling to what feels familiar. In those moments, the body is trying to protect us, and leadership requires enough regulation to notice what is happening before we act.

Great leadership decisions come from a regulated nervous system and grounding in The Wise Mind.

That means the work is not simply to remove emotion from decision-making. Emotion gives us information. The work is to regulate enough that emotion is not the only voice in the room.

Your brain processes thousands of decisions every day. To manage that volume, it relies on shortcuts, patterns, assumptions, and past experiences to fill in the gaps quickly. That system is efficient, and it can be especially unreliable in high-stakes leadership moments because it often optimizes for speed, familiarity, and perceived safety.

Bias is not a character flaw. It is what happens when a powerful brain runs on autopilot in a moment that requires more presence, regulation, and deliberate reflection. The hiring leader didn't make a rash decision because she lacked expertise. She made it because familiarity felt true, her nervous system moved faster than her curiosity, and she never paused long enough to move from automatic reaction into Wise Mind.

Reflection:

Think about a decision you made recently that did not land the way you expected. Ask yourself: What nervous system state was I in when I made that decision? Was I in Emotional Mind, Rational Mind, or Wise Mind? What did I assume going in that I never actually verified?

Practice:

Before your next significant decision, pause, take 3 deep breaths and ask: Am I regulated enough to make this decision clearly?

Better decisions begin with better questions, a more regulated nervous system, and the humility to slow down long enough for wisdom to enter the room.

What I'm Reading: House of Rain by Craig Childs

Reading House of Rain by Craig Childs has reminded me that discernment is often less about finding answers and more about staying curious. Childs spends hundreds of pages following fragments of evidence across the Southwest, refusing to assume he knows the whole story too quickly. The hiring leader did the opposite. She saw one familiar clue, decided she knew the ending, and stopped gathering information. Great leadership requires us to stay in the inquiry a little longer.

With love and care,

Dr. Christine