Executives in Science, Business and Society 3

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EMOTIONS IN THE BOARDROOM: HANDLING THE HOT AND COLD OF STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING PAGE 16 MARIE-CLAIRE DASSEN VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM Strategic decision-making lies at the heart of executive boards’ responsibility. To make such decisions, these teams need a solid rational basis: reliable data, relevant experience and in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand. But that is only part of the story. Research shows that individual emotions and group dynamics have a substantial impact on how decisions are made. For example, too much enthusiasm can make teams less open to relevant information, whereas, a tense group dynamic can detract from the actual decision-making itself. This is particularly true in the context of boards, where stakes are high, information is ambiguous and stakeholder demands are often conflicting. Therefore, strategic decision-making is not just ‘cold’ and rational, but also ‘hot’ and emotional, and executive boards need to integrate the strategic content of their discussions with the tensions and emotions inherent to their context. But how does that play out in the day-to-day practice of executive boards? How do they navigate these two sides of their strategic work? And what conditions make it easier or more difficult for them to do so?
leadership and boards IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS AND SOCIETY To engage these questions, we conducted a one and half year study in which we closely observed the executive board of a notfor-profit organisation. To complete our research, we conducted formal and informal interviews with board members about how they experienced their team’s decisionmaking, and we attended and audio-recorded the board meetings themselves. THE SLIPPERY TABLE OF STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING In our data, we identified two dynamics in how the executive board dealt with issues that came to their attention. In the first dynamic, the board discussed the content of the issue and explicitly integrated team and individual emotions into their exchange. After such integration, teams came to a conclusion and moved their strategic decision-making forward. For instance, in a conversation about a sizable technological investment, none of the available options appeared to guarantee an unequivocally sustainable result. The board’s discussion began to develop into a circular and irritated exchange until team members started openly addressing their feelings of uncertainty and doubt about unpredictable future technological developments. Once the board acknowledged these feelings and integrated them into their reasoning, with expressions such as “We want to make a no-regret decision, but we really can’t oversee this now, so we have to deal with this uncertainty”, their discussion moved forward again. Emotions rose, but the executive board remained actively in charge of its decision-making process. We also identified a second, more reactive dynamic, which appeared under one or two conditions: either when the team’s emotional intensity was very low (for example, when topics didn’t “get the juices flowing” as one team member described it), or when the intensity was very high, such as when team members became very agitated and irritated with each other. In these conditions, issues that came to the table seemed to slide off the agenda, a phenomenon we genially dubbed the “slippery board table”. Decisions were taken half-heartedly or were repeatedly postponed. Even though emotions were clearly present, they were not integrated into discussions, but suppressed, cut off or simply ignored. However, these emotions did not disappear; they remained unresolved and were carried over into subsequent discussions, sometimes with increased intensity. This steered the team toward a vicious cycle in which emotions kept resurfacing and affecting their decisionmaking. It subsequently became increasingly challenging for the board to switch from this reactive to a more active dynamic. PAGE 17 ABRI - Amsterdam Business Research Institute
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