5 proven strategies for making better decisions in stressful moments

The tensions of 2020 have taken a toll on leaders and workers alike.

The pandemic, business and financial uncertainties, and burgeoning social unrest have disrupted how we work, how we connect with friends and family, and our personal sense of security, safety, and health.

These crises present a unique challenge to communicators and leaders: How can we make decisions—ones that could make or break our business—when we’re consumed by what’s around us?

One answer has emerged from leaders at the epicenter of the COVID crisis: skilled medical practitioners, who regularly make life-or-death decisions for the people in front of them.

How do they keep their focus and decision-making sharp?

It starts with metacognition

We recently spoke with Dr. Jerome Groopman, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s chief of experimental medicine and Harvard Medical School’s Recanati Chair of Medicine, and Dr. Pamela Hartzband, an attending physician at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Division of Endocrinology, to ask: “How do you do it?”