For last week’s lecture, Nathan Ward, the Director of Student Leadership, spoke to us on decision-making.  We make hundreds of decisions every day, both in our personal lives and as leaders, and as President Monson has said, “decisions determine destiny.”  Many of these decisions are trivial and won’t have a lasting impact on our lives, but some decisions, like picking a major, really do make a huge difference.  As tempting as it may be to shy away from making these weighty, often difficult decisions, it is always better to make a bad decision than to not make one at all; avoidance never gets you anywhere.  So what makes these decisions so hard to make?  According to Brother Ward, there are five things that make decision-making difficult:

• Limited time
• Limited information
• Fear of consequences
• Disagreement
• Uncertainty 

      I think that in a leadership setting, the thing I worry about is finding a balance between being decisive and bossy.  In most cases, I would be fine with just making the decision myself, unless I am missing vital information, but that’s not what a leader should ideally do.  It’s important to hear everybody’s point of view, consider all of the possible outcomes, review everything that you know, and identify any holes you have in your information.  Like Brother Ward said, decision-making is a process, not an event.  So I think that while in some situations it is crucial to make a quick decision, even if it is uneducated, most of the time it is more beneficial to the group to hash out all of the details and come to an informed consensus.  And sometimes as a leader, when you’ve evaluated your options, you might realize that the best decision for the group is actually the riskiest, or it might involve a few negative (but necessary) consequences, but that is the decision that you must make.  A real leader has to make tough calls.

      In making decisions on a personal level, I think that I have done a good job so far, but then again, I haven’t had to make that many critical decisions.  Obviously, the decision to come here to BYU was life-changing, and even though I have basically known I was coming here since I was three, I still made a chart that evaluated all the different aspects of the different schools I was considering, and when I came to a decision, I brought it to the Lord and I felt a clear confirmation.  However, I know that I have much more complicated decisions ahead of me that are equally important: picking a major and later on, a career, deciding who to marry, how many kids to have, and the list goes on.  It will require me to do much more than a simple pros/cons list. 

      Lately, I have been trying to decide if I really want to be a communications major.  I am trying to become as informed as I can by taking some of the pre-requisites, attending events within the department, and asking lots of questions to the right people.  I have been thinking forward to when I enter the work field and will probably be a wife and mother, and have factored in time commitment, salary, and the likelihood of me actually being successful.  I need to look at other options in greater detail so I can know my alternatives, and I need to further research the requirements within my specific program.  I know that I don’t need to decide quite yet, but it is such an important decision that I need to keep it in mind constantly.  Some of the decisions we make really can determine our destiny, so it is so important that we take the right steps, be informed, and of course, always ask the Lord.