Why do bright people make unwise decisions? I’ve researched this question, in the context of pharma and other life sciences companies, for a generation, but I’m still learning new things about it. And recently I’ve discovered a new perspective on this fascinating and important topic. Stick with me for a few minutes and I’ll share my discovery and its very practical, real-world implication for how leaders can run their meetings better.

We’ve all seen those movies where a suspect is questioned alternately by an aggressive, threatening interrogator and her gentler, more understanding colleague. It’s a fictional device that I’m reminded of often when I observe senior executives leading their teams in making important decisions in difficult situations. Some of them talk of ‘banging heads together’ while others talk of ‘putting our heads together’. Their words and their style set the emotional thermostat for their team’s discussions: pressured and compelled or relaxed and reflective. And that emotional temperature visibly shapes how the team makes its decisions. I’ll come back to which works best in a moment, but it’ll make more sense if I give you a brief taste of the science beneath my real-world observations.

There’s a wealth of research about how evolution has installed cognitive software in humans that allows us to understand and change the world better than, for example, our primate cousins. One particularly interesting finding is that we have a cognitive bias for integrating multiple perspectives and their implications. Anthropologists argue that this capacity for ‘Integrative Complexity’ (IC) was selected for during millennia of living in tribal societies. And it’s their little joke that the abbreviation echoes its meaning. But the most interesting part of this research is that our IC is affected by emotional temperature.

When we’re relatively relaxed and don’t feel threatened, we listen to others’ perspectives, understand them better and (this is the important bit) weave them together to get a richer, more accurate view of reality. And, of course, it’s that high-fidelity view of the world that enables better decision-making.

By contrast, emotionally pressured situations degrade our capacity for integrative complexity. We oversimplify or caricature perspectives other than our own and elevate our differences over our agreements. This leads to a less nuanced and less useful appreciation of what is going on around us. No prizes for guessing what that means for the quality of our decision-making. In short, we have an evolved ability to see the world in all its complexity and make accordingly wise decisions. But we’ve also evolved to make quick, easy and less wise decisions when we feel pressured.

This evolutionary anthropology stuff is fascinating, but let’s talk about you, your team and perhaps your boss. I have a lot of sympathy for the ‘banging heads together’ style. Without some amount of compulsion, teams have unlimited ability to waffle, prevaricate and dither. On the other hand, set the room temperature too high and the team’s cognitive software will switch from integrative complexity to quick, easy and wrong. And this explains a lot of what I see when I watch life sciences companies make difficult, multifactorial decisions.

Dithering and fudging happen when the room temperature is so relaxed that no one feels like moving. Bad decisions can be traced to a simplistic, inaccurate understanding of the situation that results from quick and easy judgments made when leaders put the pressure on. The best decisions are built on a wise appreciation of the situation that only happens in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone, where pressure to act and integration of different perspectives are ‘just right’.

Many academic findings seem obvious, and that may be your reaction to my Goldilocks conclusion. But think for a moment about your lived experience. How often have you had meetings that allowed waffling and encouraged prevarication? How often have you seen pressured bosses raise their voices and flick the kill switch on thoughtful reflection? Conversely, how often have you felt the room temperature to be just right for integrative complexity, nuanced assessment and optimal decision making? This might seem like common sense but, as Voltaire said, common sense is not so common. So the take-home from this month’s column is that leaders should have their hands on the thermostat. Their job is to set the meeting’s temperature high enough to require decisions, but not so high that the team’s evolved wisdom evaporates.