The Science Behind Post-Decision Doubt

You made a call at school today. Then tonight that sickly feeling in your stomach shows off. Did I get it right? Should I walk it back tomorrow? Well today I want to tell you what

that feeling actually is because for years I read it completely wrong and I reckon most school leaders do too. Hey I'm Shane Leaning, welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping international podcast for leaders in schools around the world. I'm an author and organizational coach and in this show I bring you the practical ideas and honest conversations to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is supported by CC and the International Curriculum Association. Stay tuned

to learn more. So picture this, you have made a decision today. Maybe you gave a teacher feedback on a lesson observation. Maybe you signed off on a big timetable change. Maybe

you said no to a parent who really wanted you to say yes. Whatever it was you made the call and you felt okay at the time, pretty clear-headed actually. And then you go home. You're brushing your teeth or you're on the sofa or you're driving back and there it is. That sickly feeling

in the pit of your stomach. Did I get this right? Should I have waited? What will they think of me tomorrow? Maybe I should send them an email just to clarify.

Maybe sleep on it and I can actually soften it in the morning. If you have had that feeling, stay with me because today I want to give you a different way of reading it. One that for me was probably the single most useful unlock in about 10 years of my leadership. So here's a move most of us make. We feel that discomfort after we've done something big and we treat that as data.

It makes sense right? Like your gut is talking. Your intuition is firing. There must be something off about the decision you made. Otherwise why would I be feeling this bad? And that is a trap

and it's an old one. We've known about this for a while. Back in 1957 a psychologist called Leon Festinger wrote a book called A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. One of the things he noticed was this. That after you make any difficult decision you'll feel a specific kind

of psychological discomfort. And the harder the decision is, well the bigger the discomfort. He gave this a name too. He called it post-decision dissonance. Now that idea it got

kicked around for decades. Some researchers actually challenged it back in 2010. Like was it even real? Was it just a quirk of how the original studies were set up? But actually very

recently in 2021 a team at the Hebrew University went back and looked at 43 studies put together. They tightened up those methodology concerns and the findings did hold up. Making hard choices genuinely changes how you feel afterwards about the things you chose. There's also been a bit of brain imaging work here too. Within seconds of making a tough call your reward centers start

treating the option you picked as more valuable. The option you rejected were less valuable. You don't decide to do that. Your brain just does it very quietly in the background.

And so here's that big takeaway. There's a whole point of today really. That bad feeling you get after you've made a tough call. It isn't your intuition warning you that you've chosen wrong.

It's actually just the sound of your brain doing the work of committing to what you chose. It's the processing loss of everything you didn't decide to do. Everything you didn't pick. There is a big difference between those two. Let me explain a little more. So here's where we are.

We've said the feeling is real right? It's predictable and it is not a warning. So if it's not a warning what is it? Well I want to give you a way to think about this. Something that I

picked up a few years back and something now I teach in my education leaders intensive because I think once you have it you can't all see it. That feeling you get afterwards. That sickly feeling after you've made a big decision. It isn't a warning. It's a receipt. It's a receipt.

A receipt of purchase. You made the call. The thing was delivered and that discomfort is just confirmation that that transaction went through. If you never felt it maybe you didn't actually deliver it in the way you needed to. Think about it. When you buy something at the till

you don't stand there just staring at the receipt going oh no what have I done maybe I shouldn't have bought this. The receipt is just paper. It's not evidence. It's just proof that you paid and your brain is working pretty similarly. Decisions cost something and you're paying with

that feeling afterwards. That sickly feeling. That's it. Now I'm not meaning to be flipping about this. I still get this feeling constantly. I had it only the other Sunday night after a

really tough conversation that I had and knowing the size doesn't make that feeling go away but it does change what you do with it because now I don't need to treat that as evidence anymore. I don't need to write the panicked email. I don't lie awake running those alternate endings. I just go ah there you are. Receipt's arrived. That's normal and I go to sleep and that tiny shift

from treating that feeling as evidence to treating it as a cost is one of the best things I know for school leaders who are really trying to own their decision. Quick one before we continue. I am really excited to be partnering with the International curriculum Association on the International Leaders Conference 2026. If you're serious about growing as a leader this is the one event you need in your calendar this year. We have got some

of the biggest speakers in education coming together for this and because we know our audience is literally all over the world. We're running it twice across different time zones so wherever you are you can be there live. It's the 7th and 8th of May. Head to internationalleadersconference.com or grab the link in the show notes.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. Your board asks for a school-wide report on academic achievement and you've got 24 hours to deliver it so you start digging but elementary data well that is on one system. Middle school is on another. High school data somewhere else and then there's exam boards on top of that. Well by the time you've tracked down the 10 to 15 places your data lives

there is no time left for actual analysis but the thing is that status quo is not normal. It is just what we've gotten used to and the good news is CC changes that. CC brings every part of your school into one simple platform so you can spend less time compiling reports and more time leading. If that sounds familiar you can check out cc.org or s-i-s-i.org.

Okay so far we've said the bad feeling after a hard decision is a receipt not a warning so stay with me because there's a second thing stacking up on top of that and when you put them together it's pretty brutal actually. So back in 1979 Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, I've talked about these guys before they published work on what we now call loss aversion and the finding is beautifully simple. It's that losses feel roughly twice as heavy as an equivalent gain. If I give you 50 quid you'll feel a certain amount of good right?

If I take 50 quid off you you're going to feel twice as bad. Now apply that to your school. So you change the format of your Monday briefing for example and the teachers who liked the old format well they are losing something. The teachers who prefer the new one they're gaining something but guess who shouts louder? Yeah you're right the losers they shout about twice as loud.

That's the rough ratio and it's not just because they're being difficult they are just wired like every human being on earth is wired. Losses feel heavier than gains and this matters a lot for owning decisions because imagine you've just changed Monday briefing you go home that receipt arrives sickly feeling then on top of that what happens a few complaints start rolling in and they're louder than the thank yous because of course they are. If you don't know about the receipt and you don't know about loss aversion you are going to put those two signals together and you are probably going to conclude you got it wrong and what will happen then potentially you walk the decision back and you'll tell yourself you're being responsive when actually you're just being fooled by two very predictable little quirks of how human brains work and this is one of the things we really really dig into in my intensive program not just as an idea but we really practice it on the decision you're sitting with right now because knowing it is not the same as catching it live. So here's where we are now so that feeling shows up it's predictable the complaints are loud they're predictably loud so what do you actually do well you've basically got two strategies you could take here there's a researcher called James Gross at Stanford he's been looking at this for over 20 years in fact so option one when you're presented with this is suppression so you feel the discomfort and you push it down you pretend you're fine look I grew up in a family that was world-class at this by the way we don't do feelings in the leaning household thank you very much so I knowed well about pushing those things down the problem is in a lot of cases suppression doesn't work it actually costs you when you try to hold a feeling down your working memory takes the hit you'll stop noticing what happens in the room you'll stop remembering what people said in the meeting all your brain's capacity goes into holding that lid on instead of doing the actual job of leading think about it think about like when you've been in a meeting while also trying to suppress worry about a difficult conversation later how much of the meeting did you actually take in almost none right that's suppression option two is reappraisal a much much better deal you feel the discomfort you name it and you change the story a little about what it means so instead of saying things like I'm anxious because I got this wrong you tell yourself I'm anxious because that was a hard call and my brain is committing this is a receipt that's a reframe you're not pretending the feeling isn't there that's really important that's suppression and we've just said that's bad but you're changing what the feeling means to you in that moment and the most amazing thing about this is that this reappraisal it actually protects your working memory in the moment suppression burns it so if you want to actually be sharp tomorrow morning when those complaints roll in which you expect to happen sometimes with big changes the reframe isn't just better for your emotions it's better for your brain you can hold those conversations when they come to you rather than your brain trying to work on that suppression and deal with what's in front of you so here's what I want you to try this week pick one decision either one you made recently that's still rattling around or one you know is coming up and write it down on a bit of paper then write underneath it in your own writing if you can the discomfort I feel after this is not evidence it's a receipt the discomfort I feel after this is not evidence it's a receipt give it a go that's the whole exercise stick it somewhere you'll see it inside your diary on your monitor wherever it is inside you draw that you're open 10 times a day it doesn't matter but next time that sickly feeling shows up look at the note and notice what shifts I've done this exercise with quite a few leaders now including some of the leaders who have been on my intensive and I think that's a really useful phrase it won't make the feeling stop but it will change what that feeling means to you and that's enough so let me pull this all together to finish owning the decision is not about being certain I'm rarely certain about anything in my job I'm not sure I've been properly certain about a leadership call in my life if I was to be really honest but owning it is in fact about being able to say I've thought about this carefully here's how I made it here's what would change my mind and that discomfort I'm feeling tonight is just part of the cost of doing the job your brain is going to send that receipt whether you want it or not that's just biology the question is whether you read it as a warning in which case you're going to second get yourself into knots or whether you read it as a receipt in which case you're going to let it pass through if you want to actually practice this stuff and the rest of the leadership leaders I've been working through then that's exactly what the education leaders intensive is I'd love you to join it's like a 10-week program small cohort where we work on real decisions sitting on your desk right now you can get the link in the show notes or you can head to educationleaders.co forward slash intensive but I guess my message to you overall this week is

go easy on yourself take care education leaders is hosted by me Shane Leaning thanks to the show editor Pete McGill production assistant Skyler Osterman and for the original music by Guillermo Silva and thank you so so much for tuning in today if we don't speak before I'll see you here next week if you want to learn more about CC or the international curriculum association check out the links in the show notes