Park Perspectives: MBA recruiting lessons on leadership and decision-making

In last fall’s marketing course at Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, I learned that brands like Trader Joe’s intentionally simplify consumer choices to reduce friction and increase chances of a sale. I am faced with making difficult decisions daily in my personal and professional life. I frequently think of Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy from her book The Bell Jar, where you can only pick one fig to eat while the others wither away, which illustrates that making a final decision opens one door but ultimately closes others. This central tension often makes me anxious to make the “right” decision; this became particularly pertinent to me at Cornell as I underwent investment banking internship recruitment. Throughout recruitment, I was faced with decisions such as:

• What roles, industries and companies would I like to intern for?
• How do I form my professional story for interviews?
• Given timing constraints, should I prioritize A or B?

Each represented a moment of personal leadership and an opportunity to define my future.
The stakes are raised further by considering how my decisions affect others. Choosing to pursue my MBA meant relocating and spending time away from friends and family. In professional settings, decisions directly impact teammates, clients, and entire organizations while indirectly shaping culture, norms and expectations. Leadership, particularly in a business context, is inseparable from decision-making.

But what makes a good decision — and good decision-maker? As I reflected on recruiting and beginning life at Johnson, I identified six key principles that I would like to offer future leaders on their own journeys.

Figure out which decisions matter; streamline those that don’t

I read Too Big To Fail, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, over winter break, and I learned that the decisions required by Wall Street and government leaders in 2008 pushed them to their limits. But not every decision is life-or-death. A former manager of mine had an uncanny ability to distinguish what would matter months from now versus what would be forgotten in a few days.

During recruiting, I streamlined where possible. Borrowing from Steve Jobs, having an interview uniform (navy suit, white shirt, black shoes) made getting ready to take Zoom calls and impress in interviews a no-brainer. Psychologically it helped too, since throwing my suit jacket on felt like my armor for riding into battle against technical finance questions.

In contrast, decisions around which companies and industries to pursue required careful deliberation. From my years of working primarily with insurance and retirement clients at Accenture, I thought I would want to work with financial institutions; however, I ended up pivoting toward technology. What you eat for lunch or how you sign an email rarely merits the same attention as career-defining choices.

At an organizational level, the same principle holds. The strongest leaders resist the urge to micromanage and choose instead to empower others to make decisions where appropriate. By doing so, they free up their own capacity and build capable leaders across the team.

Decide to lead with excellence

During recruiting, I had friends who went into interviews with no prep, saying they’ll “just wing it.” While improvising may yield a satisfactory result, I don’t think it will ever outperform preparation. Instead of doing things “quick and dirty” to get them off my to-do list, I have been saved countless times by “just one more” revision or spellcheck. One moment that reinforced this for me was a technical screening I had at 6 p.m. on a Friday. Instead of relenting from my exhaustion from the week, I decided to review a few questions, although I felt amply prepared. Sure enough, one of those questions came up in my interview, and I credit that extra preparation to my advancing to the next round at a bank I would ultimately secure an offer at. Don’t decide to cut corners. Leaders set standards through their choices, and being thorough sends a signal that others will follow.

“It’s not personal; it’s business”

As Tom Hanks says in the film You’ve Got Mail (one of my all-time favorites), “It’s not personal; it’s business.” How do you deal with decisions that sting, such as being cut from a process, missing an event, or receiving hard feedback?

Determine which decisions have signal value. Some have nothing to do with you and may be for reasons that are purely logistical. One of the best examples I can give in recruiting is overlapping recruiting events. Not attending one event does not mean you inherently dislike that organization; you physically cannot be in two places at once. In these cases, I try to acknowledge the reasoning behind the decision and move on rather than feeling guilty. Even more frustrating is being cut from a process and told, “You are a great candidate but ultimately didn’t meet the threshold for moving forward.” For these situations, I reference the “spheres of influence” framework. If something is not in your direct control or you are unable to influence the outcome, move on quickly and without baggage.

Lastly, avoid making decisions that stem from an emotional reaction or impulse. When these emotions bubble up, the best decision is often to pause. Hasty decisions made in moments of frustration or urgency are the ones most likely to be regretted. This discipline is most critical as a leader, when an organization looks up to you to for steadiness in times of turmoil. Your ability to regulate yourself sets the standard for how teams and clients navigate pressure and uncertainty.

Know when to trust data and when to trust yourself

Some decision calculations benefit from extensive data. The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee considers inflation and employment data informed by measures such as personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and recent jobs reports when deciding to raise or cut interest rates. Similarly, when applying for business schools, I went in search of context regarding schools’ culture and academics via online research and personal connections. Cornell Johnson bubbled up to the top of my list for its location in Ithaca, New York, and its robust investment banking program. In an era where we are surrounded by information, the ability to collect, filter and prioritize data for decision-making is critical.

However, what should you do when you have no data or need to do some soul-searching? In these moments, risk tolerance matters, and I have grown comfortable leading with instinct (as my ENTJ Myers-Briggs profile would indicate). During recruiting, companies may reach out and ask for premature commitments to secure an offer later. This, in my opinion, is an appropriate place to take a risk and lay your cards on the table to communicate genuine interest rather than hedge endlessly. Fear of the unknown can limit the risks we are willing to take, yet uncertainty often holds as much upside as downside. You may not have a guarantee, but you can be your own guarantee that you will make the most of whatever outcome you get.

The caveat, however, is scale. The more people a decision affects, the less appropriate it becomes to make it in isolation. Decisions involving budgets, staffing or strategic direction warrant broader input to balance judgment with collective responsibility.

Great decisions are rarely made alone

Organizations I worked with while consulting suffered from slow, consensus decision-making. However, I cannot overstate the benefits of working with a team to formulate a decision. Bringing others to the table generates buy-in and allows for transparency. These make the team much more likely to not only accept, but champion the decision. Throughout recruiting, I saw fellow students collaborating in a variety of ways, including sharing their research perspectives on hot topics and lending support for homework and exam studying. With collaboration, you end up with better outcomes and stronger teams who know how to work together to solve a problem.

Let your yes mean yes

Professor Allan Filipowicz, who teaches a famous negotiations class at Johnson, described commitment simply: If you decide to wake up at 5 a.m., don’t renegotiate when the alarm rings. Trust your earlier judgment; don’t flake, and just do it. If you have clarity on what the right decision ought to be, do not continue to resist. Personal leadership is evidenced in managing yourself effectively by setting personal goals and taking accountability for your actions.

For an organization, your position as a leader also positions you as a role model whose decisions set the tone and direction for others to follow. If you make commitments, follow through or give an explanation acknowledging what changed. During recruiting, you will inevitably have to reschedule due to conflicts or getting caught in the rain or stuck on the subway, but how you communicate and honor those commitments is often remembered longer than the inconvenience itself. Consistency between word and action builds trust, and trust is the currency of leadership.

Decision-making may not be easy. But done thoughtfully, it can transform a source of anxiety into a powerful tool for leadership.

About the author

Gillian Grossen is a first-year MBA candidate at Cornell Johnson. Before business school, she spent six years as a strategy consultant at Accenture Strategy in Chicago, where she partnered with executives in asset management, insurance, health care, utilities, consumer products and technology. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and in political science from Northwestern University.