Much of our thinking behind our routine actions happen on autopilot mode because the brain is constantly bombarded with tons of information every moment. If it tried to evaluate every individual bit of data, in real time it would shut down.

Reasoning deals with the mental models and patterns that influence our thinking.  It reveals the universal "Why?" behind the individual "why" of our decisions. Besides, our Cognitive Biases are most active in this phase.

Understanding has everything to do with how we define a problem, before we attempt to solve it, but is heavily influenced by the mental models we apply or the "Reasoning" we use. Often Analysis masquerades as Understanding complicating our problems and leaving us with flawed decisions.

Ideation is about how we and to what extent we employ creativity in our decision. Again, a remarkably interesting fact is that Creativity is not restricted to just being imaginative, new, or disruptive. Invest, Incubate, improve are also forms of Creativity we don't easily recognize or understand.

Analysis -  helps us select the best feasible approach from all the alternatives we identify. Nothing unusual here, except that Analysis is usually our first step in the decision-making process when it actually should be the third, sharing its spot with Ideation.

And finally, Direction, refers to our ability to execute the decisions we make.

Good decisions are NOT a result of how well we USE our strengths. They are rather a result of how closely our graph resembles the Pentagon.