Leadership Skill Building: Making Good Decisions

How do you make a “good” decision?

Successful leaders differentiate themselves through good decision-making. They know how to effectively accumulate, synthesize, analyze and act on information, and when to act when information is incomplete. This creates a competitive advantage based on speed and accuracy. Effective leaders install individuals they trust in important roles and allow them to run without too many checkpoints, especially as organizations grow. Bottlenecks in decision-making slow down business processes, wasting valuable time and resources and dragging employee morale down at all levels of the organization. Leaders people actually want to follow show strength and competence through smooth, thoughtful, confident decision-making processes.

Decision-making is a skill that get stronger with practice. I recommend three foundational steps:

1. Keep a Decision Journal, where you can transcribe every meaningful decision point you encounter. Going into the decision is a good time to reassess the tools at your disposal, and note anything you feel might be particularly useful or that you feel is missing. Maybe you have time to fill in the blank before making the decision, or maybe you have to go ahead without it this time. Either way, you should definitely debrief with yourself and any other stakeholders involved in the decision afterwards, and make sure you capture learnings and use them to prepare for the next opportunity. If you are able to make this a habit, and regularly refer back, you’ll see your confidence and impact flourish.

   
   

2. Get Clear on your Vision and Values. This is a big one, worth many articles on its own, and impossible to make good decisions if you skip it. If you have not determined a clear strategic direction (vision) and the fundamental principles you can rely on for guidance (values) you are throwing spaghetti against the wall. Sure, some of it will stick, but there will be a lot of unnecessary clean up along the way. Make sure the vision and values of your organization are real, intentional, and effectively cascaded throughout the organization so everyone knows where they are going, together. This step does half the work of good decision-making for you on its own. If you haven’t done this yet, stop everything and take the time to do that. While it’s most impactful to do it on the company level and align all teams together, it’s effective on whatever level you have ownership for, whether that’s a business unit, team, or even for yourself as an individual. Start where you can! The results will speak for themselves.

   
   

3. Find Your Decision-Making Sounding Board. It helps to have trusted colleagues whose opinions you can solicit before you make a meaningful decision. Be thoughtful about who you include. When possible, try to get people who represent a range of opinions and experiences so you know you are not operating in a vacuum and overlooking critical information. Make sure they are comfortable pushing back and won’t just rubber-stamp every idea you present. Keep the group small – 3-5 is probably enough, unless there are specific stakeholders you know would add value. You don’t want to get bogged down waiting to hear from everyone. Once you have the feedback, you don’t have to integrate it all. Just make sure you analyze it, and you have thoughtful, intentional reasons for choosing to include or exclude it. Not only will that help you make better decisions, it will prepare you to respond quickly and confidently to inevitable questions about the decision afterwards.

   
   

There are moments on every career path that can make the difference between launching quickly forward and languishing in place. Practicing good decision-making skills at every opportunity will position you to seize your moment and make the most of it.

If you want support practicing these skills, don’t hesitate to reach out to RARA Coaching to book a free consultation session here.