Don’t Confuse Making Decisions With Leadership

I’m always on the lookout for articles about leadership. Here are a few snippets:

Confusing decision-making with leadership is a trap too many of us fall into.

Measuring our leadership prowess by assessing our ability to make decisions is appealing for a reason: across history great leaders have had a tendency to make great decisions.

And yet, often the best use of a leader's time is to facilitate decisions by others instead of making them themselves. The most important reason for this is that there’s simply too many decisions for one person to effectively handle.

Whether the myth of average adults making 30,000-35,000 decisions is true or not, the amount of decisions employees navigate through is staggering. However, only a fraction of these decisions are usually significant enough to truly benefit from vetting or clearance by management.

We’ll give you tangible tips on how to do just that by leveraging tools such as the 5-5-5 method, but first, let’s examine the archetypes of ineffective decision-making.

When it comes to decisions, micromanaging comes in three main flavors.

• First we have the hoarders. Like covetous dragons guarding their mountains of gold, decision-hoarders derive intrinsic value from making decisions themselves. At worst, the act of delegation can feel physically painful or nauseating to hoarders, not least because of the perceived loss of control over a source of confidence and self-importance. The main problem with hoarders is that they create bottlenecks. Constricting the flow of decisions as a management strategy is as likely to break deadlines as it is the employees’ spirits, leading to paralyzed processes and demotivated team members.
• If you succeed in prying a decision from a hoarder’s grasp, you might just transform them into the next archetype on our list: toll booths.

Toll booths delegate tasks, but they also insist on reviewing each decision before it becomes final. Delegation is accomplished in name only, and employees are not truly empowered to make decisions. Instead, employees are only preparing decisions for approval.

Although toll booths don’t always alter the course of action, the need to seek their approval bogs down processes and kills any hopes of a sense of autonomy germinating across the team. By holding on to decisions that others have proven the ability to prepare, toll booths also make their own workloads heavier and their management experience less satisfying.

• Finally, we have second guessers who delegate first and override later.

Of the three archetypes, this is often the most destructive. Second guessing decisions that were already delegated undermines trust, and it leaves team members unsure about their roles and the value of their contributions.

Second guessers also fail in allowing employees to carry the accountability for their decisions, which is one of the most powerful drivers ofonfusing decision-making with leadership is a trap too many of us fall into.

Measuring our leadership prowess by assessing our ability to make decisions is appealing for a reason: across history great leaders have had a tendency to make great decisions.

And yet, often the best use of a leader's time is to facilitate decisions by others instead of making them themselves. The most important reason for this is that there’s simply too many decisions for one person to effectively handle.

Whether the myth of average adults making 30,000-35,000 decisions is true or not, the amount of decisions employees navigate through is staggering. However, only a fraction of these decisions are usually significant enough to truly benefit from vetting or clearance by management.

We’ll give you tangible tips on how to do just that by leveraging tools such as the 5-5-5 method, but first, let’s examine the archetypes of ineffective decision-making.

When it comes to decisions, micromanaging comes in three main flavors.

• First we have the hoarders. Like covetous dragons guarding their mountains of gold, decision-hoarders derive intrinsic value from making decisions themselves. At worst, the act of delegation can feel physically painful or nauseating to hoarders, not least because of the perceived loss of control over a source of confidence and self-importance. The main problem with hoarders is that they create bottlenecks. Constricting the flow of decisions as a management strategy is as likely to break deadlines as it is the employees’ spirits, leading to paralyzed processes and demotivated team members.
• If you succeed in prying a decision from a hoarder’s grasp, you might just transform them into the next archetype on our list: toll booths.

Toll booths delegate tasks, but they also insist on reviewing each decision before it becomes final. Delegation is accomplished in name only, and employees are not truly empowered to make decisions. Instead, employees are only preparing decisions for approval.

Although toll booths don’t always alter the course of action, the need to seek their approval bogs down processes and kills any hopes of a sense of autonomy germinating across the team. By holding on to decisions that others have proven the ability to prepare, toll booths also make their own workloads heavier and their management experience less satisfying.

• Finally, we have second guessers who delegate first and override later.

Of the three archetypes, this is often the most destructive. Second guessing decisions that were already delegated undermines trust, and it leaves team members unsure about their roles and the value of their contributions.

Second guessers also fail in allowing employees to carry the accountability for their decisions, which is one of the most powerful drivers of performance and learning. Decisions that are second guessed should have never been delegated in the first place, and leaders who lean into the yank-back method of decision making are likely to create friction and inefficiencies wherever they go.

Want to know more? Head on over to the full article here for more ideas and perspectives. Afterwards, why not drop me an email to share your thoughts at [email protected] ; or call me on 0467 749 378.

Thanks,

Robert