How the Best Leaders Remain Objective – And It Isn’t Easy

REMAINING objective can be difficult for any leader.

For many, it can be a real challenge to make the right choices - especially if you are constantly being inundated with irrelevant or unrelated material.

The answer is not only to be objective, but also to remove any emotional or biased influences that might alter or compromise your decisions.

This is, of course, not as easy as it sounds, and in a recent inc.com article, entrepreneur and leadership expert Jayson DeMers outlines some key strategies for remaining objective while making key decisions, despite all of the distractions:

1. Be aware and accept your biases

As leaders, you are constantly being bombarded with often-irrelevant emotions and biases that interfere with our decisions. Therefore, by identifying and dealing with your biases and past experiences, you are already well on the way to becoming more objective. Doing this allows you to restructure your thinking so that your biases no longer adversely affect your decisions

2. Make ‘pro and con’ lists

Although nothing new, pro and con lists can be very effective in helping identify both the benefits and the downsides of any particular decision. When doing this, also remember to remain totally objective about the ‘sense of scale’ of each ‘pro and con’ and which one will, ultimately, be the most effective option for you

3. Keep it simple

Sometimes it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options involved for each decision, particularly the difficult ones. In this case, it is useful to try ‘stripping down’ the deciding factors to the bare minimum. This will also help put some limits on what you have to interpret by reducing it to just the primary considerations. For example, if deciding between two new jobs, you could ‘pare’ your decision down to just salary, work culture, and potential for growth

4. Be assertive and stick to your decisions

No matter how you manage to do it, when you have made your decision it is important to stick to it, and not vacillate. It is no use taking weeks over a decision and ‘flip-flopping’ from one side to the other before deciding. Even if you do make a wrong decision, maintaining the image of a strong leader is crucial, and you can only do this by being both decisive and convincing at all times. 

Being objective in the workplace is also crucial when maintaining employee loyalty and avoiding ethical conflicts. 

In a recent chron.com article, leadership and management expert Aaron Marquis explains how leading an organisation involves setting personal feelings and ties to one side, and making decisions based only on clear and irrefutable information.

This also applies to inter-office evaluations such as Performance Reviews, for example, where a manager must always maintain strict objectivity when determining workplace performance.

Should this not happen, some employees are likely to become disgruntled and unmotivated: with some even filing lawsuits due to perceived discrimination.

Lastly, while remaining objective is a critical consideration for all leaders, leadership ‘self awareness’ is also a major factor in this, and especially as a component of Emotional Intelligence (EI).

For example, world-renowned EI expert Daniel Goleman notes in his book, The New Leaders, that:

“Self-aware leaders are attuned to their inner signals. They recognise, for instance, how their feelings affect themselves and their performance. If a person is oblivious to his own feelings, he will also be tuned out to how others feel.”

And most importantly, by being aware of how your own thoughts and feelings affect you, you can much better understand your staff and their needs.