How Good are your Decisions?

I was speaking with a client recently and I asked her, if she could get her staff to do one thing consistently and do it well what would it be? She told me it was decision making, the ability to make decisions under pressure and in her absence.

As part of my Extreme Teams research I asked former soldiers, aid agency workers, business owners, sports people and medical professionals a similar question and decision making is frequently mentioned.

Teams and businesses need either an individual to make the decisions or a mechanism for making decisions.

So, how do you decide how to decide?

My coachees, when asked about the effectiveness of their decision making, often talk about the context in which they are making decisions or the amount of time available or how it depends on whom is present. This is all valid, however, once you have a system for deciding how to decide, once you realise how important decisions are, you can go to work and make your decision. My Extreme Teams interviewees all say, any decision is better than indecision, at least a wrong decision can be put right but a lack of decision is a huge barrier to team success.

On deciding how to decide you have 5 choices which combine the amount of inclusion you wish to give the team or group and the amount of ownership they have over the process.

o   Decide & Announce

o   Gather Data from Individuals & Decide

o   Gather Data from the Group & Decide

o   Consensus

o   Delegate with Constraints

This can often reflect your preferred style however, the best decision makers or leaders are able to flex their styles – and should one style not work they can fall back on other styles.

It shows increasing levels of inclusion and ownership the team experience as the leader includes them in the process of decision making – as we all know this requires time and effort and if, as a leader, you stay in the Decide & Announce approach you must understand the consequences – less ownership and inclusion and therefore less commitment from the team.

I suggest that this is not about one size fits all, rather different ways of decision making suit different situations – Situational Decision Making.

When I used to train the Police in riot training skills, ‘decide and announce’ was defiantly the decision making style of choice.

Finally, last week the head of my children’s school texted and emailed to say school was closed due the snow – regardless of the hassle factor, the great thing was she made a decision; she made it quickly, early and allowed all the parents to make alternative plans. In previous years, other heads have left the decision until we arrived at school or phoned halfway through the morning to say they were shutting, which was much more disruptive.

So, to conclude, begin making decisions, like any skill it needs practise. Once you have made a decision, something should be different following the decision. Never leave the site of a decision without taking action – otherwise it will just be a thought, opinion or idea and not a proper real time decision.

Piers Carter

Leadership Coach & Consultant