In a world with a constantly growing AI presence, where data is cheap, and you can easily outsource routine tasks to large language models, your decision making ability plays a more vital role than ever. Your ability to help your organization and teams make effective decisions is a competitive advantage and rare leadership skill. Three questions will help energize and clarify your decision making process.

When Decision Making Meetings Go Wrong

You’ve been there before. One of those awful meetings that turns into a painful slog through a swamp of half-hearted participation and conversations that go in circles.

Pretty soon someone says, “Sorry, I have to get to another call,” and everyone else looks at them with a mix of jealousy and frustration. The meeting ends with no decision made, an hour or more wasted, and the team’s morale drained from their inability to act.

When decision making meetings go wrong, one or more of these factors is usually in play:

• You don’t have the right people
• You don’t know who owns the decision
• You haven’t defined the success criteria

Invest in Clarity for Energetic Decision Making that Builds Morale

Missing clarity is at the heart of all three decision making morale busters. You can solve them by answering three key questions:

1. Who does this decision affect?
2. Who owns this decision?
3. What would a successful outcome do for each affected party?

Let’s look at each of these questions.

1) Who does this decision affect?

To make the best decision, make sure to include people who the decision affects in the process. You don’t need everyone. What’s the smallest group of people to get the needed input?

2) Who owns this decision?

Before discussion begins, clarify the person or people who will actually make the call. There are only three options:

• A single person decides (maybe you, maybe another subject matter expert)
• A group votes
• A group reaches consensus (where everyone can live with one outcome)

(To learn more about clarifying who attends decision making meetings and who owns the decision check out the Advanced Guide to Lead Meetings That Get Results and People Want to Attend)

3) What would a successful outcome do for you?

This final clarity question is critical to a successful decision, and yet we regularly see leaders skip it or assume that everyone has the same success criteria in mind.

But of course, they don’t, and so people talk past one another and frustration reigns.

You can’t reliably choose effective solutions if you don’t know what success looks like.

Let’s say your team is discussing a marketing opportunity with some newly available funds. If you jump into the discussion before establishing success criteria, how will you choose between different options?

Lela and Vinesh jump in, “Let’s hire actors and do a flash mob of the thriller dance. Then the zombies will transform at the end by shedding their overshirts and revealing our product tee shirt. It will be great for social!”

Mark and Sheila suggest, “We should really do one more booth at the new conference expo they just added at the end of the year. Those leads are usually solid.”

Osa and Vik listen for a moment and then add, “Let’s not limit ourselves here. There’s an opportunity for a partnership with the magic soda corp—they’re looking for someone to package with for a winter campaign.”

The conversation likely turns into a tug of war between two or three different positions who each argue for solutions that make sense to them.

The antidote to this confusion and frustration is to establish clear success criteria. If you’ve already got clear success criteria, don’t keep them a secret. Share them before anyone presents any ideas.

A Powerful Question

But if the criteria aren’t clear or haven’t been established for you, it’s up to you to ensure a shared understanding of what success looks like.

When you first ask key stakeholders what a successful outcome will do for them, you can build a set of success criteria that will both filter the ideas people bring to the table and then give the decision maker(s) a way to evaluate choices.

“What would a successful outcome do for you?” is one of our favorite of the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict because it gets underneath what people really need. Instead of arguing for their position (zombies, booth, partnership), you learn what outcomes matter most.

Use Your Criteria to Evaluate Options

Suppose you ask the relevant stakeholders this question and get a resounding answer like, “We need to boost overall sales and leads for next year. A secondary, but important outcome is that need to improve perceived value for our existing channel partners.”

Now you’ve got some general criteria to work with. You might drive for more detail or numeric goals. But even if you get directional criteria like these, you are in a better place to evaluate options. You can ask each group to make their case relative to the success criteria in play.

Team flash mob might take zombies off the table (it would help with perceived partner value, but probably not have much effect on sales or leads.) The expo and partner-packaging folks can make their cases for both outcomes.

Before You Stop with the Options You Have…

You can also ask your team to reframe the opportunity and look for alternative ways to achieve the same or better outcomes.

This can be a fun exercise: “We’ve been talking about increasing our pipeline by 3%. What if we needed to increase it by 10% with the same resources? What might we do?”

Your Turn

It might feel obvious to clarify what success looks before you get into a decision making conversation. But it happens all the time and teams waste too much valuable time and energy talking past one another. Energize your decision making conversations by clarifying who should be there, who owns the decision, and critically, what will a successful outcome achieve.

We’d love to hear from you: how do you ensure decision making criteria are clear before you get into discussions about ideas?

You Might Like:

• Why Your Team Can’t Innovate When You Want Ideas and Try to Help
• Workplace Innovation: The Secret to Getting Better, Remarkable, Usable Ideas
• How to Train a Struggling Team Member to Make Better Decisions

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5 Actionable Strategies for Making Better Decisions

This is actually something I wrestle with quite often. You have a vision in your head. And you know what needs to be done. You know exactly the steps that need to happen to make the right decision.

And it can be incredibly frustrating, especially if you feel they’ve been trained. You don’t want to micro-manage; giving them the answers will frustrate everyone involved.

But here’s the thing. If they’re not doing things the way you know they need to be done– if there’s a “right way” that matters to make these decisions, they don’t need encouragement or coaching; they need training.

Here are some actionable strategies for making better decisions:

1. Define Success Clearly: Clarify what successful decisions look like. This step is crucial in guiding team members toward better decisions.
2. Share Your Thought Process: Break down how you approach these decisions. This includes the options you consider and the questions you ask yourself. By doing this, you’re telling them what to do and teaching them how to do it.
3. Use Real Examples: Apply your thought process to actual scenarios. Show how you would navigate these situations, and then let the team member try their hand at it. This hands-on approach reinforces the training and encourages better decision-making.
4. Transition to Training Mode: Sometimes, stepping back into a training role is necessary. It’s about equipping your team with the skills to do better independently.
5. Continue Support: After the training, continue to encourage and coach. The goal is to empower them to excel in their roles.

Fostering better decisions within a team isn’t about dictating every move. It’s about training, sharing insights, and supporting them in applying these skills. This approach solves the immediate problem and strengthens the team’s decision-making capabilities.

Related Articles:

How to Get Better At Delegating the Right Decisions

Translate Leadership Training into Behaviors that Last

Fuel Your Career: 17 Critical Skills When You’re a Young Leader Hungry for Success

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Leading for All of Us

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Help Your Team Make Better Decisions

0:00 – Do your meetings go in circles and you’re never able to make a decision?

0:22 – Make your meetings productive, efficient, and something people want to attend.

0:50 – If you’ve ever heard someone say, “I don’t know why you ask my opinion, you’re just going to do what you want anyway,” the tools we cover today will eliminate that morale-sucking complaint.

1:30 – The first mistake is a lack of clarity in the problem or decision being discussed.

2:10 – To make better decisions and have better meetings, focus your discussion on one of two topics: where are we going and how are we going to get there.

3:10 – So define the goal, then talk about the means to get there.

3:36 – An example of how to keep your team focused on the goal, then the means, and not allow discussion to bog down with both simultaneously.

4:32 – Then, the second mistake is a lack of clarity about who owns the decision.

5:53 – There are only four ways for a group of people to make a decision (and you normally only use three of them in business).

7:12 – The critical step to engage your team and help them make better decisions is to clarify before discussion begins: who owns this decision. Now they know how to participate, who to influence, and what decisions they need to make.

8:28 – How to combine these techniques.

The post Lead Your Team to Make Better Decisions, Faster appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The post A Manager’s Guide to Better Decision Making appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You want to empower your team to make the right decisions. But delegating can be scary.

After all, some decisions are not up to them. Heck, some are not even up to you.

So, how do you delegate the right decisions and ensure your team understands the decision-making parameters?

Recently we’ve had several clients ask us to help their managers get better at delegation.

So we’ve created this delegation decision-making tool (we call it the strategic empowerment tool) and incorporated it into many of our leadership development programs.

We thought it would be helpful for you as well in your work to delegate the right decisions.

The Strategic Empowerment Tool To Help Delegate Better

How This Tool Works

CONCEPT

People need freedom and autonomy in order to do their best work, solve problems, and build better ways of getting work done. But where should they use their discretion and where do they need to do it the “company way”?

What decisions do you want to fully delegate, which do you need some involvement, and which decisions do you just need to be kept in the loop about? Strategic empowerment removes the guesswork and helps people focus their creativity and problem-solving where it will make the most difference.

WHY this tool works:

Strategic empowerment provides clear definitions and removes the guesswork about where to innovate.

RESULTS

Clarity about how and when to innovate and creatively solve problems leads to more focus on established processes and more innovative solutions where they are most needed.

RELATIONSHIPS

Clarity about how and when to innovate and creatively solve problems creates psychological safety and trust between colleagues.

WHEN to use it:

Use the Strategic Empowerment to guide conversations before delegating or once or twice a year to reinforce parameters for decision making as you encourage your employees to solve problems and think more strategically.

Download the Strategic Empowerment Delegation Tool by clicking here.

How to Do I Empower My Team By Delegating Well?

This tool works very well at every level of the business from executives delegating to middle managers, to project managers, to frontline supervisors and employees.

In this Asking For a Friend, Karin shows how this strategic empowerment delegation tool can be used with entry-level customer-facing employees.

“How do you ask your staff to stick to policy but also provide an excellent customer experience by providing some degree of flexibility?” #AskingForaFriend.

Your turn.

What are your best practices to get better at delegating the right decisions?

See Also:

Lead Your Team to Make Better Decisions, Faster

Effective Delegation, An Easy to Use Tool

Leadership Without Losing Your Soul Podcast Episode:  The Secret Ingredient to Master Delegation

Leadership Skills: 6 Leadership Competencies You Can’t Lead Without

The post How to Get Better at Delegating the Right Decisions (With Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

You don’t know what you don’t know, and even what you DO know you know, could change.

In a recent conversation, “Joe,” a senior leader in the assisted living industry, recounted his first days of the COVID crisis in what turned out to be an early hotspot.

In those first few days we had so little information about this virus or how it spread and no guidance on what to do next. The only thing we knew for certain is that our residents were the definition of vulnerable—so I told my staff ,”Close the doors. No more visitors. Period.”

“But the families will be angry,” my staff warned. “Yes, they will—our primary mission is resident safety, I repeat close the doors.”

“But, what about …” (insert all the reasons why a bold, decisive move like this will be unpopular.   “I hear you. Close the doors.”

He shared, “I’m certain that early decision saved lives.”

A courageous culture needs clarity.  Knowing your values. Understanding what’s at stake and being willing to lead decisively with the information you have at the time.

And, staying curious and open while the situation evolves and be open to ideas of what must happen next.

5 Ways to Lead Decisively When You Don’t Know

When leading during times of uncertainty and change, it’s easy to feel like you don’t know anything. But you do.  Start there.

1. Ground yourself in your values.

decisive leaders lead consistently and ask for input

The most decisive leaders we know have a clear set of values that guide their decision making. The wafflers are the ones who are more focused on optics or popularity than doing what is right.

2. Stay focused on what matters most.

Joe could act decisively because he knew saving lives trumped satisfaction ratings or anything else. Of course, he cared about his residents and their families. He understands the importance of quality of life and the need for human connection. All that matters, a lot.

And in this moment, saving lives came first. In a time of crisis, being laser-focused on what matters is key when you have to make a quick, tough call.

3. Make the best, next, small, bold decision.

You don’t have to make all the moves to act decisively. Your equivalent of “shutting the door” doesn’t have to be for a month. But, 48 hours can buy some time to get more information. You can tell your team, “I don’t have all the answers. And our direction may change. But for today, this is what we’re going to do.”

4. Show up with confident humility.

We were talking with “Jane,” another healthcare leader who had been given an enormous responsibility for operational safety during the early COVID preparation.

I was given a yellow vest to wear which meant that if there was a tough decision to make, it was up to me to make the final call. Sometimes this meant I was being asked to make decisions in departments where I was not the functional expert. I had to show up confident, people needed to see that in their leader—but also incredibly humble, to ask a lot of questions of the right people and to really listen to their point of view, including watching the looks on their faces while I weighed options. And then take that information in to make the best rationale call.

5. Prepare for the pivot.

We’re all living in a world where the news could change tomorrow. Leading decisively at a time like this also means being willing to remain detached from the decision and be ready to pivot when new information comes along. It’s okay to say, “Yesterday I said we were going to do this ___ and that made sense with what we knew at the time. And now we also know ____. So here’s what we’re going to do now and why.”

And sometimes…

“Let’s wait and see” is also an appropriate answer when you just don’t know. Some decisions don’t need to be made right now. Deciding when to decide is also a decision worth making.

See also: How to Change your Mind and Not Lose Their Trust and Support

How to Disrupt the Disruption and Help Your Team Move Forward

You can download a FREE chapter of our new book Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates here.

The post How to Lead Decisively When You Don’t Know What’s Next appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The June Frontline Festival will be about developing ownership and commitment.  We’ve expanded the Frontline Festival to include other formats such as podcasts and artwork and are always looking for new thought leaders to join the party. Won’t you join us?  Send us your submissions here!

Now, on to the May Festival where our submissions lent themselves to two major themes:

Challenges in Decision-making and Problem Solving

Eileen McDargh of The Energizer gives us Resiliency Routed by Routine. When the track seems clear in both directions, past and future–knowing you can only see as far as the bend in the “road,” move forward. What conscious effort will you now make? Follow Eileen.

Eileen votes coffee.

Tony Mastri of Marion Marketing gives us How to Set Marketing Goals (vs. Objectives) with Examples.  Solving the problem of which goals and objectives you should be setting and measuring at your business can seem like a monumental task. This post will aid your decision-making process for setting goals and objectives for yourself or your team.  Follow Tony.

Tony chooses coffeeeee (sic) (black) unless he has a sore throat. In that case – tea with honey.

Chris Killeen of elitePOD writes, Lesson Learned or Just Observed? A Weapons Officer’s Perspective. Every organization needs to make mistakes to improve. The hard part is capturing lessons … the RIGHT lessons … to learn from for future success. The Air Force Weapons School provides a method to do this rapidly and precisely which increases the decision cycle capability for any organization. Follow Chris.

Chris votes coffee.

Jon Mertz of Activate World gives us Holacracy: Achieving Clarity and Productivity. What happens when a company transitions from a traditional business model to one with distributed authority? According to Morgan Legge, of Convert.com, decision-making is shifted into the hands of the role holder. She and Jon discuss her company’s transition to a Holacracy and how it has broken open a lot of old paradigms and ways of thinking about work. Follow Jon.

Beth Beutler of H.O.P.E. Unlimited gives us How to Handle Decision Fatigue. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the number of decisions you have to make? Here’s some encouragement. Follow Beth.

Beth votes both tea and coffee and even coffee substitutes. She likes to mix it up.

Shelley Row of Shelley Row Associates asks, Do You Have Analysis Paralysis?  You strive to make data-driven decisions, but too much data can result in analysis paralysis. Here’s a way to help. Follow Shelley.

Strategies for Decision-Making and Problem Solving

Lisa Kohn from Chatsworth Consulting Group writes What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do where she shares a few simple steps for having more clarity, flexibility, and confidence to make the important decisions you have to make. Follow Lisa.

Maria Tanski of Patriot Software provides Problem-solving and Decision-making: Key Ingredients to the Best Possible Solution. Solving problems and making decisions can be challenging. Use these five steps to help determine the best solution for your business and improve your problem-solving techniques. Follow Maria.

Maria prefers tea.

Wally Bock of Three Star Leadership provides Problem Solving Like You Mean It. It outlines four ways to give a serious problem the attention it deserves. Follow Wally.

S. Chris Edmonds of Driving Results through Culture gives us Heads or Tails? Three Keys to Better Decision Making. How good a decision-maker are you? What influences your approach? Humans vary in the pace of their decisions. Chris gives us three ideas to consider in order to improve our decision-making process. Follow Chris.

Chris loves a good cup of coffee.

David Grossman of The Grossman Group gives us The Best Way to Come at a Problem. Before you can solve a business problem or achieve a goal, you have to understand what the situation is. Find out how to do just that in the most effective way.  Follow David.

The post Decision-Making and Problem Solving: A Frontline Festival appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

One of the biggest “Do you have a private minute?” questions we get asked by managers is “How do I get anything done with my indecisive boss?”

Okay, the conversation is actually less polite. It’s usually more along the lines of:

“Aghhhhh, Karin and David do you see what I’m talking about? Did you watch him in that meeting? He postponed EVERY SINGLE decision. He’s the most indecisive boss I’ve ever worked for.

Why can’t he make a decision? We’ve laid out all the data he asked for. And he keeps stalling! At this point I’d rather just hear a “no” than to talk about it anymore. The really frustrating thing about this decision is, there’s really not a downside here. It’s a no-brainer! What should I do? How do I help my boss get to a decision?”

We get it. Dealing with an indecisive boss is frustrating at best, particularly when you really care about your work. After all, he’s the boss, making decisions IS his job. It’s tempting to wonder why you should have to work so hard to help him.

If you’ve read Winning Well, you know what we’re going to say next. Yup, be the leader you want your boss to be.

How to Help Your Indecisive Boss Make a Decision

So here are a few ways to get your indecisive boss comfortable with making a decision.

1. Ask Strategic Questions

One of the biggest mistakes we see managers make when pushing their boss for a decision is that they do too much talking.

If you’re met with resistance, stop selling and start asking questions to understand why your boss is stuck.

• How do you think this change would impact the customer experience?
• Have you ever tried anything like this before? How did it go?
• What’s driving your hesitation?
• Who else needs to be involved in such decisions?
• What do you think would happen if we implemented this approach?
• Am I overlooking anything here?
• What do you think your boss would be concerned about here?
• Are there any political issues I might be overlooking?

2. Provide a Clear Path Forward

When presenting an idea to an indecisive boss, don’t just talk conceptually. Be crystal clear on what your idea would take to implement: specifically who would need to do what by when and how you will measure success.

Indecisive managers are often afraid of change because it just sounds like too much work. Show how moving forward with your plan is easier than sticking with the status quo.

3. Make it Reversible

One of the biggest reasons for decision paralysis is that it feels so permanent. Find a way to let them taste the impact of the decision in a way that can be easily reversed. Got a new process? Try it with one team. Worried about the customer experience? Try your idea out with a small subset of customers and carefully monitor the experience. It’s a lot easier to sell in a pilot than to convince a risk-averse decision-maker to make a “permanent” change.

4. Include Others

If your boss needs to socialize the idea with others, offer to tag along. Chances are if he’s afraid to make a decision, he’s equally afraid of expressing his opinion to his boss or other stakeholders.

Offer to support him with an enthusiastic, “Awesome, I’d love to join a quick call to help you socialize the idea.” Or, “What can I do to support you as you’re communicating this idea?”

5. Talk about the Pattern

If this is an ongoing problem it might be time to have a genuine conversation with your boss about why she struggles to make a decision.

It might be time for an I.N.S.P.I.R.E. conversation.

I-Initiate: I really care about the success of this project and in doing everything I can to support you and the team.

N-Notice:  I’ve noticed you are really struggling with this decision

S-Support:  For example…

P-Probe: What’s going on?

I-Invite: What can I do to make this easier?

You can download a PDF of the INSPIRE model and complete process here. 

6. Keep Trying

Keep grounded in confident humility. This isn’t about you or your boss, it’s about doing the right thing. There’s nothing more convincing than someone passionate about doing the right things for the right reasons.

Give your indecisive boss a chance to sleep on it, and try again.

Your Turn

Working with an indecisive boss can be frustrating, but with some empathy and confidently humility, you can help them to lead and get the clarity you need. Leave a comment and share: What’s your best advice for working for an indecisive boss?

The post How to Work with an Indecisive Boss appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

“This is so stupid—you asked for my opinion and then ignored it. I don’t know why I even bother! From now on, I’m just going to shut my mouth and do my work.” If you’ve heard this or said it yourself, you’ve experienced a critical mistake many managers make when they lead a meeting: lack of clarity around decision ownership.

If your meetings aren’t working, look at your clarity of decision-making. Fuzzy decision-making leads to frustrating meetings.

People hate feeling ignored. Unfortunately, when you ask for input and appear to ignore it, employees feel frustrated, devalued, and powerless. In contrast, when you are clear about who owns the decision and how it will be made, people will readily contribute, the team can collaborate, and are far more likely to own the outcome. Clear decision-making improves results and relationships.

Four Ways to Make a Decision When You Lead a Meeting

This isn’t difficult, because there are only four ways to make a decision when you lead a meeting:

1. A single person makes the decision.

Typically, this would be the manager or someone she appoints.

In this style of decision-making, you might ask your team for input and let them know that after hearing everyone’s perspective, you will make the decision.

2. A group makes the decision through a vote.

This might be a 50-percent-plus-one majority or a two-thirds majority, but in any case, it’s a decision by vote. With this option, you ask everyone to contribute input, and they know that the decision will be made by a vote at a specific time.

3. A team makes the decision through consensus.

Consensus decision-making is often misunderstood. Consensus decision-making means that the group continues the discussion until everyone can live with a decision. It does not mean everyone got his or her first choice, but that everyone can live with the final decision. Consensus decision-making can take more time and often increases everyone’s ownership of the final decision.

4. Fate decides.

You can flip a coin, roll the dice, draw from a hat, etc. There are times where flipping a coin is the most efficient way to make a decision. When time is of the essence, the stakes are low, and pro-con lists are evenly matched, it’s often good to just pick an option and go. For example, if you have 45 minutes for a team lunch, it doesn’t make any sense to spend 30 minutes discussing options. Narrow it down to a few places, flip a coin, and go.

Each way of deciding has advantages, but what’s most important is to be very clear about who owns the decision.

Start With How

When that frustrated person said, “You asked for my opinion and then ignored it. I don’t know why I even bother!” he was under the impression that the team would decide by vote or consensus when in reality it was the leader’s decision. This type of confusion wastes tons of precious time and energy and sucks the soul from your team.

The next time you lead a meeting, take time before the discussion begins to state how the decision will be made. You get yourself in trouble (not to mention that it’s unfair, disempowering, and quite soulless) if you suggest a vote and then change back to “I’ll decide” when you think the vote won’t go your way.

Before discussion begins, be clear about who owns the decisions. How will this decision be made?

Be specific. For example, you might begin a decision-making session by saying, “Okay, I’d like to spend the next 40 minutes getting everyone’s input, and then I’ll make the decision.”

Or, you might describe the decision to be made and say, “We’re not going to move forward until everyone can live with the decision.”

You might even combine methods and say, “We will discuss this decision for 30 minutes. If we can come to a consensus by then, that would be great. If not, we’ll give it another 15 minutes. After that, if we don’t have consensus, I’ll take a final round of feedback and I’ll choose, or we’ll vote.”

You save yourself grief, misunderstanding, and hurt feelings when everyone knows up front how the decision will be made. You also empower your people to be more influential because when they know who owns the decision, they also know how to share their information. Do they need to persuade the single decision maker, a majority, or the entire team? They can choose their most relevant information and arguments.

Your Turn

Think about the next time you will lead a meeting to make a decision with your team. Who owns the decisions? Is it you, the team through a vote, or the team through consensus? We’d love to hear from you.  What questions or comments do you have about clarifying who owns the decision?

The post How to Lead a Meeting and Make Effective Decisions appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.