Leaders decide! Do they?
Leaders’ decision-making skills help them advance!
The Decision making challenges in leadership and management is tough among hard choices! Whether our decision to make is strategic, tactical, or operational, we feel the churn in our stomachs when that moment comes. At times we feel more than we think and keep issues on the back burner for later. We knew deep down in our hearts that those issues should have been addressed in the past if not now. Yet they end up on the ever-growing stack of pending to-do lists. Both at work and in personal life.
Who is this for?
Professional employees who are in responsible roles that require making decisions such as contributor, manager, or leader in any workplace. Also, the individual decision-makers are responsible for their personal and family lives.
Decision-making process to make a call!
Making decisions take a bit of thinking; the type of thinking that helps us evaluate our choices. It takes your effort, time, feelings, perceptions, risks, rewards, guts, and courage to deliberate upon and dole out the options.
When you start to ponder any of these factors, believe it or not, you are already making progress. Because you choose to think them over than being mediocre, you advance yourself to make your call.
You find your decision matters!
When you advance to or do make the call, the second-guessing kicks in and forces you to doubt yourself. That inevitably makes you feel indecisive. You will be trapped in a cycle of good or bad, right or wrong, fear or courage, and success or failure.
We want to make a good decision that is right and leads us to succeed. That would, indeed, be great! Don’t we all wish that? Your second-guessing is your clue that the decision is important to you and it matters to you a good deal. You will need to groom your leadership skill when you face decision-making challenges.
What are your leadership decision-making challenges then and how should you overcome them?
1. Fear
You are afraid of being wrong and get trapped in a cycle of fear. In other words, this is your classic fear of facing the worst outcome that you can imagine and your fear of not being able to control it. That fear is stopping you from making your move.
How do you overcome fear in decision-making?
Tap into your intuition. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Laureate, in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” said that “intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” That is, your brain makes note of your experiences. Your gut feeling, Thinking Fast, knows you well in more cases than you think. It guides you to make better decisions. That’s your intuition. You can be analytical, Thinking Slow, in the rest of the cases.
🠊 Start believing in yourself and learn to trust your intuition.
🠊 Have courage in making tough decisions.
🠊 Build self-confidence in the decisions you make.
🠊 Take the necessary actions to execute what you have decided.
2. Conflict
You choose to avoid conflicts at the very moment you need a decision. Often, people tend to avoid conflicts than dealing with them.
How is resolving conflict in decision-making work?
If you choose to address conflicts then the presence of conflicts makes your decision better. Here you can choose to avoid that results in a lose-lose scenario, accommodate for a lose-win scenario, compromise for a no-loss-no-gain scenario, collaborate for a win-win scenario, or even compete for a win-lose scenario as per Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument that measures the response of individuals during conflicts.
🠊 You should be Cooperative and Assertive in your decision-making. Therefore, you will collaborate for the mutual benefit of your decisions in the long run even though each situation demands a suitable scenario amongst the list.
3. Negative Influence
You are surrounded by the negative influence that incapacitates your ability to make tough decisions. For instance, the influence of people around you and how they perceive your decision; your obligation to comply with the expectation of people over what is right; and your need for acceptance of others.
How to tackle the negative influence challenge on your decision-making?
The first thing that comes to mind to fix negative influences is to strive to be positive and always do right. Despite the positivity and righteousness are credible they are passive in decision making.
The real force that lets you decide is positive energy; such energy drives you to decide no matter what because you are focused. You achieve such focus by ruthlessly eliminating distractions and the number of decisions to make. Barack Obama said during his interview with Vanity Fair that “You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself.” referring to his preference for grey or blue suits during his presidency.
🠊 Focus your attentive energy on goals and the people that matter the most.
The fear of ‘what would happen’ will stop you from dealing with potential conflicts. When the conflicts are left unattended whether they are with yourself or with the people around you, you will build up negative influence around you. Many professionals do face such scenarios in their personal life. Vandana has decided that ‘at times taking a risk in life is worthy‘ by overcoming her challenges whether they are her fear, conflict, or influence. However, some choose to dwell in indecision.
These are 3 important decision-making challenges in leadership competency out of others in decision making and the skills needed to overcome those decision-making challenges. Leaders need to acquire those skills to play a competent role in their workplace. So, the leadership developing the next generation of leaders is more vital than ever before to help businesses elevate their value proposition to their customers!
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