5 steps to get your team making powerful decisions (without you)
I had a very brief conversation with the CEO of one of the world's biggest tech companies that changed my view on decision-making forever.
I asked: "What is the biggest decision you’ve ever had to make?"
His response: "I very rarely make decisions. I hire a team who are much more skilled to make all the decisions for me.”
I always thought decision-making flowed upward, with the final call resting in the hands of the CEO.
But after that convo and the years under his leadership, I learned that true leadership isn’t about making all the decisions.
Why us managers shouldn’t be making decisions:
The leader is not the closest person to the problem. The team are. So even with all the data and the best intentions they can’t make the best final call.
If a leader makes the decision and it turns out to be a WRONG one, you’re stealing a learning opportunity from your team.
If the leader makes the decision and it turns out RIGHT and incredibly successful, they’re taking away all the empowerment and glory that comes with that success.
Whoever makes the decision will have the most accountability, ownership and passion to push it through to execution/completion and make it a success. You want this to be the team, not you.
But how should we respond when our team ask us to make a decision?
And what if they’re not comfortable making decisions right now, how can we start training them to be?
All will be revealed in…
The 5 stage decision-making framework
Hand the decision back to them
Starting simple - if we had a decision where we’re picking between a set number of outcomes, so picking between X, Y and Z, we need to hand the decision back to them:
- Ask: “Which one would you pick?”
- After hearing their response, say: “Well there’s your answer”
- Follow up with: ”You’re the expert, so whichever option you pick I’ll back you” OR
”You pick, test it, and if it’s not the right option let’s revisit and try something else”
Practice doing this every single time and eventually they’ll stop coming to you in the first place because they know they have your complete support.Don’t give answers, ask questions
When they come to you for help or advice on a decision, instead of offering the classic “Here’s what I’d do”…
Help them to find the answers and blind spots themselves by asking thought-provoking questions.
Some examples:
“How do you think that would impact our customers?”
”How does that get us closer to our goals?”
”Have we done it before? If so, what results did we get?”Educate your team on bias
Every human has different layers of unconscious bias.
Bias is unavoidable, but it’s the ‘unconscious’ bit that we can, and need to, combat.
Some of the most common types of bias at work
Affinity Bias: The tendency to favour people who we perceive to be similar to ourselves. This bias can be particularly problematic in recruitment.
Conformity bias: Your team are more likely to sway toward an option that would land most popular with their peers.
Confirmation Bias: We seek information that confirms our existing beliefs while ignoring information that contradicts them.
Selection Bias: Something has happened to make us notice that certain viewpoint more. Like when you want a certain new car, you notice more models of that car on the road. If you are in marketing and have just seen a video telling you why you need to invest £x in a certain software, you’d all of a sudden see many streams of information that tells you this was the right decision.
These 4 types of bias just scratch a very small surface of a problem you need to be aware of, I’d recommend starting your bias education journey here.
Love, not fear
Picture the scene… It’s post pandemic, Linkedin is rife with the ‘work from home or office’ debate, companies are pulling out ‘work in the office 2 days a week’ policies all over the place.
Then a member of my team comes to me with ‘I’m thinking of making it mandatory for my team to come into work every Monday’
I asked why
Their answer was ‘I’m worried everyone is just hungover on a Monday morning and doesn’t actually do proper work’
My line of questioning was the following…
“Is there something on Monday morning that it’s essential they’re in the office for” “No”
“Is anyone in your team under-performing” “No, not really”
“Is anyone in your team not living up to our values” “No”
The answers to these questions indicated that the team are actually completely fine to work from home on a Monday.
The member of my team was just fearful of a potential problem that didn’t exist. He was making his decision from a place of fear. Putting rules in place for fear of a negative outcome in the future.
I like to switch this around, and say “If you were to make this decision from a place of love, what would the outcome be”
The fact is, your team are performing well, they are living up to our core values, and there is no essential reason for them to be in on a Monday.
So the fact of the matter is, even if they are hungover on a Monday morning and not doing proper work first thing, it doesn't matter.
Show them love and trust over fear and control.
2. Ensure a decision is actually made
This is a big one. To do nothing is still a choice. A choice to stay the same.
There’s been countless occasions when one of my team has brought me a brilliant problem, with an analysis of the outcomes, and are very close to making the decision.
But then weeks and months pass, and no decision is actually made or executed on. You must hold your team accountable to making a decision and executing on it.
To consider
As with everything, there are exceptions to this.
There are times when I’ve stepped in and overruled with sensitive matters, when the team really cannot see past their bias, or when it’s unfair such a big decision riding on someone’s shoulders. That’s fine, but these situations are rare.
So with everything else... Stop getting in the way.