Bad Leadership Choices

Not getting this information sent to you directly? Sign up for your FREE monthly Smartmanager newsletter today.   Sign up now! 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to Avoid Bad Leadership Choices

Three Primary Abilities Needed for Good Decision-Making

C-level executives usually understand that solid decision-making is typically a combination of experience, art, and science. Often, however, they downplay—or forget—the core foundations of consistently good decision techniques.

While much has been written by management “experts” about the best way to approach decision-making, most theories (after one eliminates the buzzwords and embellishment) involve three primary skills. When combined properly, these three abilities give senior executives the ammunition they need to make consistently solid decisions.

1. Conceptual skill. One needs to understand and implement concepts to view decisions and their ramifications to staff and corporate goals. Morphing concepts into decisions and action plans first requires conceptual understanding.
   
   
2. Solid strategic thinking. Strategic, more than operational, thinking is required to make the best decisions. Strategically thinking involves projecting (visualizing) the results of both major and minor decisions as they apply to overall organization well-being.
   
   
3. Employing patience when analyzing alternatives. Evaluating the upside or downside probabilities of alternative decisions often cannot be done properly in a short time window. Exhibiting the patience to effectively analyze both probabilities leads to better decisions.

While experienced senior executives often employ a variety of technical and theoretical aids, these three classic skills provide the foundation of ultimately valuable decisions. Although decidedly non-high tech, employing these principles, in the presence or absence of additional techniques, typically leads to solid, valuable decision-making.

Five Actions to Avoid Within Your Leadership Strategy

Although expressing issues in the negative is often counterproductive, there are conditions that reverse this tenet. This is one of those times, as avoiding these common errors typically lead to better leadership, delegation, and decision-making.

1. Over-delegating. Delegation is important, if not critical to C-level leadership. However, total “hands off” policies often lead to lower level staff making decisions totally on their own, devoid of senior leadership input. In addition to sometimes unreasonable higher risk levels, the senior leader may find him/herself completely “out of the loop.” Answering questions of the Board of Directors, stockholders, or the media may prove to be a challenge you cannot meet.
   
   
2. Becoming involved in tasks when you should not. This action error is the diametric opposite to over-delegation. Senior leaders with high level enthusiasm and interest exhibit positive virtues. However, heavy work in the “trenches” often consumes much too much valuable time for a senior executive. Much like a sophisticated fighter jet, spending time at ground level often proves fruitless when compared to operating at 35,000 to 40,000 feet. Losing critical strategic thinking time and delegation planning time invariably returns to haunt C-level executives in both the short- and long-term.
   
   
3. Scheduling too many one-to-one senior executive meetings. A leadership strategy that values one-on-one meetings more than senior team consultation often leads to diverse problems for senior executives. Disagree? Consider the common results. This strategy forces your team members to respond in a “vacuum,” without interaction and opinions from other leaders. Some team members will work to become the first or last to be consulted, believing they can either shape (first) or influence (last) your coming decision. Finally, this strategy discourages creativity of the individual and the team.
   
   
4. Being reluctant to share decision-making responsibility with senior teams. This leadership strategy, when combined with the prior tendency, will often lead you to ask more than necessary of your individual leaders and not nearly enough input from your leadership team. You may not even realize that you are following this path as you traverse it. Why should you lack confidence in a leadership team that you have not really used? How can you determine their superiority or mediocrity without giving them the opportunity to succeed or fail? The simple answer: You cannot judge their ability to think and act as a leadership team if you never give them the opportunity.
   
   
5. Making decisions before consulting with senior teams, but “pretending” they have meaningful involvement. This “strategy” is much more common than most senior executives would ever care to admit. C-level executives that try to “fool” their senior teams into believing an action plan was “their idea” often suffer a dangerous backlash of negativity and loss of trust. Assuming your senior leaders earned their positions via high performance and ability, they typically will quickly determine that you have already decided on a course of action and that you are simply patronizing them. True leaders strongly dislike being manipulated, just as you would.

Once again, achieving a proper balance should be the C-level executive’s goal. Analyze an issue and ask, “Should I make the decision, delegate the decision to another leader, or consult my team?” Reality dictates that there will be a diversity of issues indicating one action or another. Over time, your responses to this question may highlight some habits or actions to avoid in the future.

For example, if you consistently determine that you, alone, should decide on the action plan, you may suffer from error number 2, being involved in too much minutiae. Conversely, if every decision dictates that you consult the full team, you may display the signs of uncertainty. Strive for balance in your leadership strategy while avoiding common decision-making mistakes.