How to Make Better Decisions as a Leader: 7 Habits That Work

0:00Welcome to Leadership DNA, a podcast of those who aspire to be a better leader. Alongside Arturo Gomez, I'm Rob Cressy. Today's topic tips for effective decision making as a leader. In Arturo, decision making can make or break a leader's credibility. It's not just the choices that we make but how we make them. For me, one of the things that I always coach and I always tell managers and just people around me, it's that the more opportunity that you have to absorb information, the more opportunity that you have to actually approach things in a sponge manner, be a good listener, have some empathy with regards to situations, scenarios. The more information that you're able to absorb, the better you're able to actually make decisions. If you're getting put on the spot and unfortunately as an entrepreneur or as a leader, manager and organization, sometimes more often than not, have to make decisions that are quite fast. Some are split second. If you don't have a good accumulation of the noise and the information that is out there that's readily available for you, then your decision-making process is probably going to be faulty. My recommendation is for people to constantly try to understand the various things and it becomes a lot more challenging when organizations get significantly bigger. It kind of goes to this, they talk about how certain CEOs are encountering challenge because they've put themselves in the ivory tower in this corner office and they're not in touch and in contact with the organization. That lack of feedback loop, that lack of understanding of the organization and the culture is I think sometimes a critical blow to an organization. But even if you're a group of five or you're a group of two, I think it's really important that you spend as much time trying to absorb.

2:27If you're that person that is being… If you're in that position that you have to be making decisions, not everybody is in that position. But if you're going to put yourself in a position where you want to be able to make effective decision-making, have an effective decision-making process, I think it requires a good understanding of the things that are happening around you.

2:51Yeah and I think Arturo, one of the things that we can even do is open up our aperture on this entire discussion because we are all making decisions for ourselves every single day because we're leading ourselves. Self-leadership is one of the things that we've talked about often here is how are we making the decisions to effectively lead ourselves? So whether you're working in a company or you're a solo entrepreneur or someone running a team that decision-making when… When I was listening to what you were saying, there's one thing that just stood out to me so much in this decision-making process. And one of the things that's been the most valuable as well as the hardest things I ever had to learn as an entrepreneur and a leader was that system scale. And at some point in my career, I was not a systems person. I didn't see the world in terms of how am I creating systems in my life? But creating effective decision-making is about your process for how am I making these decisions. So I started to write down sort of what are some things that come top of mind for me on what I do or others do to be a more effective decision-maker. And you know what number one is because Arturo, you said sometimes we're making very quick decisions. It is taking an extra split second to respond back. And God knows any of us in a relationship know all about this where maybe you can do a heated or less than desirable conversation with somebody close to you and boom, you can just be quick to respond back. But we also know if you can just take that extra beat to… And you said this, listen, right? So we can be an effective communicator gathering the information by listening. So I'm going to give it that extra beat. That extra beat can make everything because we live in a world where we are quick to jump back. We're quick to give our opinion. And one of the things that I've actually done consciously to be both a better listener and more effective with my decision-making, and we've talked about this before. There's a term called sensory acuity meaning an awareness of your senses. So what I did is let's say when I was living in Chicago, I'd be out with my friends I'd grabbing a drink somewhere and let's say there's four of us. I would intentionally put myself back in the conversation and just listen to what was happening in front of me. And when I did, my mind was blown at one, the conversation, the flow of it, how people just jumped on top of each other, two, how people would hijack conversations. We were talking about one thing and you could just see the other person waiting to give their own opinion on things. Well, how is this relevant to effective decision-making? Because when you can understand the flow of communication in front of you because you're a better listener, because you've got a system and process for this, it allows me to be more effective because maybe I'm not going to be spending as much time in those sort of conversations.

6:06And it's a very specific real world granular example. But when I think about leadership and personal growth and being somewhat about self-improving and being a great leader, it's about these micro moments because that's what decision-making is is hey, what can I do? What is my process for making the best decision in this moment at this time? And then the next part of it for me is being decisive. I am an effective in decisive decision-maker because I have a process that I trust, so I'm going to make things faster because I know number one, I look forward not backwards and then number two, I'm an action oriented person. So let's get into action and we can always course correct that action. But so many people don't make effective decisions because they fall under analysis paralysis and we look in one month later, they're still talking about the same thing. That's right.

7:02Yeah, it's 100%. I think in listen, the best leaders have that capability. They really are individuals that are strong listeners that know enough about the organization, the culture, its people, its inner workings to be able to make these decisions. One thing I will say too, so because obviously some of our listeners are people that are trying to sharpen their skillset and certainly I think also with the desire to become that decision-maker.

7:42I would say that at least for me in our organization, I like when people speak up. I want to hear the person that thinks that they shouldn't speak. I want to hear the voice of of everybody. So for my recommendation is, you have to have those other components that we talked about. You have to have this empathy piece. You have to be a good listener. But I think that if you're not assertive, if you're not willing to share your opinion, that you're never going to be heard and you're never going to be considered. And so I think it's oddly in order to become that decision-maker, you have to really be trying to insert yourself and give feedback and speak up. Because that will I think want it. It could help the organization to actually make decisions because they have this information. But two, for strong leaders who are constantly looking for the next generation, it's going to identify you as somebody that has calmly intuitively brought these things together to be able to voice an opinion that could have essentially become a decision-making component for whatever's occurring.

9:06Absolutely, love what you just said there. And I'll yes end this with two frameworks that I use in my life as well as with my clients that can help with decision-making. And this first one is so simple and applies to all areas of your life. So if you have a decision to make, you can say what is the best case scenario, the worst case scenario, and the most likely scenario because so often we can have we over-analyze things or we can live in fear or we can also be so grandiose and think that I'm going to make a million dollars by just pushing this button right here. So by asking yourself what's the best case, worst case, and most likely scenario, you've now at least given yourself three different options in which you can evaluate this. Okay, and from that now you've got a decision-making framework. And the next one is coming straight out of what I do on the personal growth coaching side of things. And this is all around building your business and life together in lifestyle design. And there's a framework that I teach that is part of everything that we do. Number one, vision. What is it in the world that you want to create or do? Number two, being this is your identity. Who are you being? What is the story that you're telling yourself and the number three becomes your action? How are you taking action? Because when you know your vision and where you're going, it's a lot easier to create yourself as the person that you tell yourself the story that lives in the action because the story that you tell yourself will create your actions, your actions will create your results. But Arturo, we both know this. One of the biggest areas where people leaders included can fail is a lack of clarity. So if we don't have a vision of where we are going or what we want to do, it's very challenging to make effective decisions because they will not be effective by design because that's why goal setting is there but I like vision better because there's a greater energy to that. Let's set that vision, let's get clarity of vision and now we can make a better decision around that. 100%. And so the other thing too, and I think you're alluding to it is that in a really efficient, effective organization, the person at the top doesn't always need to make the decisions for things to operate efficiently.

11:38And so without this vision, without this clarity, then people in various stages of the organization don't have the ability to make a decision because there are just no one knows. No one knows what you know what to do how to do it and so by enabling process and creating vision and creating these clarity, you can create some tremendous efficiencies. You know I had a conversation yesterday with two staff members and we're part of a newly formed hospitality group and so there's some learning curve types scenarios that are occurring right now. And my method then both was that you know we're going to be we're going to get to the place that we need to get and that's that's right around the corner. I'm very confident of that because we're in a strong position now but that I told them that my goal is for them not to have to come to me. I don't need there is no ego, there is no like hey I've got to be the final decision maker. I said I've got a lot of stuff going on. I'm trying to balance a lot of things. I'm here for you always but if you guys if we still need to hone in on how the decision making process occurs then let's do that. If you're timid and afraid to make the decision because you think that the outcome might be bad I don't fear that so I'd rather you go ahead we're not putting people on the operating table here so you know mistakes aren't going to be life threatening but we all need to work together to get to that to get to that spot and that that happens over time. I mean two people just you know walking you know getting to know each other regardless if you have a fully built out training manual cultures and an absorbed in one day you know and so to understand how these efficiencies from a decision making standpoint occur it does occur over time but if without clarity and without definition in terms of how things should work you're you're never going to get there.

13:54I love it now give a real world example that came from one hour ago so I'm coaching a CEO of an insurance insurance agency and then separately his sales team on how they're leveraging ChatGPT and AI in their business. And there's a new project that he wants to take on all around Hey Rob should we be using AI for data analysis? And he goes where do I even start with this and we've previously done a bunch of stuff and he's very forward thinking. And similar to what you just said here my answer to him was all around well what is your process for every time you start a new project as it relates to the word of ChatGPT and AI? And it was sort of a light bulb moment for him because I'm always just going to default to the fundamental of like you've previously created other projects we want to go from zero to the first step but the way that we do that is by saying what is your system and process for what I do on when I bring a new project to the table?

14:54And the fundamentals are the fundamentals for reason because we do them over and over again so whether you're a CEO of an insurance agency or you're brand new in a hospitality company it all applies the same because we want to follow these frameworks to make effective decisions. Yeah 100 percent. So yeah those would be the kind of the basics behind why I think it's important to have a process in place and what the outcomes are when you have effective decision making as a real cultural training piece within the organization and even within yourself right for me it's I can't I feel like it's disrespectful to walk in or try to participate in any one of my businesses without having done a lot of homework to be able to be in that room.

15:59And it's just it's like if you're not prepared to be you know making decisions or be prepared to have intelligent conversation about decisions that need to occur then you should not be in the spot of any type of leadership position because you're just being absolutely disrespectful with people's time and energy. Alright this what you just said is the most valuable breadcrumb from this entire episode and when I think about what leadership DNA means there's levels to this game and if I think about how your eye show up in any meeting or any company that we run in what the expectation is we created this podcast because leadership DNA is a series of pieces or Lego blocks that create who we are as leaders and how we show up and there's a standard for what it means to be an excellent and exceptional leader and Arturo, you just so distinctly said what that standard is. So if you're listening or watching this right now I encourage you to think about how you show up for every single thing that you do in your life because it is going to blend into what you're doing on the business side because there's a reason why we create this confidence about ourselves because we've done the work to show up to put ourselves into a position to be effective leaders because we're going to communicate effectively we're going to communicate with candor we're going to do all winter power people you know all of this goes together over the course of decades and while we break this down on little micro moments it is the culmination of what you just said it is the exact why we do what we do so that we can be the person that makes things happen.

17:56Yeah it's part of the driven you know driven force that you know I think propels us both and other people that really want to contribute you know to me it's less about hey I want to be a boss hey I want to be this or whatever I just I want to contribute I want to be a great contributor and I want to make sure that if anybody's spending time with me that it's not done their times not wasted you know and you got to be you got to be informed you got to be informed and so yeah. All right and let's get to our action item or our takeaway and on my end is actually an action item and this can also be for the end I would love to hear about others decision making process more specifically articulate it what does yours look like like the most likely worst best scenario it's a very simple framework that we can share with others I would love to hear what your decision making framework looks like what about you Arturo? Yeah I think if you're in a decision making position right now I think again if you're struggling to find balance I think you you have to want I think you got to look at yourself and make sure that you are putting in the work and the homework to be able to understand the intricacies of whatever organization that you're responsible for be the sponge you know be that sponge where you're really trying to kind of take you know whether it's five minute one minute you know twenty-second snapshots of different things that are occurring around you poke your head around ask questions feel the energy of the organization that will allow you to make intelligent decisions that will be inclusive that will actually represent the best interests of your clients that will represent the best interests of the people that are working hard for your organization and that's it you got to be you got to be a student of you got to be constantly wanting to drive information through your system in order to be able to do you know to get to a point where you can be an effective decision making contributor yeah in Arturo one of the things you said is being a great contributor I know you and I both love hearing from people who listen to this who are effective and exceptional leaders working everybody connects with you it's gonna be linked in Arturo Gomez and you can hit me up on LinkedIn or Instagram at Rob Cressy

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