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The Leadership Mistake of Waiting Too Long · Leading From the Front!

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  [SPEAKER_00]: is no right decision.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's only effective decisions.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Most leaders who are challenged with making decisions in a timely manner are simply afraid of making a mistake.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They're scared.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fear.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The hard part is admitting that you've been calling something thoughtful when you have actually been feeling afraid.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Overcoming that is the challenge.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Make the call, make a smaller one if you have to.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But stop letting the delay decide for you.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to continue our discussion about decision-making, which is the second part of step-to-choice, and why it's so important.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's a real mystery to people who have been in organizations for any length of time.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: To have seen some leaders that will take too long to make a decision.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's so much research on this that it is astounding to me that we still are challenged by it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: However, we're human and what is that humanness caused us to do when we're in a position of making decisions?
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I've got a theory on this and I guess I'll have to check on this, but I've seen that many CEOs are like B or C students, they're not always the A students in school.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason they make better CEOs is
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  [SPEAKER_00]: This is going to sound strange, but it's because they're used to making mistakes.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They make mistakes, they learn from the mistakes, and they correct them.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And effective decision making often is being able to make the best decision you can make at the right time, knowing that it might not be perfect, it might not be even the best decision for the circumstances, but it's the best decision at the time.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: and great leaders often know that when they make those decisions, they will have the opportunity to make another decision shortly if the decision they made is wrong or not quite up to the level that it needs to be.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I know this sounds kind of weird, but it's a unsubstantiated part of my experience.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When I've seen leaders that when you talk to them and they find out that
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, they get a C plus on their math test or their chemistry test, well, that's what I would get on my chemistry test would be a C plus.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But the ability to make decisions is to take the information that they have and make the best decision at the time.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens with others that get
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  [SPEAKER_00]: overly analytical is something going on inside and what that inside challenges is fear.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's an emotional response to needing to be right and the fact is in business and in complexity and human nature and often we talk about this in our leadership development that there is no right decision.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's only effective decisions and great leaders make
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got another 24 hours of learning and they're willing to take the risk.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the fact is, in research has been done across the board, that most leaders who are challenged with making decisions in a timely manner are simply afraid of making a mistake.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They're scared.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fear.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And we need to overcome that fear as leaders.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we do that?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We understand, first of all, that the biases and the emotional attachment that we have to being right is the very thing that's holding us back.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'd like you to think about this, how do we engage a team, how do we engage others to make a decision and have a deadline for that decision and simply make it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a very hard thing for some people to come up with.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We can gather more information and by gathering more information, sometimes we can make
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  [SPEAKER_00]: with the need to make the decision in a timely manner.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I like to use the phrase, never make a decision before it's time.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a two-way short.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to make it in a timely manner, but you don't have to make it too fast.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So what does that mean?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Establish an understanding of a when the decision needs to be made, not just what the decision needs to be made.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's take these two very important skills of emotional intelligence and decision-making and put them together so we understand how these are scientifically correlated to leadership effectiveness.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our definition of leadership is the ability to build relationships so we can achieve our goals together with compassion and accountability.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's break this apart.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: First of all, building relationships.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: How do we build relationships and make connections?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Two things need to occur in business
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to have aligned values and goals, and then we have to demonstrate a clarity of caring for each other in the achievement of those.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So how do we do that?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: How do we connect?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We do not connect on external stuff as much as we connect emotionally.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think about it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Who are the most important people in your lives?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: People will say it's their family, their spouse, their children.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you connect with your children by accomplishing a task?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, yeah, you do, but it's the joy of accomplishing that task together that really creates that bond.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the same thing is true in our everyday lives and business.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: is we understand that the achievement of goals and projects and these activities and tasks are important.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: However, how we go about the achievement of that is a connection emotionally.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And when people are struggling and we see people are struggling, first of all, statistics show that over 80% of the time, people that are challenged at work are because of things outside of work.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And usually it's emotional with family, with health,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: with finances, with other things that are really affecting their lives, and causing them to think of something other than work.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: By being compassionate about some of those things and understanding it, we might be able to help the person.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And that help, that's support.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know, let's go as far as saying that love, that grace can create a very, very strong bond on a team.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the other part of it is achieving our goals together.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The decision-making and the accomplishment of tasks through competency is necessary in order to continue to have a viable business or a viable organization.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't matter if it's a church, a nonprofit, or a profitable business.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to achieve things in this society in order to be able to move forward and go into the future.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: By doing it,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: together and understand each other's strengths and limitations, which we will get to in step three, we do that to effective decision-making and emotional intelligence.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now I remind you that emotional intelligence is the combination of self-awareness of self-management, social awareness and relationship management.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So that means that in any situation, two people are a team are understanding what's going on inside, how they're managing that emotion, and then being aware of the emotion of others in the room, or an individual in the room, and managing that relationship so you can achieve your goals with compassion and accountability.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So you can see how emotional intelligence and decision-making are so tightly connected.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's a model that I love that will help with this in building trust on teams.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Building trust requires people to be vulnerable, vulnerable in terms of their strengths and limitations that we will talk about in step three.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But that vulnerability demonstrates the team.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: where I'm strong and where I'm weak and not hold in because of a fear of an emotional fear that somebody could discover there's something I don't know.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I've got news for you.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We all don't know.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: We all don't know how to do.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But as teams, we have the opportunity with effective emotional intelligence, connection, and effective decision making to bring that
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So putting all this together kind of reminds me of a coaching opportunity that I had with an executive and it was a new vice president and We sat down in his office.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've been working together for maybe three or four months and he said he had a situation And the situation was that he worked in a construction company and one of his project managers had asked several of the construction workers to come to his house and do some work on his house
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I know in that organization, if they asked permission, they would allow that occasionally just to help somebody out, but he did it behind the scenes and he did it for several days.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When this executive found out about this, he brought the person in the office, he told him he had to stop this, that this was against company policy, and if he did it again, he would be having a more serious conversation with him.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: About two months later, in another coaching session, he says to me, I cannot believe that I'm talking to you about this again, but this guy did the same thing again, and I said, So you were made a commitment you were going to let him go and he said, yeah, but he's working on this really important project and I really can't let him go in the middle of this project and I said, well, so what are you going to do, he said, well,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's only gonna take maybe a few more weeks.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna let him finish this project and then I'm gonna have to let him go.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, that's your decision, okay?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So a few weeks goes by, we have another meeting, a few more weeks, a few more weeks, a few more weeks.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a few months that went by.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, so what's going on?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He says, well, you know, he makes another excuse, okay?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: What I realized is this executive had never fired anybody before and you could tell that it was tearing him up.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he was tearing him up for all the right reasons that we think about when we have to change someone's life with determination.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was thinking about the guy's family.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was thinking about his life, all of these things that he was thinking about, which is really, really important.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And this is a company that has a big heart and they care about people.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's part of the value
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's okay most of the time.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So we talked a few times and another month goes by.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, have you talked to the CEO and the president about this?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, yeah, they support the decision.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So when are you going to do it?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm going to do it soon.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: A couple more weeks go by.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sitting in his office again.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, he has not pulled the trigger.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's time for the coach to step in and I said, hey, you know what?
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to worry about him anymore.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I think this problem has been taken care of all by itself.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, well, what do you mean?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, you've got the president's support, right?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He was, yeah, and you've got the CEO support, right?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it's against company policy, right?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you haven't done it yet, right?
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's right.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, don't worry about him.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They'll find somebody to fire him, and it won't be you.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he goes, oh, uh,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Said, so what are you going to do?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He's he'll be gone by Friday.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I said, okay, let's see.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe you by Thursday He called me up and he said he had he had terminated him.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a very very difficult decision Okay, so there's a lot of factors involved here in this particular case There was a policy that was was broken and violated and it was a simple black and white thing However, there's all of these other factors with family and longevity this guide worked there for years
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  [SPEAKER_00]: But there was one other piece of this whole thing in taking so long to make the decision that this executive wasn't considering.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think for one minute there weren't other people in that organization that knew that this project manager was violating those policies?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course they did.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The workers know more about what's going on than the vice president.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Trust me, eventually what happens in situations like this is the workers and the other managers lose trust in faith in the executive because the decision wasn't made to let someone go who is violating company policies.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: They start to question the trust of the executive.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I will say that that happened about 13 years ago.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That leader now is the president of that division and understands when he has to pull the trigger, when he has to make those tough decisions, but he had to overcome the emotional fear and challenge in that moment because he has such a big heart.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: That is self management and relationship management in a situation that none of us want to
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I learned about the power of having the right people on the team very early on, and I mean early on.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's almost July 4th, and this show might go on after July 4th, which is our 250th anniversary of the United States of America.
• 12:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: 50 years ago, during the 200th anniversary, I was a brand new second lieutenant in the army.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: My first platoon was a modapul of 35 mechanics,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: About two weeks after I took over the job, Sergeant McCant walked into my office with a stack of folders and dropped them on my desk.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, what are these, Sergeant?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: He said, these are seven people in this platoon that don't belong in this man's army.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Now back then, it was this man's army.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I have to tell you, this person's army today, okay?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So I said, well, what's the problem?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, they just don't belong.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And my history with the Army, these gentlemen need to go on to another career.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, well, let's review the facts and we did.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, okay, so what do you need for me?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he said, all I need is your support.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you've got it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is it taking so long for you to get the support?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And he looked at me and it is most professional manner said to me, the previous Patuton leader wouldn't support it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we got rid of those seven, okay, and the productivity of the motor pool went up significantly, not only were we able to get all of our work done each week, but every Friday afternoon we had training
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: for the troops that training included volleyball and beer I just want to put it out there okay but those 28 people that were left there's 28 mechanics got more done than the 35 did prior to that because they had to rework all of the stuff from these other seven that didn't belong there.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So I learned very early that competency in the right situation is very important.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: And there were other factors in this particular case.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's summarize this for a second.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's think about this because this gets complicated in leadership, right?
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Motion intelligence, decision making, effective relationship building, achieving goals together, compassionate accountability.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: When I use the phrase, compassionate accountability, people I have people that often will say, I love that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: I just I love that.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It kind of combines things.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: it does and understand that when you have just accountability, then the message that you're giving this human being, this your humanness doesn't count.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: It's outcome, output, goal achievement, task completion only.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: You're a robot, get it done and that's it.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Great organizations aren't built around that.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great organizations are built around the talents and the strengths and the humanness of each individual that feels like they belong in that organization, not like they're forcing themselves to fit in.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all wanna belong to something.
• 14:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when we find an organization that aligns with our basic value set and we can express that values within an organization and then use the talents, strengths and competencies to contribute.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: you just create teams that are absolutely amazing and it all comes together.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The leaders responsibility is to understand each person's personality, talents, competencies, strengths, and interpersonal interaction in order to be able to contribute at the highest level with that team.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Step one and step two, help us.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: really understand how to bring all that together as leaders.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Step three, which we will talk about next in detail on strengths, limitations, and grit, will help us understand what the next step is in developing and creating great teams from the inside out.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: So just wrap in this whole idea up around decision making because I think we have a fallacy here that most leaders think that making decisions is hard.
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  [SPEAKER_00]: The decision is self-isn't hard.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's understanding when to make the decision and how to overcome the fear.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The hard part is admitting that you have been calling something thoughtful when you have actually been feeling afraid.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Overcoming that is the challenge.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Make the call, make a smaller one if you have to,
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  [SPEAKER_00]: Set that deadline and make the decision.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this episode has helped you, share it with the leader who needs to hear it.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Follow leading from the front wherever you listen, and I will see you in the next one.