SThis week I was driving to spend the day with a leadership coaching client, and this question popped into my head: What is the greatest risk for leaders – acting too quickly or acting too slowly? While it’s certainly true that we can sometimes act too quickly (without enough research, input, thought and assessment), my experience is that acting too slowly is the truest curse and the biggest risk for leaders. In asking this question to many people this week, I’ve found they mostly have the same opinion. So what makes deciding and acting too slowly the true risk for leaders?
We all know that leadership requires decisiveness, but it’s easy to get caught up in over thinking, over assessing and over analyzing a situation, and this delay in decision and action usually has a negative impact. These potential negative impacts include lost opportunities, changes in the situation which limit the impact of the decision we made and the action we took, diminished returns on our actions, a demoralizing impact on our team (including lack of confidence in the leader), and team uncertainty and lack of trust. All of these are significant and worth the effort to avoid.
One of the key reasons for our delays is the fear of making the wrong decision, rather than focusing on the opportunities from making the right decision. It is often said in sports that you have to decide if you’re going to play to win or play not to lose, and this choice also applies in your leadership. Are you leading to win or leading not to lose? Leading to win often requires that we decide with a sense of urgency and that we take relatively swift action upon our decisions.
Yes, make no mistake about it – a decision is not the same as an action. There’s an old saying that goes like this: Three birds are sitting on a fence, and two decide to fly away. How many birds are still sitting on the fence? The answer is three—deciding to fly away is not the same as flying away! Too often we (and our teams) confuse deciding with acting, but they are not the same. Even once you decide, it’s critical to have an action plan in place to turn the decision into action.
While it’s important to get enough information to make a good decision, our quest for enough information is often the source of our delays and even of our procrastination. Many years ago I read a book by Colin Powell, who had significant leadership roles throughout his career which involved making many major decisions. His rule around decisions and research was simple – research, discuss and consider until you get to a sixty percent confidence level and then go with your gut. Not ninety percent, and not even seventy-five percent – a mere sixty percent and then you decide based upon your gut (and obviously put your decision into action). If it’s good enough for the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense, then it’s good enough for even the biggest of our business decisions.
What is your speed of decision and action and thus your speed of leadership? Are you an urgent and swift leader, or are you leading in the slow lane? If you are not sure, then ask your team members what they think. If they see you as a slow leader, it’s probably time to take your foot off the brake of research and assessment and put your foot down on the accelerator of discernment, decisiveness and action.
The slow lane feels safer, but that’s not where leaders spend their time. The slow lane simply is not where innovation, change and impact happen. No need to rush, but amp up your urgency and your speed of action in order to enhance your leadership and your impact. Are you ready to shift into the leadership lane of action?
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