Decision Making For Good Leadership

Decision-Making is of prime importance for good leadership. Generally it is thought that a good leader takes all decisions and they have to be the best. In this modern age it is impossible for one person to take all the decisions and for all the decisions to be the best. There are too many unseen variables and too many people involved in implementation for a leader to take all the decisions and for them to be the best ones.

However, understanding the types of decisions and the people involved in making them can help the leader to manage the complexity of decision making. The factors that make decision-making easier and the types of decisions are given below.

Decisions are Data-Based

A good leader makes decisions based on data, which is analyzed for patterns of information. The information is then used to make thought-through decisions.

While it is true that you cannot know everything, doing an analysis of available data about a predicament will, nevertheless, lessen risks of failure.

While all decisions need to be data-based, there are at least four different kinds of decisions.

1. Paradigm Decisions

Paradigm decisions are those which provide guidelines for decision-making for all people in an organization or team. Decisions such as: Having a smoke-free organization, having a non-discriminatory people policy, etc. are paradigm decisions. They help team members and leaders to take the right decisions when they are faced with a dilemma

Such decisions need to be made with the involvement of everybody. The consensus process is a very useful methodology to make such decisions.

2. Policy Decisions

Policy decisions are necessary to provide for resources and official permission for the operations of an organization.

For instance if the Performance Appraisal Process needs to be reviewed, then a couple of policy decisions need to be taken. A decision needs to be taken to set-up a committee which will analyze the existing process. The different teams in an organization need to volunteer a representative to become members of the committee.

The management team needs to allocate money and time for this team to function and come up with an insightful report.

All decisions that are taken to ease the functioning of the teams are policy decisions.

Policy decisions are taken in a participatory mode with the involvement of everybody who will be involved in the execution of the task.

3. Procedural of Functional Decisions

Procedural decisions are taken by a few people who will be carrying out the plans/policies/goals of the organization or who will be impacted by the decision. These are decisions that will help implement a process.

For instance, outlining the procedure of recruitment and selection in an organization is a process of detailing the actions that a team will take when they follow this procedure. It will also detail the actions to be taken if there are exceptions.

4. Structured Decisions

Structured decisions are taken by individuals who are directly executing the plans of the organization. These decisions are informed by the data available to the employee, the procedures/structures that have been put in place, and the knowledge of the policies and paradigms of the organization. The decision-maker could be the CEO or the security guard at the gate.

Understanding the kinds of decisions, the number of people who need to be involved in taking them, provides the leader with a confidence to take decisions - sometimes alone and sometimes with others.

This will also give the leader the confidence in the decisions of his team members - as they are taken with an understanding of the values and procedures of the organization.
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