Leadership or Management?

Does being decisive mean a good decision?

By Christina Ryan DLI CEO

Often leadership coaching seems to involve slowing someone down so that they can observe a situation from multiple perspectives, but what would happen if that slow down came at the beginning of the situation rather than retrospectively?

Modern management has evolved into a demand operate at speed. Part of that need for speed has been the push for those in positions of responsibility to be decisive, to make the right decision quickly. Is being able to make a fast decision good leadership, or is it simply reaching an outcome?

Usually moving fast means also moving on your own, and good leadership is not about moving on your own. It requires collaboration and a deeper understanding of who will be impacted.

Moving quickly, making fast decisions, knowing that you are “right” is part of conventional thinking in vertical development terminology. It can be good management, but that does not make it good leadership. And, how do you even know that you are right? It is a decision based on your single perspective.

In a world that desperately needs good leadership, being right and imposing that individual sense of right on others can take communities in a different direction to where they want to go.

Something that characterises post conventional thinkers, those who think more outside the box, is that they are more likely to ask questions than provide answers. They are more likely to seek the views of others and to pull together collaborations to address problems.

Bringing other people into a process allows us to identify what the “right” question is. If the right question isn’t being asked, then the right decision will be hard to find. A fast decision based on what one person knows may feel right to that person, but it may struggle to be a good decision.

If a decision disenfranchises those who it is about, then it is not a good decision because it is the result of asking the wrong question. If a decision is focussed on the desired outcome of one person, then it risks being framed around the wrong question because the multiple perspectives needed to consider the impact of the decision are absent. (Benno Torgler talked about this in a recent article outlining the need for public morphologists.)

The push for faster processes, decisions, and outcomes is squashing the potential for good leadership.

Good leadership is about bringing people with you, and to do that people need to feel part of a decision-making process so that they can relate to how the decision was arrived at.

The push for fast management is hindering the ability of managers to be good leaders. It is forcing managers into being decision factories who impose their decisions in order to achieve rapid outcomes. But when those decisions need to be retrofitted to factor in the missing perspectives, how much time was really saved?

Good decision making doesn’t need to be a slow process, but it does need to be collaborative. Good decisions are the result of asking the right question, and asking the right question will involve multiple perspectives. Good decisions are the result of asking not telling.

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Christina Ryan is the CEO of the Disability Leadership Institute, which provides professional development and support for disability leaders. She is a certified adult vertical development coach and identifies as a disabled person.