Everyone is a leader. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a CEO, a manager, or a frontline worker, what you think and do impacts the people around you. The decisions you make can influence others positively – or do the opposite. Therefore, the key to fulfilling your leadership role at work and in life lies in developing your ability to make better decisions.
 

Making better decisions may sound easy but it’s not. We walk through our lives with our minds made up and jump from snap judgment to snap judgment--reactions, opinions, likes, and dislikes that we form in the blink of an eye without a first--much less second--thought.

There are exceptions to this, of course, and we can all probably come up with something we thought long and hard about before committing to it. When we sit down to assess our performance as leaders we tend to focus on those exceptions, on those decisions we see as high stakes or high pressure, as pivotal.

And that makes sense. Everyone faces big decisions and those of us who are in leadership positions do so more often than others. Successful leaders make tough decisions under pressure. If you’re a coach in the NFL, it’s down to you to decide whether or not to call that timeout in the final minutes of the fourth quarter when the other team has the ball on your goal line.

The same is true of our lives and our careers.

As in a football game, all of the decisions you make count. Researchers have estimated that people average 35,000 decisions each day. That's 245,000 decisions per week. over 12 million decisions per year. Our lives are the sum of those decisions.
You don’t think about every single one. Studies have found that about 40 percent of what you do every day is fully automatic. That’s a lot, but it’s not nearly all of your decisions. The majority of your decisions – 65% -- are conscious. You’re in the driver’s seat a lot more than you might think. Other research reveals that decision-making has twice the impact on your performance than talent and skill combined.

On the one end of that, 60% are the big decisions that you see coming and that take the time to consider deeply. You know they matter.

At the other end of the spectrum are decisions that don’t matter much. Deciding which pair of your eight pairs of identical brown socks you are going to wear is never going to be any kind of a high-stakes moment.

What I want to focus on are those in the middle, the low-impact decisions that you make everyday that don’t seem to matter much, but have a real impact. A couple of cookies in the afternoon with your coffee doesn’t make much of a difference, a few cookies a few times a day every day of the week is a lifestyle choice. Being late to every meeting is a statement.

Those thousands of small but intentional decisions are visible to those around you, and that means you have an incredible opportunity to shape your life and career through conscious choices.

What Do You Do When Faced with a Decision?

This is a question that most of us have been asked before, most likely in a class like Management 101. In the classroom context, decision-making is made to sound like a linear, logical process. Step one, identify options, step two, decide on the best option, Step three, Implement the decision.

If only it were that easy.

I’m not saying logic doesn’t play a role, but if you think it’s the only thing involved in decision-making, you’re fooling yourself.

Obstacles to Effective Decision-Making

When you make a decision, several things intervene and interrupt your thinking. Here’s a short list: emotion, bias, overconfidence, excessive optimism. You’re going to have your list, as well as your own tendency to slide in one direction or another. I’m not going to get into where those obstacles to good decision-making come from, but focus on what to do about them -- and how your decisions can improve if you hold off, take a moment, and freeze a situation to give you time to think through the decision you/re about to make.

Recognize
Once you freeze the situation, start with recognizing what is going on, and the impact that it’s having on yourself and those around you. Most crucially, recognition involves seeing what’s moving and motivating those involved--including yourself-- and causing them to react or respond in one way or another.

Reflect
Once you’ve recognized the situation, the next step is to reflect on what is happening and why it matters--how it fits into the big picture of your life, your values, your principles. What do you want this decision to mean? What are the principles and values this decision gives you the chance to demonstrate? Stop, take a breath, recognize the situation and reflect on how what you are going to do reflects on who you know yourself to be.

Reframe
Step three, use that recognition and reflection to reframe the situation. Think of it as a spotlight or a magnifying glass. How do you see the situation differently? What are its most crucial parts? Sometimes you are going to need to change your approach. And here’s a surprising thing, it’s often a feeling of relief that arrives when you step back, freeze the situation, and reframe it. It opens things up and in doing so. That is emotionally freeing.

Respond
Last of all--and for those of you who are keeping score, this is the 4th and final “R” on the list--respond. This takes you back to the tools you may have learned in that Management 101 class about applying quantitative methods to identify and evaluate options.

Positive leadership doesn't require dramatic changes or perfection. It’s the cumulative effect of small, intentional decisions made consistently over time. By focusing on making just one or two better decisions each day, you can create a positive ripple effect in your life and the lives of those around you.

Your decisions matter. The next time you find yourself reacting, hit the pause button, freeze the situation and take yourself through the four Rs of positive leadership: recognize, reflect, reframe, and then--and only then--respond.

Author Bio

Chuck Wachendorfer is the co-author of Don’t Wait for Someone Else To Fix It. He is the President of Distribution at think2perform. He is a renowned leadership development professional and has worked with clients including American Express, Wells Fargo, Comerica Bank, TD Wealth of Canada, Charles Schwab, and others.

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