How do You Make Decisions?
After a fifteen-year on-again, off-again quest, I found a copy of a book I remember from my early childhood, I Decided. Rereading it after more years than I care to share with you, the story was just as I remembered. A little girl goes shopping with her mother and is allowed to pick one toy. She weighs her options, thinks through the possibilities, and makes an informed decision. She can’t wait for her father to come home from work so she can tell him about her choice. I loved that book and made my mother read it over and over until I could read it for myself. It described my decision-making process to a T. Have you ever thought about how you make decisions? Before you can answer this question and explain your decision-making process to someone else, it might be helpful to spend some time reviewing exactly how you do make decisions.
The employees who ask you (or who would ask you if they thought they could), How do you make decisions? are trying to understand what goes on behind the scenes so they can better understand the decisions you make. They will learn to make better independent decisions if you help them envision the kinds of things you consider as you make decisions. You could share what kinds of decisions are hard for you and which ones are easy. You could share with them how you gather data as well as how much data you gather before you feel confident of the facts behind an issue. You could let them know under what circumstances you go with your gut feeling and when you need logic to prevail. You could share how you decide who you go to in order to bounce ideas and possible solutions around. You could, if you’re really brave, talk about bad decisions you’ve made and how you came to make them. Even better, you could talk about how you learned from a bad decision and how you changed your decision-making behavior because of it.
You could ask the person questioning you how they make decisions and what they’ve learned about decision-making in their previous jobs. You could assure them that organizations are stronger when different people employ many different ways of making decisions as long as everyone does their homework before they decide. You could challenge them to become better decision-makers.
I could lend you my copy of I Decided.