The act or function of providing leadership and the direction on how to make wise decisions
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Many people think that decision-making is a result of personality rather than a strategic choice. With that said, leaders need to understand that personality can’t stand in the way of making critical corporate decisions. Successful leaders can alter their approach to decision-making to accommodate the demands of diverse business situations. Show
[ Want a shareable PDF of this article? Download it now ] This article will break down four styles of decision-making, when to apply them, and when it’s time to try a new approach. 1. Directive decision-makingA directive decision-maker typically works out the pros and cons of a situation based on what they already know. Directive decision-makers are very rational and have a low tolerance for ambiguity. Their decisions are rooted in their own knowledge, experience, and rationale, rather than going to others for more information. The upside to this style is decision-making is quick, ownership is clear, and it doesn’t require extra communication. However, directive decisions can sometimes be made impulsively, without all the necessary information. When to use directive decision-making This style of decision-making lends itself well to situations characterized by stability, repeating patterns, and consistent events. Reserve directive decisions for instances where there is a clear and undisputed cause-and-effect relationship; in other words, a right answer exists and is understood collectively. A leader’s role in directive decision-making A leader needs to sense the situation, categorize it as a scenario that calls for a direct decision and respond appropriately. Make sure there are best practices in place for recurring processes. When classifying the situation, remember to ask yourself: Is this my decision to make, and do I have all the required information to make this decision? Delegate if necessary, but remember to communicate in clear, direct language. It’s a leader’s job to understand when extensive, interactive communication is unnecessary and to make direct decisions based on the information they already have. Signs you need to use a different approach If you start using direct decisions to make complex jobs simple, you need to change your approach. When operations are running smoothly, it’s easy for leaders to fall victim to complacency. Leaders need to be mindful of the changing complexity of particular situations. If you start using direct decisions to make complex jobs simple, you need to change your approach. Understand that changing circumstances call for changing decision-making styles. [ Where is your team's digital transformation work stalling? Get the eBook: What's slowing down your Digital Transformation? 8 questions to ask. ] 2. Analytic decision-makingAnalytic decision-makers examine much information before taking action. For example, analytic leaders rely on direct observation, data, and facts to support their decisions. However, unlike directive decision-makers, an analytic decision-maker will seek information and advice from others to confirm or deny their own knowledge. These decision-makers have a high tolerance for ambiguity and are very adaptable, but they like to control most aspects of the decision process. This style is a well-rounded approach to decision-making but can be time-consuming. When to use analytic decision-making Analytic decisions are helpful in situations where there may be more than one right answer. Use this style of decision-making to solve problems where the cause-and-effect relationship is discoverable but not immediately apparent. Primarily, you’re using this approach to explore several options or solutions and using fact-based management to guide appropriate action. A leader’s role in analytic decision-making Unlike directive decision-making, leaders need to analyze all the information available to them before deciding on a course of action. It’s beneficial to assemble a team of industry experts to assist with analytic decisions; however, leaders need to consider conflicting advice and ideas openly. At the same time, leaders need to consider the viewpoints of non-experts in order to make the most of the analytic decision-making process. Signs you need to use a different approach The most significant warning sign of overuse of the analytic decision style is analysis paralysis. If you find yourself functioning in a state of over-analyzing or over-thinking without action or reaching a decision, you need to drop this approach. There may not be an "I" in team, but there is an "I" in disengaged. What does this have to do with leadership? Well, regardless of what, why and where you lead, you -- as the leader -- are directly responsible for the engagement of those who follow you. Whether you're leading a
family, a class or a corporation, leadership means inspiring others to achieve certain outcomes. And it's up to you to decide whether you are leading positively or negatively -- and whether you choose to focus on engagement or merely output. "Improving your leadership begins with a focus on improving what you're already good at." Leadership can often be equal parts high confidence and self-esteem and worrying if you're doing it
right while continually searching for answers. Whether you're a leader in an organizational setting or have high influence in some other capacity, improving your leadership begins with a focus on improving what you're already good at. We would call that leading with your strengths: the things that come naturally to you and that help you succeed daily. When you intentionally apply your strengths as a leader, that's when your life and the lives of those you lead begin to change. This page will provide you with new ways to think about your role or position as a leader. Legitimate improvement begins with a refusal to ascribe to one-size-fits-all solutions. Stay with us, discover why your strengths matter and then learn to use yours to become a transformational leader. 02 What Is Leadership?Improving leadership is an idea that can be difficult to grasp in tactical or practical ways. The first step to improving it is to define it. Our leadership definition, in its simplest form, means "the act of getting individuals aligned and moving in the same direction toward a desired outcome."  Picture this: a world where every leader knew what goals they wanted to achieve, knew how to get their followers working toward that goal and knew how to use their strengths to get there. The world would be a much different place, wouldn't it? Effective leadership has a lot to do with inspiring, aligning and then activating -- but it doesn't end there. A key to effective leadership is the ability to define outcomes, but then helps individuals put their talents to use to get there. The best leaders know their people and are more aware of those people's strengths than they are of their weaknesses. Great leaders aren't blind to their own or others' weaknesses; they just know that their competitive edge lies within their strengths. Let's put this into perspective. Consider the owner of a successful bakery. Let's call him Jim. When Jim was in culinary school, he wanted to open a restaurant, but there was a problem. He was terrible at cooking. He burned every pasta dish and dried out every chicken entree. However, when it came to the art of baking, he excelled -- nobody was better. Jim also had a natural knack for leadership, often pulling other students into his projects and helping them learn through his expertise -- whether it was people or pastries, he knew what he was doing. And even better, he knew that what he had originally desired had changed. Now, his friends and family wanted Jim to follow his original dream. His instructors offered him extra cooking lessons because they knew he could get better. His peers told him to work harder, saying, "Jim, we know you're good at baking. You're the best -- a natural! But forget that. Your dream is to cook. Just spend more time on that." But he didn't listen. Jim opened his own bakery, hired full-time staff and grew a successful business. From an outsider's perspective, it was easy to see what Jim should do. The advice from Jim's inner circle wasn't great. Their intentions were, but they were ignoring natural excellence and emphasizing weakness in hopes of mediocrity. It's the type of advice leaders fall prey to often. "Spend most of your time developing your weaknesses to become a stronger leader" -- when really, you could acknowledge those weaknesses but use your strengths to make up for them. Not focusing on weaknesses and focusing on strengths is countercultural -- but the best leaders don't follow. They are willing to stray from the way things have always been done and be open to better ways to succeed. Defining Leadership Roles and ExpectationsHaving clear expectations in your role as a leader is vital to success. Most of the time, understanding your role and the expectations that come with it begins with deciding what outcomes or goals need to be met. Whether you define them yourself or have an organization define them for you, they need to be clear, manageable and well-communicated. When leaders lack clear expectations for their own roles and outcomes, it can create a lack of trust among their followers. They can come off as incompetent and lose buy-in from their team members. Think of any leader you've had personal experience with. If you asked them, "What is the outcome of this supposed to be?" or "What is the purpose?" and they said, "I don't know," there would be an apparent issue with how they go about fulfilling the duties of their role. Action item: List out the responsibilities of your role -- both those that were ascribed to you and the ones you took on yourself. Outlining the expectations and responsibilities of your role as a leader will help you know where and how to focus your energy. 03 Leadership Traits: What Makes a Good LeaderA good leader takes responsibility for their leadership. They understand that everything they do directly affects the people they lead. In other words, the best leaders lead with their followers in mind. We've studied which leadership skills are the most important to a follower. What do you think we found? Maybe "good communication," "motivational" or "highly committed"? While these traits are certainly important for leaders, what followers crave the most are trust, compassion, stability and hope. Check out the descriptions below. Which one of these traits do you excel in? Which one doesn't come as naturally to you, and how can you lean on strong complementary partnerships for that trait? The Most Important Leadership TraitsTrust Building trust is the foundation for leading. Honesty, clarity and behavioral predictability all make up trust. Leaders must adopt the trait of trustworthiness and prioritize it as one of their most important skills -- because without it, people won't feel as confident to follow. Example: Share your concerns or struggles as a leader. By modeling this, your followers will be more likely to trust you with theirs. Compassion Bring positive energy and a willingness to listen. Being compassionate means caring about your followers holistically while seeing them as more than just their ability to perform. Compassionate leaders should be willing to share their own struggles and accept the same honesty from others. Example: React calmly and empathetically when followers are dealing with difficult situations in work or life. From family burdens to workplace burnout, modeling compassion can help them succeed. Stability Ensure people can count on you. Providing stability looks like creating space where people feel psychologically safe, like they can depend on you to answer their questions, hear their ideas and address their concerns. Communication is key for this trait. Stability puts emphasis on the current moment, keeping people grounded in the here and now -- knowing they can count on you. Example: Try to be as consistent as you can when responding to those who follow you. Seek to answer the questions your followers have. This will help provide the stability they crave. Hope Encourage people to believe in a better future. While stability focuses on today, hopefulness deals with the future. People need to see that their leaders have a clear direction in mind. They want to have faith that their leaders are guiding them in the right direction. When leaders communicate hope, they can help followers feel more enthusiastic about the future. Example: Talk about the future as if it's bright. Even when things are hard, you can acknowledge difficulties while still communicating the best possible outcome to your followers. To practically apply these traits, make them a part of your everyday communication. Every email, conversation, instruction, etc., should be building hope, trust, stability and compassion. Learn more about these essential leadership traits (also called the "four needs of followers") from Gallup experts. 04 Seven Expectations for LeadersIf you Google "effective leadership skills," "developing leadership skills," "characteristics of a good leader" or anything in that ballpark, you'll notice a pattern: Almost every article, website or business leadership skills "solution" is geared toward trying harder and investing in developing weaknesses. Or trying to adopt certain leadership qualities that simply don't come naturally. This isn't the right way. It doesn't produce long-lasting results. Great leaders actually start somewhere else: They start with an awareness of their strengths. They should begin with a goal in mind, communicate the desired outcomes and then identify where they've had success in the past -- and then consider how they'll use those successes to help them now. Self-awareness is key in using your strengths. It's hard to use something you're not aware that you have. What all leaders need is a fresh look at the leadership behaviors that actually contribute to performance, development and success. These are the expectations for every leader:
These expectations work in any scenario where there's a leader. No, really -- think about it. CEOs? For sure. Professors or teachers? Definitely. The leader of your small group at church or facilitator of a book club? No doubt. Being able to do these seven things well can be the biggest differentiator between being an average leader and an exceptional leader.
Want to increase your self-awareness and develop as a leader? Download this free activity to connect your natural talents to leadership outcomes -- and discover how you excel as a leader. 05 The Most Effective Leadership StylesYou may have wondered, "What kind of leader am I?" There are countless ways you could answer this question. But most people look to academic leadership theories or find a list of leadership personality traits and different leadership styles to try to answer this. For example, there's transformational leadership or authentic leadership. Well, wait, aren't all leaders supposed to be these two things? Then there's transactional leadership and laissez-faire leadership, or you could be more autocratic or a coaching leader. OK, now I'm really confused. With many ways to pinpoint your leadership styles or categorize your relationships with your followers, your attempts may leave you feeling discouraged or irritated. But if you're not sure what kind of leader you are, how are you supposed to find support or improve? Instead, ask yourself a different question: Why and how do I lead? Most leadership categories are all about how a person behaves when they're leading a group -- when really, you should be focusing on the things that you already know and that are easier to identify: your natural patterns of excellence. These natural strengths tell you more about why you lead the way you do and how you lead best than about what kind of leader you are. Maybe something you're naturally drawn to as a leader is being vocal and being someone who is always in front of the room. This could be your Communication theme. Influencing Or maybe you find yourself being the leader who is always pushing their team to go further, reach higher and continually challenge themselves. This could be your Achiever theme. Executing Could you be the leader who is energized by brainstorming sessions and who loves thinking about all the things that could be? This could be your Ideation theme. Strategic Thinking Or maybe you're the type of leader who listens to everyone's individual story and sees the unique value that every follower brings to your team. This could be your Individualization theme. Relationship Building Each leader is naturally drawn to different things, so you may find that more traditional ways of compartmentalizing leadership styles leave you feeling confused. Instead, answer the questions presented by the four domains of leadership below.
Traditional methods of leadership discovery say to choose the statement that best describes you to discover what one specific type of leader you are. Top Left Quadrant: I am task-oriented and like to get things done. Top Right Quadrant: I can motivate others and can often be commanding. Bottom Left Quadrant: I am more analytical in my approach to leadership, always lost in thought. Bottom Right Quadrant: I tend to focus on relationships and can understand where my followers are coming from.
The four domains of leadership say, "You naturally do all of these things; you just do them differently than others. Let's discover your unique way of leading." Top Left Quadrant: How do you make things happen? Top Right Quadrant: How do you influence others? Bottom Left Quadrant: How do you absorb, think about and analyze information and situations? Bottom Right Quadrant: How do you build and nurture strong relationships? The four domains of leadership are a helpful framework because when you search for one specific leadership style, you wind up trying to spend more time categorizing than you do developing. Each of the four domains encompasses a set of CliftonStrengths that fit that category. Leaders who know their CliftonStrengths become more effective leaders in a few ways. Knowing their strengths helps them:
Those who know and use their CliftonStrengths are also: 6x as likely to be engaged at work 7.8% more productive in their role 3x as likely to have an excellent quality of life 6x as likely to do what they do best every day Simply understanding your strengths makes your life better -- and who wouldn't want to have a higher quality of life and be more effective? Haven't discovered your strengths yet? Get started and take the assessment today. 06 Leadership vs. ManagementAt the end of the day, leaders and managers are both focused on two things: developing people and delivering team (or organizational) success. Leadership: Traditionally, leaders have been responsible for creating the overall strategic vision. Management: Managers are the ones who "get things done," execute leadership direction and direct teams. But as the workplace continues to change, the line between the roles of leaders and managers continues to blur. Driven by the pace of change in globalized business and an evolving workforce that prioritizes development and flexibility, today's business world is agile and dynamic. As a result, a manager's role is far more than supervisory -- and Gallup finds that 70% of the variance in a team's engagement is influenced by the manager. Furthermore, the traditional role of a boss as a command-and-control function does not work for today's workforce. The expectation is for the manager and leader to be more of a coach than a boss. THE PAST
OUR FUTURE
The biggest difference between a leader and a manager is where they fall within an organization. A manager is someone who is usually in charge of leading people, where a leader is in charge of leading the people who lead people. Leaders are more responsible for creating the strategic vision and are a little more removed from the front lines. Managers are more about getting the actual work done. Check out this video that talks about the differences between leadership and management: 07 How to Lead a Team to SuccessSuccess is measured and defined differently by all, which means that good information on how to lead your team to success or understanding what makes a successful team can be hard to find. Before you know how to lead, you need to know what a successful team looks like. A successful team is a team where individuals are positioned to do what they do best and get the resources and partnerships they need to do their best work. Leading a successful team requires you to identify the unique contributions that every person on your team makes -- including yourself. CliftonStrengths makes this easier. Having team members discover, develop and lead with their strengths can lead to higher employee engagement and performance, which are outcomes of a successful team. However, they aren't the most important outcomes because giving your employees the opportunity to do what they do best is the greatest measure of a successful team. To lead a successful team, be willing to admit to your team that you're not great at everything. It's good to acknowledge, and it's even better for your team to hear. Conventional wisdom says that to become a better leader, you should develop the areas where you are naturally weak. And to be a good leader, you encourage your team to do the same. But CliftonStrengths says you should invest in the places where you're naturally strong. "Identify the unique contributions that every person on your team makes -- including yourself." Here's a practical way for you and your team to understand each other's strengths and intentionally aim them at your goal -- the Team Strengths Grid. As a leader, you could look at your team's grid to determine who would good be partners to:
Position individuals to do what they do best, better use each individual's strengths, build more effective partnerships and teams, and then mobilize the team to increase individual and team effectiveness. For more information about the team grid and bringing strengths to your team, contact us. 08 Leadership DevelopmentIf your attempts to develop in the past have fallen short, it may be because too few leadership development programs can clearly define the experiences that lead to excellence in leadership. They don't individualize, they can't match leader to experience at the time it's most needed, and they don't help leaders analyze their experiences so they can effectively apply them in the future. Don't overcomplicate your development. Start with these three areas: 1 We believe that knowing your strengths is a great foundation for creating a leadership development plan. When you take the CliftonStrengths assessment, you will get a report with personalized results. Our CliftonStrengths 34 report (featuring all 34 strengths in rank order) will help you discover what you do best and give you the confidence to live and work every day using those strengths. The descriptions of your top strengths, and the order in which they appear, will be unique to you. Because just as we believe that no two leaders lead the same way, we also believe that no two people have the same strengths. Take the Assessment 2 Learn to identify your own key experiences. Key experiences are some of the most critical components of leader success. Put simply, "Key experiences are events in a leader's life that result in learning, growth and/or increased capacity to effectively lead." Every role and every industry looks different, but key experiences are one of the foundational elements to leadership development anywhere. Here are a few examples of key experiences that have helped develop leaders in the workplace:
Although those key experiences will look different for each person, you can notice a pattern or commonality between them all. Embracing new situations and being uncomfortable are important parts of developing as a leader. When things look tough, lean in. That's where growth happens. 3 Take a look at the seven expectations for leaders. If you truly want to develop, those are where you should begin. Start with a self-assessment. At first glance, which one of these core leadership competencies do you do really well? How can you get even better? Then determine which one doesn't come as naturally. How can you use your natural strengths to develop it?
For more details, check out the Seven Expectations for Leaders section. And to get started right now, download this free activity to help you develop. 09 Our Best Leadership AdviceYour time is best spent when you're sharpening your skills and honing your talents. Stop worrying about what you're bad at, and start working harder at developing what you're good at. What is the purpose of decision making as a leadership function?Decision-making is a leadership skill that managers use to assess a situation and determine how the organization may proceed. The decision-making process involves the following steps: Identifying the challenge: In this step, the manager discovers an issue and determines the circumstances that led to the situation.
What are the functions of leadership?Leadership is an essential component required where a group of people are working to achieve the common goal.. Setting goals. ... . Organising. ... . Take initiatives. ... . Cooperation among employees. ... . Motivation and direction. ... . Liaison between workers and management. ... . Policy making.. What leadership behaviors do you use when making decisions?5 Decision-Making Skills for Successful Leaders. ... . Identify critical factors which will affect the outcome of a decision. ... . Evaluate options accurately and establish priorities. ... . Anticipate outcomes and see logical consequences. ... . Navigate risk and uncertainty. ... . Reason well in contexts requiring quantitative analysis.. How does leadership influence decision making?Leaders are responsible for establishing a process by which decisions are made. This process is critical to organizations because it can hinder or facilitate goal execution, job satisfaction, and overall effectiveness.
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