What Does It Mean to Be Decisive? (Episode 56)

Transcript

What does it mean to be decisive?

Sometimes when people think of leadership, they think of decision-making. And when they think of leaders and decision-making, they think of someone who’s decisive. And that’s the word often seen for a leader.

Maybe they see someone sitting in front of a table and issues and problems are coming up and the wind’s whipping their hair from the air vent, and they’re just making decisions left and right. They’re being decisive, whether those decisions have been redone or whatever, that doesn’t matter, but they’re being decisive.

Of course, decision-making is just something leaders do. It doesn’t define what a leader is, but what does it really mean to be decisive?

Is being quick being decisive?

Often, as we just gave in that example, people sometimes think that being decisive is being quick to a decision. And yes, there are times as leader you need to make quick decisions. But is that really what decisive means?

Because it’s easy to get in that mentality sometimes because life happens, things get urgent., and sometimes we can start making decisions because something needs to be done. Or sometimes you want to be seen as giving results, you want to make quick decisions because you want to show that you’re doing something. And it can get in that mentality of quick decisions and this.

But really that’s not how you want to be because you want to make good decisions. I say good… you want to make the best decisions that you can. And to do that, you need to gather information when you can. You want to listen to people, ask questions and get all the information you can in the time you have so that you can make the best decision.

I don’t remember the author of the book, but the book was called Executive Intelligence. And this was a topic that he covered in the book. And he talked about how sometimes leaders, they felt like they had to make those quick decisions and be “decisive.” And they often didn’t have the time to do the research or to gather information but somehow they always had the time to redo things because they didn’t make a good decision, because they didn’t take the time in the first place.

Let’s look at the opposite – being indecisive

What does it really mean then to be decisive? Well, let’s look at what indecisive is. When you’re being indecisive, you can’t decide. You’re going back and forth. You’re being wishy washy. Maybe this, no, maybe that, and you’re just unsure. And often it becomes, it’s out of fear.

Sometimes you want to be that 100% certain, and you can’t be, as we’ve talked about before, is that usually you can’t get all the information. You have to use the best information you have.

But you don’t want to be wrong. You don’t want to make a mistake. You see those decisions as right and wrong, so you don’t want to decide. So you go back and forth because you fear. And so that’s what being indecisive is.

And if you do that as a leader, that of course, harms you first of all, because you’re not moving forward, but also because it’s confusing and frustrating to your team, especially if you’re going back and forth on decisions.

If you do decide like, another part I should say of being indecisive is making a decision and then quickly switching to something else and be like, “Oh, that might be wrong.” So you switch to something else.

That of course is frustrating. That of course makes people while they don’t move forward or don’t want to take steps toward things because they’re not sure if you’re gonna change your mind again.

Dealing with choices

There will be times in your life as a leader making decisions that there’s going to be lots of choices. And of course you want to try to narrow those, but sometimes there’s not one clear answer. You’re not sure which way to go. And it may be time to decide.

What you have to do is, of course, you have the information you’ve gathered, and it’s time to decide, sometimes you just have to choose. You make the choice and move forward with it. You don’t go back and forth. You don’t question yourself out of uncertainty. You make the best decision you can at that time and move forward in that decision.

That doesn’t mean that you never check your decisions. It doesn’t mean that if you don’t get new information, you change. Yes, if new information comes in, then pivot, but that’s different than changing your decision because of fear or because of uncertainty or because you’re afraid you made a mistake so you’re jumping back and forth between choices.

No, when you get new information, then you decide, then you pivot, but don’t do it out of fear.

See it as experimentation, not right or wrong

And one way to see it that can help you with these decisions is to stop seeing the decision-making as being right or wrong. Sometimes we, again, don’t want to make a decision because we’re afraid we’re going to be wrong. But instead see it as experimentation.

See it as, “I’m going to try this. We’re gonna see how it works. If it doesn’t work, that’s okay because it’s just an experiment. Now we know it doesn’t work. So let’s go to a different thing. Let’s try something else.”

And if you see decision-making as that, that can help you press forward and make those decisions even when you’re not certain, because you see it as an experiment versus again, right or wrong. And this really can apply to lots of areas in your life.

Life examples

I don’t know if you’ve ever sat in front of Netflix or Amazon or whatever streaming service you use and you can’t decide. And part of that is because there’s so many choices. But part of it sometimes could be because you fear choosing something you won’t like. And so we don’t wanna be wrong about what we choose and waste our time.

But if you just see it as experimentation and the fact you don’t have to watch the whole show, you can be like, well, let’s just choose something. And if we don’t like it, okay, we learned. We can talk about that we didn’t like it and then just choose something else.

Or even going out to eat. Sometimes, for some, it can be hard to pick a restaurant because you don’t want to choose the wrong restaurant. You don’t want to be wrong. But if you see it as experimentation, okay, let’s just try it. And it’s not, oh, I made a bad decision. We didn’t like it. It’s, well, we learned now we don’t like it. So we know not to come here again.

Experimentation.

What being decisive means

Being decisive is not about rushing to a decision. It’s not about the speed of the decision. It’s about making the decision when it’s time to make the decision. If you have time, you want to gather information. You want to do the research and listen and ask questions.

But when it’s time, you make a decision and you move forward with it. You don’t flip-flop, you don’t wishy-washy, you make a decision, you move forward.

Now, if new information comes in, yes, you can pivot because now you’ve got new information. But you’re not acting out of fear or uncertainty.

I hope that helps.

And remember too, that you can see decision-making as an experiment, as you’re trying to make the best decisions when you don’t have all the information, just experiment, find out, if not, move forward.

You can often take decisions in small steps. Doesn’t always have to be a giant leap.

Again, hope this helps and see you next time.