Leadership through decision making

We all need tools in our leadership toolbox. Let me propose an additional tool for you to add to your toolbox as an effective way to increase your team’s engagement.

I believe we can all agree that one of the key elements of successful leadership is transparency. The more your team knows, the better they can perform. Hidden agendas and relationships kindle distrust and inhibit the teams performance. Trust is at the core of successful leadership and trust can be gained through transparency. One of the techniques in developing transparency is by formalizing how decisions get made. It shouldn’t be a mystery. Itemizing categories of decisions out in the open and who is tasked with each type of decision helps everyone understand how they fit in. Ultimately, you want decisions to get pushed down as far as possible in your department or organization. Letting all team members know who makes the decisions and why creates the transparency needed to gain trust throughout your area of responsibility.

The following grid is a sample for a technology based organization. Each category is an area where decisions are made. Copy it or create your own grid of decision making categories. Get your managers to fill in the grid and use the feedback to finalize your processes. Then socialize among your team and refine as needed. This tool can be frightening for newly minted leaders who fear giving up control. They may see themselves as the ultimate decision maker. Seasoned leaders know this is how you outperform your competitors because you have a highly engaged team where trust runs deep.

If you give this a try, please post back on your results or ways to improve this methodology and tool.