of principles and preferences
When you’ve got a robust feedback culture, it can be easy as a leader to avoid some uncomfortable deciding by deferring to your colleagues. You can also get yourself into a pickle, making your deciding harder, by doing this. It’s pickled because your people want different things. They are good at their jobs, they are good folks, you want to do right by them. You may have your own take on the question at hand, further complicating matters. Whose take should win the day?
I find it helpful to get out of this knot by asking if this is a decision rooted in principles or preferences. The preferential ones you can decide by poll (most popular option wins) or by designating a winner (maybe looking for someone whose preferences don’t get met as often or whose take should get a good test) or by delegation (which is a way of designating a winner).
The principle ones probably shouldn’t be decided by poll. The good news about this is you’re not at the mercy of conflicting opinions (even if you may wisely pay attention to them). An impasse among your teammates need not be an impasse for you.
A decision that calls into question a principle is really a little theater of leadership. If you’re a leader, this is the kind of thing you need to develop skill at doing and communicating - and teaching others to do, too. Poll numbers (or worse, your sense of the vibes from different parts of the organization) are a crummy basis for this critical work.
Consider instead making a call that blends your intuition, facts you’ve gathered, takes/advice/recommendations from others in the org, and an explicit interpretation of the principle (or core value) you think is at play. Tell your people that’s what you’re doing. Tell them further that this is the kind of thing folks should likely be doing in their own work regularly - using the info they have, perspectives they don’t, and shared values to make principled decisions.
You won’t avoid mistakes or bad calls this way. But they’ll likely be more useful mistakes.
-Eric
