OS 102: Leadership Skill of Discernment

Leadership Skill of Discernment The culture of compromise is often accepted as the price of mass. But in fact, this is the crowded road to popular acceptance, and it works far less often than the compromisers believe it will. - Seth Godin* Ours is a world where we are saturated with information, which we are expected to absorb and respond to, often instantly. Not only must we respond, but the expectation is that we will make decisions with wisdom, with justice, with compassion and with a whole array of other values. - Loretto Gettemeier, D.C.** Making the Best Decisions A big part of leadership is decision making. I advocate for not making decisions in a vacuum. Leadership is establishing a culture of excellence. Leadership is building a team of leaders. Leadership is a collaboration building synergy. Despite all of those things I've said about leadership and collaboration, the leader is ultimately responsible for the decisions. Discernment is a key leadership skill. Having written guiding principles is essential for the leader to have discernment in making effective decisions. There should be guiding principles for the leader personally and guiding principles for the organization, the team, the board, for any group or person working and making decisions. These principles provide a lens for viewing the issues and for guiding the decisions. As the second quote above points out, we have lots of data coming at us rapidly. This only complicates our decision making process. Therefore, I have created these 3 principles for anchoring myself for making the best decisions: 1. Perspective: This is the most difficult of the three. We have so many things coming at us, it’s important to get away from the tyranny of the urgent to understand the consequences of each decision. One great tool is the 4 quadrants taught by Stephen Covey. The 4 quadrants are: Urgent and Critical; Urgent and Not Critical; Not Urgent and Critical; and Not Urgent and Not Critical. Planning our work helps to keep us in the Not Urgent and Critical quadrant. Unfortunately, we spend too much time in the Urgent and Critical quadrant wasting time and energy by losing the choice of the best timing to make the decision. There are sliding priorities that are not predictable, so careful planning allows us to accommodate those sliding priorities. Otherwise, we are so driven by the urgent that was left until the last minute, we compromise both the new priority and that which was left undone. This creates stress. 2. Emotion: Managing stress is so critical for leaders.

Om Podcasten

Converting Passion to Profit is a podcast by Hugh Ballou, The Transformational Leadership Strategist teaching leaders to convert their ideas into income. Each session is packed with practical concepts for immediate application.