Sept. 28, 2020
029: Overcoming Indecisiveness
Leaders make decisions every day. You must become comfortable making decisions. There are many types of decisions, and it's critical that as leaders, we make timely decisions so we can move forward. We should not dwell on "what-ifs" or have regret. Make the decision and move on. In the episode, I discuss the following steps to overcoming indecisiveness:
- Change your mindset,
- Know what kind of decision you are making,
- Write down the details of the decision,
- Consult with your experts and your team,
- Analyze your options,
- Make the decision, and
- Communicate your decision.
You can download the Leadership Growth Blueprint for Finance and Accounting Managers here. You can use this guide to develop your leadership by focusing on communication, and growing and empowering your team.
For more resources, please visit stephenmclain.com.
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You can now purchase a course to help you advance your career from Finance Leader Academy. It's called Advance Your Finance and Accounting Career: Developing a Promotion Strategy that Sets You Apart.
Transcript
WEBVTT
00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:07.000
In the episode today I'm talking about overcoming indecisiveness. leaders make decisions every day. You must become comfortable making all sorts of decisions for your team, your organization and for yourself. It's often a mindset issue that stops us from making timely decisions. decision making is a critical part of your leadership ability. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the finance leader podcast where leadership is bigger than the numbers. I am your host Stephen McLain. This is the podcast for developing leaders in finance and accounting. This is episode number 29. And today, I will discuss overcoming in decisiveness. And I will go through the following seven steps. Number one is change your mindset. Number two, know what kind of decision you're making. Number three, write down the details of the decision. Number four, consult with your experts in your team. Number five, analyze your options. Number six, make the decision. And finally number seven, communicate your decision to everyone. Muhammad Ali said once the decision is made, do not look back, do not second guess your decisions. leaders make decisions every day. It what sets us apart from others. If you are striving to become a better leader, you must be comfortable making decisions without dwelling on it or feeling regret for the decision you must make. Sometimes decisions are quick. And sometimes a decision takes more time to analyze and figure out what the outcome you are really trying to achieve and who the decision impacts the most. They can range from decisions about your career path to how your team is composed, and what tasks they do. And also the complex business planning decisions along with strategy, we must make decisions to keep moving forward. That includes for our team for our own career, and for the company we are working for when critical decisions are not made, progress gets stopped. And your people can't act until that decision is made. It prevents you from moving forward and prevents the most critical work from being done for your organization. What type of decision are you making? What impact will this decision have on not only on your people, but also all the stakeholders for your company? And also for the strategy moving forward? And also for potential results and expectations being met or not met for the company? Is it a long term project you're working on? Or is it to resolve conflict or dealing with a crisis right now? Is it about letting a team member ago which can be very tough, and which is a very critical decision that you must be talking with many people who are experts, especially for when transitioning a member out of your team? Why do people get crippled about decision making sometimes a leader wants to be liked and not disliked. It's tough for some and this is what's going to make the difference between effective leaders and ineffective ones when leading change you will not be liked. Trust me. Leading Change is tough leading change is making people uncomfortable. And making those kinds of decisions can be crippling, they can be hard, they can weigh on your mind. And they can make you feel doubt about all sorts of things that are going to go on with your team and around the company you are working at leading change is tough. Leading Change takes courage and you must make those tough decisions. After you have weighed all the options and you've done the analysis. Some people are afraid of risk, and they are afraid of the outcomes that may happen or don't realize what the outcomes could be that unknown of what the outcomes could be really paralyzes some people, some leader don't want to be responsible, and it's tough. Again, this is going to set you apart from your peers. If you have trouble or don't have trouble making decisions. If you can make decisions without regret and not dwelling on the decision you are making. You're far ahead of many others. Sometimes people become overwhelmed in the details. And they can't distinguish between a relevant fact and just a piece of information that really has no bearing on the decision itself. Some people do have a mindset of regret or are paralyzed by what if they regret what could have been but this can't stop us. We can't think about what could have been if we had chosen a different alternative to the decision. We must be focused we must make the decision we must move on and make adjustments as necessary. As leaders we make all sorts of decisions or formally
decide and announce you will not make a decision and that is also very acceptable. Make the decision when you need to. And don't be pressured to make the wrong decision early. Sometimes you may feel pressured by outside forces to make a decision that is not good for the team or the company right now. So you've got to consider the timeliness of a decision. And if that decision is really right for the company, in the team or not, you are the leader, you have to choose according to the requirements on the situation. And also the requirements from your supervisor or other entity that is above you, and position. When dealing with a decision. We need to be aware of our biases. We all have them, often our biases hidden from even us, we may not realize that a bias is affecting how we view others, and how we make decisions about our team. We are how we were raised as children and the some of our influences, including our friends, our family, what church we attend, what we watch on television, and what music we listen to be aware of your bias when making a critical decision that impacts your people. Be aware of your thinking patterns, and anything that can unfairly alter your decision. Be fair, always be aware of how you treat people, and how you speak with your team. So you can make the most fair decision while understanding your bias. So now I want to take you through the seven steps to overcome in decisiveness and to help you make that decision that is looming. Number one is change your mindset. And I love talking about mindset. You hear it from me almost every episode, you have to understand that leaders make decisions. It's what we do, we decide things we prioritize, we set the vision we set how fast or how slow, we move to address and to accomplish the strategy that we have. Our mindset determines everything we do. It's where our confidence comes from. It's where we believe in ourselves, do we believe in ourselves or not? Do we believe that we're gonna make the right decision? Do we believe what we're gonna do is best for the organization and for the team. It's a form of procrastination, like perfectionism, when you don't make the decisions that you have to credibility is lost. When we don't make the critical decisions on time. You have to communicate constantly on what you are doing so as not to lose credibility, even communicate, when you are delaying a decision, are not going to make a decision at all, because others may be waiting for you, or wanting you to make that decision. And it's best if you communicate your intentions and also your plans for that decision. Your team wants someone who can make the tough decisions with its personnel or conflict resolution, or it's about long term strategy, handling a crisis making unpopular changes and leading change when necessary. Your supervisor is also looking for you to make decisions. Because it's what leaders do. It's the expectation that we have when we sign up to lead a team we sign up to lead an organization. Making decisions is part of the job. It's part of the responsibility of making sure the organization moves forward. So if you change your mindset, you will change your outcome. mindset is everything. Having a proper mindset for leadership and making decisions will help you in everything that you have to approach and everything that comes your way. Number two know what kind of decision you're making? Is it a decision that needs to be in the immediate something that has to happen right now? Or is it a long term decision, like strategy or a project you're working on prioritizing tasks
is a daily decision. So this is something you must be doing every day. tasks and requirements come at us from all angles. And we have to make decisions on what tasks are the most important, and assign our people accordingly. And making sure our team is protected from requirements that are not a priority. We have to make decisions around what is important and making sure our team is working on the most important requirement first, and that requires us to make those kind of tough decisions. Also, you may have to assign a very critical project to someone on your team and you have to consider who is the best person to go on that project. That project may be very high visibility and also may give an opportunity for advancement for the person who's going to work on that project. So those kind of projects those kind of decisions are very important and you need to figure out that that is the kind of decision that you will be making. Number three is write down the details. You need to figure out what the relevant facts and assumptions are to the decision. You must prioritize them and you must ensure that they are relevant. Sometimes people come up with facts and assumptions that may be on the border that may have some kind of influence but don't really influence heavily into how the decision is made. continually make sure that the factual assumptions to come up with really do have an impact on the decision on the outcome that you're looking for, you also need to figure out what you are trying to achieve, what is the end state or desired outcome of the decision? What are you trying to get done? Or what has been given to you as an outcome from your supervisor or the board or a senior leader or a C suite? Number? Really, what are you trying to get done? What are you trying to solve? What are you trying to accomplish? And I don't want you to get paralyzed with the details, write down what's relevant, what's important, what's going to have an impact, and just focus on the most important details, don't get paralyzed, China write down everything, what is the most important and then prioritize them. Number four, I want you to consult with your experts. And also with your team, who can you talk to to consider the aspects and details of the decision who also can help you come up with relevant facts and assumptions when choosing who do involve make sure that they will be impacted by the decision to we need people who are advising us who also have skin in the game. So they give real feedback, because those who aren't impacted by the decision may not really care in the long run, because the decision doesn't affect them, you want people who are going to be impacted who are involved, who are going to be part of the project part of the process, or whatever this decision is because they will give you critical feedback on who the decision will impact the most, because they will be impacted. Number five, I want you to analyze your options, consider what choices you have in the decision and then make the very best decision, you can prioritize your options, figure out what the impact is to each making sure you assign the right facts and assumptions to each option. And then this will lead you to make the very best decision that you can possibly make number six, and this is comes the tough part. And that is make the decision, you have weighed your choices, you have done the analysis, you have consulted your experts, and also your team and any other stakeholders who may be impacted, make the decision. And then you can adjust as necessary and move on making sure you have that mindset, we're going to keep going, we have other things to do, we're going to continue to analyze the outcome of that decision. And if we need to make adjustments, we will we're going to commit to executing that decision continuing to adjust but keep moving forward, we have to commit to it, we don't want to look back, we don't want to have regret, we want to get it done, we want to move forward to the next decision. And the next thing that we have to do as a leader and then only readdress this decision if necessary, and we get all that regret out of our head. We commit to it, we get it done, we move on, and we get our team moving on to the next thing that's important. And finally, number seven, I want you to communicate your decision to everyone that is impacted and everyone that may become involved. Everyone who needs to know must know what you decided it will help to build trust and cohesion within the team and organization. If it's a critical decision like strategy or an unpopular change, then you must transition to becoming an influencer to talk with everyone about why it's important that the change is necessary, convince others to commit to that decision, even when you're not around, convince others it's best for the organization. In the long run,
use those influencers skills that we've been working on. It's important to talk with people make your rounds, even on Zune calls, talk and then talk some more continue to talk about change, change that has to happen, and then decision and the desired outcome of that decision. Talk with everyone talk with as many people as you can continue to solicit feedback on how the decision is impacting them, and how the decision is impacting the organization and also how they are being able to do their jobs better or not do better continue to talk with everyone. That's how you make your organization better. And that's how you get buy in and continue to get great feedback on all of the decisions and policies that you may have. Now, when I was in the army, an officer more senior to me told me to not rush to critical decisions and take the time that you need but make the decision not all decisions are the same make the decision or decide not to make the decision but you better communicate what you're doing so others are not left guessing on what the decision is and not left guessing that you've decided to wait to make a decision and it was great advice. It was great advice for my career and great advice that I continue to use today. make the right decisions at the right time. Be timely and making sure you talk with everyone about what you have decided or what you have not decided. I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description or You can go to Stephen McLain calm. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you for an easy one today, if you struggle with decisions, what is causing the struggle, I want you to think about it. I want you to write it down. And I want you to decide today to change we have to keep improving. As a leader, we need to focus on our development and being able to make timely decisions is critical as in our development. As a leader, the next few decisions that come up, make it don't dwell on it, live with the decision, keep doing that process. Get comfortable making decisions, don't dwell about making bad decisions, make the decision, commit to the outcome. Talk with everyone continue to analyze and develop and get better at becoming a leader and becoming the leader who can make the tough decisions. And the decisions in the right timeliness. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering through finance leader Academy is called Advanced your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization. This course helps you analyze what you bring to the organization, how you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead, you can go to Stephen mclain.com. For more details. Today, I talked about how to overcome in decisiveness using the following seven steps. Number one, change your mindset. Number two, know what kind of decision you're making. Number three, write down the details. Number four, consult with your experts and your team. Number five, analyze your options. Number six, make the decision. And number seven, communicate your decision to all those who may be impacted. Next week, I'm going to talk about how you can positively impact the business. I'm going to give you a couple of ways you can help the business grow and improve. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader Podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen mclain.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:07.000
decide and announce you will not make a decision and that is also very acceptable. Make the decision when you need to. And don't be pressured to make the wrong decision early. Sometimes you may feel pressured by outside forces to make a decision that is not good for the team or the company right now. So you've got to consider the timeliness of a decision. And if that decision is really right for the company, in the team or not, you are the leader, you have to choose according to the requirements on the situation. And also the requirements from your supervisor or other entity that is above you, and position. When dealing with a decision. We need to be aware of our biases. We all have them, often our biases hidden from even us, we may not realize that a bias is affecting how we view others, and how we make decisions about our team. We are how we were raised as children and the some of our influences, including our friends, our family, what church we attend, what we watch on television, and what music we listen to be aware of your bias when making a critical decision that impacts your people. Be aware of your thinking patterns, and anything that can unfairly alter your decision. Be fair, always be aware of how you treat people, and how you speak with your team. So you can make the most fair decision while understanding your bias. So now I want to take you through the seven steps to overcome in decisiveness and to help you make that decision that is looming. Number one is change your mindset. And I love talking about mindset. You hear it from me almost every episode, you have to understand that leaders make decisions. It's what we do, we decide things we prioritize, we set the vision we set how fast or how slow, we move to address and to accomplish the strategy that we have. Our mindset determines everything we do. It's where our confidence comes from. It's where we believe in ourselves, do we believe in ourselves or not? Do we believe that we're gonna make the right decision? Do we believe what we're gonna do is best for the organization and for the team. It's a form of procrastination, like perfectionism, when you don't make the decisions that you have to credibility is lost. When we don't make the critical decisions on time. You have to communicate constantly on what you are doing so as not to lose credibility, even communicate, when you are delaying a decision, are not going to make a decision at all, because others may be waiting for you, or wanting you to make that decision. And it's best if you communicate your intentions and also your plans for that decision. Your team wants someone who can make the tough decisions with its personnel or conflict resolution, or it's about long term strategy, handling a crisis making unpopular changes and leading change when necessary. Your supervisor is also looking for you to make decisions. Because it's what leaders do. It's the expectation that we have when we sign up to lead a team we sign up to lead an organization. Making decisions is part of the job. It's part of the responsibility of making sure the organization moves forward. So if you change your mindset, you will change your outcome. mindset is everything. Having a proper mindset for leadership and making decisions will help you in everything that you have to approach and everything that comes your way. Number two know what kind of decision you're making? Is it a decision that needs to be in the immediate something that has to happen right now? Or is it a long term decision, like strategy or a project you're working on prioritizing tasks
is a daily decision. So this is something you must be doing every day. tasks and requirements come at us from all angles. And we have to make decisions on what tasks are the most important, and assign our people accordingly. And making sure our team is protected from requirements that are not a priority. We have to make decisions around what is important and making sure our team is working on the most important requirement first, and that requires us to make those kind of tough decisions. Also, you may have to assign a very critical project to someone on your team and you have to consider who is the best person to go on that project. That project may be very high visibility and also may give an opportunity for advancement for the person who's going to work on that project. So those kind of projects those kind of decisions are very important and you need to figure out that that is the kind of decision that you will be making. Number three is write down the details. You need to figure out what the relevant facts and assumptions are to the decision. You must prioritize them and you must ensure that they are relevant. Sometimes people come up with facts and assumptions that may be on the border that may have some kind of influence but don't really influence heavily into how the decision is made. continually make sure that the factual assumptions to come up with really do have an impact on the decision on the outcome that you're looking for, you also need to figure out what you are trying to achieve, what is the end state or desired outcome of the decision? What are you trying to get done? Or what has been given to you as an outcome from your supervisor or the board or a senior leader or a C suite? Number? Really, what are you trying to get done? What are you trying to solve? What are you trying to accomplish? And I don't want you to get paralyzed with the details, write down what's relevant, what's important, what's going to have an impact, and just focus on the most important details, don't get paralyzed, China write down everything, what is the most important and then prioritize them. Number four, I want you to consult with your experts. And also with your team, who can you talk to to consider the aspects and details of the decision who also can help you come up with relevant facts and assumptions when choosing who do involve make sure that they will be impacted by the decision to we need people who are advising us who also have skin in the game. So they give real feedback, because those who aren't impacted by the decision may not really care in the long run, because the decision doesn't affect them, you want people who are going to be impacted who are involved, who are going to be part of the project part of the process, or whatever this decision is because they will give you critical feedback on who the decision will impact the most, because they will be impacted. Number five, I want you to analyze your options, consider what choices you have in the decision and then make the very best decision, you can prioritize your options, figure out what the impact is to each making sure you assign the right facts and assumptions to each option. And then this will lead you to make the very best decision that you can possibly make number six, and this is comes the tough part. And that is make the decision, you have weighed your choices, you have done the analysis, you have consulted your experts, and also your team and any other stakeholders who may be impacted, make the decision. And then you can adjust as necessary and move on making sure you have that mindset, we're going to keep going, we have other things to do, we're going to continue to analyze the outcome of that decision. And if we need to make adjustments, we will we're going to commit to executing that decision continuing to adjust but keep moving forward, we have to commit to it, we don't want to look back, we don't want to have regret, we want to get it done, we want to move forward to the next decision. And the next thing that we have to do as a leader and then only readdress this decision if necessary, and we get all that regret out of our head. We commit to it, we get it done, we move on, and we get our team moving on to the next thing that's important. And finally, number seven, I want you to communicate your decision to everyone that is impacted and everyone that may become involved. Everyone who needs to know must know what you decided it will help to build trust and cohesion within the team and organization. If it's a critical decision like strategy or an unpopular change, then you must transition to becoming an influencer to talk with everyone about why it's important that the change is necessary, convince others to commit to that decision, even when you're not around, convince others it's best for the organization. In the long run,
use those influencers skills that we've been working on. It's important to talk with people make your rounds, even on Zune calls, talk and then talk some more continue to talk about change, change that has to happen, and then decision and the desired outcome of that decision. Talk with everyone talk with as many people as you can continue to solicit feedback on how the decision is impacting them, and how the decision is impacting the organization and also how they are being able to do their jobs better or not do better continue to talk with everyone. That's how you make your organization better. And that's how you get buy in and continue to get great feedback on all of the decisions and policies that you may have. Now, when I was in the army, an officer more senior to me told me to not rush to critical decisions and take the time that you need but make the decision not all decisions are the same make the decision or decide not to make the decision but you better communicate what you're doing so others are not left guessing on what the decision is and not left guessing that you've decided to wait to make a decision and it was great advice. It was great advice for my career and great advice that I continue to use today. make the right decisions at the right time. Be timely and making sure you talk with everyone about what you have decided or what you have not decided. I have a free guide for you. It's called the leadership growth blueprint for finance and accounting managers. In the guide I talked about three leadership areas communication, team growth, and empowerment. Plus a few recommendations around challenges with the systems you are probably using to complete your work. The link to the guide is in the episode description or You can go to Stephen McLain calm. Please use it to help you with a few leadership wins today. Thank you for an easy one today, if you struggle with decisions, what is causing the struggle, I want you to think about it. I want you to write it down. And I want you to decide today to change we have to keep improving. As a leader, we need to focus on our development and being able to make timely decisions is critical as in our development. As a leader, the next few decisions that come up, make it don't dwell on it, live with the decision, keep doing that process. Get comfortable making decisions, don't dwell about making bad decisions, make the decision, commit to the outcome. Talk with everyone continue to analyze and develop and get better at becoming a leader and becoming the leader who can make the tough decisions. And the decisions in the right timeliness. This episode is sponsored by my new online course offering through finance leader Academy is called Advanced your finance and accounting career developing a promotion strategy that will set you apart Are you having difficulty getting recognition from your leadership despite all the hard work you pour into your job and your organization. This course helps you analyze what you bring to the organization, how you can set yourself apart from your peers through high visibility work and developing your leadership skills. Plus how you can devise a strategy to move ahead, you can go to Stephen mclain.com. For more details. Today, I talked about how to overcome in decisiveness using the following seven steps. Number one, change your mindset. Number two, know what kind of decision you're making. Number three, write down the details. Number four, consult with your experts and your team. Number five, analyze your options. Number six, make the decision. And number seven, communicate your decision to all those who may be impacted. Next week, I'm going to talk about how you can positively impact the business. I'm going to give you a couple of ways you can help the business grow and improve. I hope you enjoyed the finance leader Podcast. I am dedicated to helping you grow your leadership. I hope you enjoyed the show. You can get this episode wherever you find podcasts. Until next time, you can check out more resources at Stephen mclain.com and sign up for my updates so you don't miss an episode of the show. And now go lead your team and I'll see you next time. Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
