What Each Leader Must Do

The real goal of a leader is to be able to get into to the habit of making decisions without flip-flopping and to be able to make those decisions in the face of adversity consistently. How nice would it be to make decisions without the pressures of other people counting on you to make them, withstanding the spotlight?

There are more people than you can imagine that would rather not have the ball in their hands when everything is at stake, the big play needs to be made, and the game is on the line. They shun the responsibility to someone else to get it done.

Organizations and individuals have to do more than wait for direction. We cannot expect someone else to take responsibility for our own success. We must make our own opportunities, participate where opportunities already exist, and become part of something bigger than us.

We can be a warrior or a worrier. We have to be willing to take a risk and stand in the pocket when the stakes are highest. We have to be willing to take a chance, even when we have doubts. If not you, well then who?

When you are making a certified decision, it may not be the spot-on decision at the time, but the key is to be confident in that decision, no stuttering. When you demonstrate 100% confidence in your decision-making, your team will follow.

More often than not, as a leader we are going to have to make a decision changing course from the original decision, an audible. When you make an audible, you are changing course from the original plan because of something you see that will cause your original plan to not succeed. Thus, by changing the play, the tone of your actions, and belief in your own decision, others trust in it too. As a result, whatever their job is, they do it better because they believe and have confidence.

When you stutter or hesitate, your opponent will see your timid nature and will not only bolster their own confidence, but also give them the advantage. In order to have this type of confidence, we must be willing to put in an enormous amount of preparation. Decisions are not usually straight forward as like a math problem. There usually is no one way right answers.

Thorough preparation is essential that requires certain knowledge and intellect if we are going to make effective choices. Making important decisions requires a clear direction. It requires assimilation of the right amount and right kind of information. Failing to prepare, is preparing to fail.

We must be willing to work really hard on our expertise. As we craft and become knowledgeable on our skill, the level of respect others have for you will increase. Basically, that means that we have to learn to trust our decisions, while staying flexible enough to stand there with open eyes and mind.

Making great decisions consistently well requires four things:

Realize when and why you need to make decisions.

Decide what the real decision is. The core decision.

Work with the decision. Figure out what you need to understand about the decision.

Make a choice that best fits your values.

It is important however, that we can prepare all our life and still be hit by a thunderbolt. There are some decisions in life that just are not ours to make. What we plan on happening may not exactly happen the way we expected it.

Every single day we get knocked down. The key is that we have to be able to pick ourselves back up and refocus on what is ahead. If we dwell on what happened we could not be at our best. Earnest Hemingway said that, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”

Resilience is the ability to bounce back. We must be resilient. It is our ability to retain original form after being tested by difficult conditions. Just like a rubber band or ball, when you get squeezed or stretched, it springs right back to its former shape. By being able to see problems as opportunities and hang in there when most crumble, resilient people recover from most anything.

Accepting the responsibility for meticulous preparation and planning, strategic decision-making, and embracing resiliency is what each leader must do.