There is no doubt that quick and effective decision-making is essential for helping businesses run efficiently and that a large part of any business leader’s role is making decisions that can have a major impact on their team or their company’s bottom line.
If you aspire to reach more senior levels in your career, it is essential to develop your ability to make complex decisions. How can you learn these types of skills, and what are the various styles of decision-making leaders can adopt?
How can you fine-tune your decision-making skills as a leader?
Although some people are naturally born with a flair for taking tough, decisive action, most of us have to learn how to go about it.
One of the top ways to do this is enrolling in a relevant academic program that refines your abilities in this area. The doctorate degree in leadership from Spalding University is a popular choice that provides a flexible way to gain decision-making skills online. It is the ideal manner for any aspiring leaders in business to not only find out how to make better decisions but also how to lead effectively in the modern commercial sector.
Once you have developed your decision-making skills in a course like this, you will be ready to take it into your next role. Just as there are numerous ways to boost customer service, however, there are also multiple leadership styles of decision-making. Here is a brief overview of each one.
Autocratic
Autocratic decision-making sees leaders taking on the sole responsibility for deciding what to do based on information they source directly and what they believe to be the best call. Leaders who use this style do not look for any outside help when making their decisions. Although this style can show a leader to be powerful, assertive and in total control, it can also sometimes de-motivate staff whose views they do not seek out or ignore.
Consulting
A more open style of leadership decision-making is consulting. This involves leaders speaking with relevant members of staff individually to gather their thoughts on an issue.
This approach can work well in terms of team morale because it helps staff feel involved in decisions. It can also enable leaders to see things from a different perspective or use the ideas gathered to reach better overall decisions. However, this can be a long-winded way of making decisions and is therefore not always suitable if you need to act quickly.
Information seeking
One of the five leadership styles of decision making, information seeking sees managers asking staff to provide information they can use to make a decision. The ultimate outcome is still decided by the leader and involves them using the information gathered by others to act upon. This approach can be more inclusive and means decisions are made based on hard evidence, but you have to be careful of information overload and decisions being delayed while you wait for data.
Delegation
Business leaders who adopt this style give more junior staff members the chance to make decisions for them. It is important to note that while you can delegate decisions, you cannot delegate responsibility for them. This means that managers will still be held responsible for the actions of junior staff to whom they have delegated decisions.
This style of decision-making for leaders can be useful for empowering team members. Delegation is also known for leading to better employee engagement and speeding up decision making. You do need to make sure the staff you delegate to will make the right calls, however. This approach can also be resented by some junior staff because they think it is the manager’s job to make decisions.
Negotiating
This approach is quite similar to consulting, but negotiating has one key difference. When adopting this style, you seek out advice from a group of employees rather than individual staff members. Negotiating sees the group make the decision and also take on responsibility for it.
This approach can be useful because it means a wider range of views are heard and better decisions can therefore be made. It is a time-consuming way of doing it, however, and this means it might not always be the best choice.
Choose the style you feel most comfortable with
Most people are eager to know which is the best of these five styles. The truth is that it comes down to personal choice and which approach you feel most comfortable using. It is also important to think about choosing the right approach for the right situation. If you do this, you should find it easy to make good decisions as a leader.
