Leaders Are Decision Makers Sometimes things don’t turn out as expected, and the attitude we take in those moments is the most important thing we can take care of. Check this out: Suppose you’re traveling from home to work in your car as you do every morning and suddenly realize you forgot your wallet at home and have no money in your pocket. The thing is you’re on time to an important meeting. What do you do? Do you head to work anyway and ask a coworker for a loan that day? Do you go back home to pick up your wallet? Do you call your son to bring you the wallet to your work? Do you skip lunch? The way you solve that problem says a lot about you. Ok, this is a “minor problem”, but if you pay close attention to your way out of it, you can learn more about yourself. And your approach towards life. Going back to our wallet problem let’s take a look at the options: If you’re near the office you won’t go back home, and you should have to ask a coworker for a daily loan, even though you don’t like to ask for loans. On the other hand, if you’re not that far from home, you can head back and pick up the wallet, call back to the office and tell them you’ll be late. For the sake of simplicity, let’s stick with these two options. The first option, helps us to make it to the meeting on time, but it will be necessary to ask someone for a loan. With the second option, we won’t ask for a loan, but we should have to be able to apologize and probably accept a bad comment from the boss. Each option demands different way outs, but both of them have to be faced. The important thing is, once you’ve made a decision, you should stay with it, and move ahead, move forward. If the decision turns out to be wrong, it’s probably because you didn’t have all the information at your hands, or didn’t give it the proper thought. If that’s the case, the lesson should be learnt. Believe it or not you need to have courage to face those decisions, and that my friends is what a leader has. What will your attitude will be in that situation? My call is: take it as a learning experience. When presented with options, sometimes take the hard road, take it as a mini-mini-boot camp for your problem solving skills. Remember, your problem solving skills are honed every single day when you face these kind of situations. Your problem solving capacity is an ability you should train as often as you can. Leaders are known for taking the best options, not the easiest, or the hardest, but the best ones. You can only take the best options if you know you can solve the problems you’re faced with no matter how hard they are. And only if you know 100% where you’re headed to a.k.a. “What’s your vision?”. It’s easy to take the best option when you know where you’re going. LEADERSHIP ACTIONS 1. Next time you’re faced with options. Take one you’re not so comfortable with. I’m not saying take the hardest, I’m saying take one that helps you strecht yourself a little more than usual. 2. See how it turned out, and notice how you feel after solving the problem or situation. 3. Next time you deal with something difficult again, remember the good feeling you felt when you solved the previous problem and take the best option, not the easiest for you, but the best option to solve the problem.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 09:14:23 +0000
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