Leadership Achievement: The Challenge Of Making Choices
One of the things you need to be ready and willing to do as a leader is to make choices and then act on them to get results.
While there are often lots of models and frameworks that you can use for making choices, the truth is it can be a really big challenge.
The first challenge of making choices is that there is always someone standing on the sidelines ready to undermine your choice. Faced with this, it can sometimes be difficult to move forward confidently.
The second challenge is that the people who are impacted by your choices don’t always respond rationally. More often than not people think first and foremost about what it means for them.
Challenge number three is the whole area of group think, where people get on the bandwagon of having a view about something based on others’ opinions, even if they know little or nothing about the choice or realities.
Number four on my list is that people only see what they want to see. I am amazed how much coverage is given to all the things that go wrong and very little to what has gone well. I call this the 2% syndrome, where all the attention is on the 2% that went wrong rather than the 98% that went right.
Finally, it is easy to look to back with the benefit of hindsight. However, let’s be honest. If someone had not made a choice and taken some risk, most of the things we have and take for granted would not exist. With choice there is always a risk that it won’t work out as expected.
So what’s the answer? Well to be honest, in my experience you just have to get on with it and accept that sometimes it won’t work out as you expected. The reality is that unless you are willing to make choices, nothing is ever going to happen.
Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk
About the Author Duncan Brodie
Since 2006 I’ve worked with in excess of 8,000 accountants and professionals in workshops, seminars and one to one helping them land their next jobs and become better leaders, presenters and business partners. Before that I spent 25 years in accountancy climbing the career ladder from Payments Clerk to FD. I’m a CIMA Fellow, Certified Professional Coach and Team Coach Facilitator.