The "Most Important" Questions: How to Lead Through Big Decisions
How do you help a Senior choose a college?
How do you determine which route to go … which decision to make? Some decisions don’t make a big impact on your life … Chick-Fil-A versus Big Shaq’s Chicken? Both are consistently tasty fried chicken. Both, no matter how much you pray, will consistently have a similar impact on your waistline and energy levels over time. Every decision have an impact.
Our oldest son, Titus, is inundated with the choice, “where are you going to go to school?”. He’s applied at large schools, small schools, state schools, Christian schools, etc. All are good schools. All have offered him sizeable amounts of scholarship money. The question I asked him while sitting in the lounge at the Dallas airport helped him start to sift through the decisions.
The questions is simple: What is the criteria you are using to determine which school you should go to? He gave me a look; you know that look we parents get when business logic is brought into the home. So, I said, “when you are on the pitch and choosing which pass to make, you have 3-5 options and choose the best one. How do you choose the best one?"
It’s that type of decision making he need to bring into his school choice.
The actual question I’m asking is: What’s most important? Not what is convenient, not, what is easy, but what is most important.
The other question is: When you are done, how do you know it was worth it?
It’s amazing what happens when we stop looking at what is convenient, what is easy, what is right in front of us, what we have done before, etc. … and we start looking at …
What’s most important?
How do we know it was worth it?
Suddenly, we have criteria for decision making that we didn’t have written down before.
We all have decisions to make daily. Our decisions impact lives in significant ways. Your leadership leaves a ripple effect on your organization, your family, your community and the families of your team members. What legacy are you leaving by your decisions?
The final questions before making a big decision should be: What legacy am I going to leave?
Let’s get very practical right now. You might be leading through:
Organizational transformations
Layoffs
Budget cuts
Fast growth and fast fires
New product launches
Leadership training to improve culture and performance.
How are you making those decisions? Are you asking:
What’s most important?
What result makes this decision worth it?
What legacy will this decision leave?
Before making your next big decisions, be sure you can answer these questions.
At Insight Leadership Group we want to you to love your life at work and love your life at home. We know that is much easier when we are healthy leaders who sleep with your heads on your pillows at night without regret and wake up without fear for the day.
