The value of your decision-making framework
How do you define success in your life? When you look at the choices you’ve made in your career or at work, you should be able to identify where your choices have been empowering and where they might have held you back. Are you happy with where you are?
If the answer is no, or if you’re unsure, then it’s important to recognise how the choices you’ve made have been your ‘yellow brick road’ to today.
The reality is, if you want a different outcome, you need to make a different choice.
When you make a different choice, you need to take a different action.
It’s that simple.
Why is change so difficult?
While there are so many personal reasons you can find to explain away why you didn’t reach the goals you set for yourself – or the change you wanted to see – the reality is that wishing and hoping don’t get you there.
Think about your most recent job or a project you’ve been working on. You weighed up your options and believed that the decision you were making at the time was the right one for you and/or your team. But the result was not what you had anticipated.
Few people intentionally make poor choices.
Personally or professionally, just wanting a different outcome is not enough. You have to consciously choose a different outcome.
Learning to question poor decisions before you make them
In everything you do there will be light and shade. You’ll be presented with opportunity and opportunity cost. When you make a choice for something, you are simultaneously making a choice away from something else – one or many alternatives.
Choosing the outcome is the simple part. It’s the consistency in your everyday decision-making that is difficult.
Learning to question those decisions before you make them will allow you to make decisions that are more beneficial to your career, your leadership and your teams in the future.
Rarely is a choice for a different outcome binary – either yes or no. Often the choice requires a different daily action. It’s not a ‘one and done’.
When you choose to be a more dynamic leader, to step into your strengths, to stand up for what you believe in, you are choosing to be seen, heard and open to judgement. You are choosing not to be the person you’ve been before. You are choosing to change your standards, your relationships and your performance metrics.
You are choosing to rock the boat – even if it’s only your boat that is rocking!
How do you make a different choice? You do it in two steps:
Make a different choice
Take a different action
You might not be able to change any of your past decisions, but you can change your future ones.
Walking away from who you’ve been in the past
Often when people make a decision to change, they choose more of the same. They double down on the actions they’ve taken to get to where they are today.
Right now is your chance to grow and change and to do so, you must walk away from the person you’ve been before.
You need to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Ask yourself two questions: ‘What does great look like?’ and ‘What do I need to let go of?’
To move forward, you need to let go of the decision-making framework that got you to where you are today.
Separating ego from identity and aspiration
To become the master of your leadership role you need to allow someone else to take on the responsibility of your prior role.
This might be challenging for you. It is for a number of high achievers and performers.
To make this process easier, you need to connect with the importance of your decision-making. Acknowledge what choices you’ve been making. Which ones have served you well, and which ones haven’t? When you’ve identified what’s working and what’s not then will you stop hesitating about making different choices.
Choices are the first steps you take on the road to growth, change and transformation. When you make choices consciously and wisely, you get different results; your probability of success skyrockets.
If you want leadership and career transformation, but don’t know how to do it, make a simple choice – get in touch with me.