09/09/2025
Leaders at all levels make countless decisions everyday - from hiring and firing, to project to prioritization, to budget management. If you’re a new leader, acclimating to being a decision-maker can be challenging. Like other key business skills, you can learn how to make better decisions through education and practice. Here's a quick primer on why decision-making skills are crucial to leadership success, and six ways to enhance yours:
1️⃣ Involve Your Team - While you may have the final judgment call, enlisting others to work through challenging decisions can be helpful. Asking for input from your peers can open your mind to new perspectives. If you ask your direct reports to brainstorm ways to improve your production process’s efficiency, chances are that they’ll have some ideas you didn’t think of.
2️⃣ Understand Your Responsibility to Stakeholders - When facing a decision, remember your responsibilities to stakeholders: customers, employees, investors, and society. Your obligations to each may be slightly different and and can as a roadmap or guardrails for some of your toughest decision-making scenarios.
3️⃣ Consider Values-Based Strategy - If you make decisions that impact your organization’s strategy, consider how to create value. Often, the best decision provides the most value to the most stakeholders.
4️⃣ Own Your Financial Statements - Any organizational leadership decision you make is bound to have financial implications. Building your decision-making skills to become familiar and comfortable with your firm’s finances is crucial. The three financial statements you should know intimately are the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement.
5️⃣ Leverage The Data - Beyond financial information, consider other types of data when making decisions, like progress toward goals or key performance indicators (KPIs) that offer specific, measurable results. Whatever the decision, find metrics that provide insight into it.
6️⃣ Learn From Other Leaders - Don’t underestimate the power of learning from other leaders. Network within your field or industry and create a group of peers to bounce ideas off of. Listening to, connecting with, and learning from other leaders, helps you hone new ways to approach your decisions.