Helping Your Boss Make Better Decisions

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to the Leaders Kit Bag, your go to podcast for practical leadership insights in just six minutes. In each episode, we tackle real challenges faced by leaders and managers, offering actionable tools and strategies you can take away and immediately apply. And because leadership doesn't happen in a studio, there's these episodes are mostly recorded outside on the move. They're raw, unscripted and straight to the point. So wherever you are, let's dive in and sharpen your leadership skills six minutes at a time. We often talk about how to lead and support our own teams, but what about those we report into? What if one of the most impactful things we could do as leaders is is to support those above us to make better, more well informed decisions? If this idea intrigues you, then today's episode of the Leaders Kitback is for you. The best leaders and managers amongst us don't just simply follow instructions and directives, but rather they help their bosses to make better, more well informed decisions. And in this episode of the Leader's Kit Bag, I've got three tips to help you do just that. Number one is to provide insights, not just data. Challenge yourself to move away from simply reporting data and facts upwards on the topics that really matter on the subjects that are linked to the organization's key goals and strategic objectives. Challenge yourself and your team to provide insights and commentary around emerging trends, patterns, risks or opportunities from the ground up that might not be so obvious to those above you. Number two is to provide options, not just obstacles. Nobody enjoys working with someone who seems to only flag issues and problems without proposing potential solutions. So next time you are given a task that perhaps seems unworkable, you could respond by by saying something like, okay, with our current capacity, here are two ways I think we could proceed. Which one sounds most workable to you when you respond in this way? When you respond to challenges or obstacles by sharing potential solutions, it demonstrates ownership and reduces the appearance of you being resistant. And thirdly, the third way to help those above you to make better decisions is to ask better, future focused questions yourself. Again, when given a particular task, challenge or objective, you could respond by saying things like, okay, can you help me and the team understand what is the long term objective or goal we are trying to achieve through this task? Or it might be, okay, great, how are we going to track and monitor performance against this goal or task that we've been given? When we do this again, it demonstrates ownership. It shows that we are thinking about what we're being asked to do and by asking those future focused questions, it challenges those above us to really get clear on what they're asking for and why. So there you have it. Three ways to help your boss or bosses to make progress better, more effective, more well informed decisions. As always, I hope it's been useful. And until next time, look after yourself and look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. Lead on.