Bad Decisions Need Good Responses

A Team Member Made A “Bad” Decision…Now What?

First of all, it is a subjective statement to say that a bad decision was made by a team member. Let’s still explore this idea as if a team member did make a bad decision. There are really three ways that a leader can respond to this decision.

• Response 1: Say Nothing, Do Nothing

I have seen this one all too many times and it is generally the wrong answer for two reason. First, by not saying anything, the leader does not verbalize that something is wrong which causes the leader to lose confidence in the team members ability to ever make a decision again. This causes the team member to then question why the leader never allows said team member to ever make decisions? This only builds dissonance as time passes.

The second unfortunate outcome of the say nothing, do nothing approaches is that the team member will not know that they have made a bad or wrong decision. They then have no idea that they should not have made that decision in the first place. This approach is my personal least favorite as there is really no winner by dealing with bad decisions in this manner.

• Response 2: It Is The End Of The World

While there may be circumstances where a person makes a terrible decision like stealing money, making racial slurs, or intentionally setting fire to something. In my experience most people don’t often make malicious decisions like. If your team keeps making decisions like that I would say that you and your team have a different issue that should be solved. All of this to say, when an “end of the world” decision is not made, there is really no reason to treat a person as if they made a decision that has ended all of the human race.

I have luckily not been treated like this very often but I have unfortunately been in the vicinity of people being treated like this. This response happens all too often and it is absolutely cancerous to moral (of the person and the team) as it breeds fear, does not affirm said persons humanity, and further decreases the team member’s ability to buyin to the vision of what the team is trying to do.

• Response 3: Affirm Effort But Allow For Teaching

Last, but of course not least, a response that I try to execute on is one where I am able to affirm the effort and the thinking that a team member made but also leave the door open to allow for a teaching moment. The key here is that you as the leader must remember that this person is on the team and I have no reason to believe that they were trying to do anything other than move the ball down the field for the betterment of the whole team. The last statement assumes that the decision that was just made did the opposite of moving the ball down the field yet that is not what the point is here. The point here is that as the leader, I have to acknowledge their commitment to the team, understand why they made the decision they made, and help them understand why that decision should not be repeatedly made.

There is one side note to this approach and it is solely for the leader. The leader who is taking this sort of approach must enter these sort of situations, not with assumptions but with curiosity. The sort of curiosity that asks the question, “why”? Why did this team member make said decision? Was it because they did not know better or they did not have another choice, or did the leader not offer enough training or support for the team member to make a different decision? Further, the question “why?” will allow the leader to better understand their team members as people. This allows the leader to better understand what abilities, giftings, and weaknesses each team member has. In addition to understanding, this allows the leader to better understand how to support each team member better. Lastly, the leader must ask the question “why?” as a way of keeping this sort of difficult situation from happening over and over again.

L