How To Make The Tough Call

We all come to a point in our life where we have to make a difficult decision. That's even more true for those of us who lead. Personally, I had to make one of those decisions today, and to say it was challenging is a serious understatement. But I did it, and while I'm sure there are things I can improve, I'm feeling ok with how I handled it.

So I thought a good way to close the loop for myself on this particular tough choice was sharing with you the approach I took. I hope that you get some insights from it when handling your own tough calls.

Making The Tough Call

Most of the information and advice I've gotten about making hard decisions focuses on overcoming fear and indecisiveness. Be brave, trust your gut, feel the fear, do it anyway! These are nice things to hear, but they don't tell us how to think through the problems.

And when other people are impacted by the decision we make, knowing how to find and communicate the why behind the what not only helps us to move forward, but also helps us to let go.

I'm not saying to put your feelings aside. And I'm not saying to ignore a negative outcome for someone else based on your decision. But to get to any level of clarity, you have to be able to focus and lower the outside pressure.

Say It Out Loud

So let's start by saying the decision out loud in plain words. Not “we have a problem” or “I have concerns”, but a real sentence that captures what needs to happen. “I need to let that person go.” Or in my case today, “I need to cancel that event.”

Even putting that simple line at the end of the paragraph above was hard to do just now. Vague worry lets us hide from decisions, but a clear statement does not. No matter how hard it may be to write. Or hear.

Talk to the People Closest to the Issue

Next, talk to the people most affected by the situation before you decide anything. Don't have an answer and then reach out trying to get them to justify or confirm your decision. Instead, ask them what they think. What do they see? What do they want?

Their honesty will teach you more in a few paragraphs than another week of thinking about this alone in your office.

Put a Date On the Calendar

Next, you have to put a time frame to both making and communicating the decision. Not “soon” or “this week”, but an actual date on the calendar.

There will never be a perfect moment, and all we can do is be best prepared for the moment we choose. And no matter what, make sure we do get to choose. Don't wait so long that the choice gets made for us. Or potentially worse, options get removed that could have been valuable.

Be Straightforward in Sharing the Decision

Once you finally decided, say what's changing plainly. This is probably the toughest one for me because I have a tendency to want to share my overthinking.

What I've learned is that people can handle change even when it's not ideal. What does frustrate them is long-winded explanations where nobody's really sure what happened or if a decision was even made.

Right now, most of us have a few tough choices languishing on our to-do list. One of my biggest challenges is letting them pile up because I couldn't decide quickly enough, until I'm staring at five hard problems instead of solving one.

So name it, talk to the people it affects, set a date, and follow through when the date comes. That's the whole process. No secret formula, no perfect moment , no extra bit of data. Just the next hard thing, said out loud, on a date you already picked.