Confidence in decision-making stems from both the leader and the surrounding environment. Leaders often feel their decisions are solitary acts, made with input from others but with the responsibility resting solely on their shoulders. While it may seem solitary, the context provides social support that encourages possibilities, even permitting the possibility of failure.
Four factors govern a resilient leader when making decisions. They are experience, observation, confidence to act and imagination. Confidence to act is the key. The others make it possible to understand the situation and explore or create possibilities. Confidence to act is essential to do what a decision is all about – taking an action.
Confidence is seen as individualistic. The person feels confident in who they are (at some level) or not. It depends on their self-awareness, comfort with ambiguity, and strength of character. What is not always considered in using confidence to act is the environment in which the decision-maker lives. To feel confident to act, the decision-maker must also feel that the decision will be supported when it is made, that mistakes are allowed, and that growth is permitted. If the decision turns out to be wrong, critique is offered without retribution.
An Example
For example, you hire a web designer who will add new pages to your existing website to cover a new product. The person you hire produces pages, but they are delivered on the date when you had hoped to go live. Without seeing them prior to the ‘go live’ date, you see the price listed for the new product needs to be corrected from the notional price set in the specs for the website.
You can delay the release date and miss the opening event, or you can go live and accept that early visitors to the site will get a really good deal with the incorrect pricing. Your choice is embarrassment for the company versus loss of early revenue. You have seen other situations where management has been creative in solving problems when mistakes have been made. This management style frees you to make the decision.
Knowing that management would have greater embarrassment with no place for potential buyers to go at the event, you chose to go live and fix it as soon as possible. You feel confident that loss of early revenue is the right choice. As it turns out, management does understand and prefers not to be embarrassed. They decide, in addition, that the price, although lower, can be announced as an introductory offer.
When leaders can make decisions with the confidence to act, action can be quicker, creating resilience through a margin of time. With a supportive environment, even as responsibility remains on the leader, confidence to act depends also on the surrounding culture of the organization.