Difficult Decisions. Eric Pliner

Difficult Decisions - Eric Pliner


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most difficult choices rarely challenge us because we lack information. They're not solved by aggregating data or reviewing spreadsheets or even by using artificial intelligence.

      By its very nature, leadership – that is, creating the conditions for change in service of generating shared value and meaning – is inherently interpersonal. It requires bringing people together to envision and enable a future that is somehow different from today. Leaders prompt personal and communal growth and development; generate emotional soothing and comfort; inspire new perspectives and ways of being; engender individual, collective, and community wellness, health, and wealth; and help us to know and understand who we are and why we are here.

      And because leadership is interpersonal, how we lead today affects real people's real lives right now – and may have consequences for years and even generations to come.

      There is a lot for leaders to learn about the sources of and context for our choices, and there is a lot that all of us can learn from other leaders to inform how we make the most difficult decisions of our lives.

      Leadership is about tough choices, and making tough choices shows leadership.

      We must ask ourselves, then, what kind of leadership we want to show. What kind of leaders – and people – do we want to be? And how does thoughtful, considered conscientiousness and communication about these choices make us better at what we do – and who we are?

      So rather than looking for ways to make decisions more objectively, every one of us who has a difficult choice to make should instead focus on how to build and sharpen the ability to make subjective decisions with greater skill.

      “But wait,” you say, “aren't ethics and morals synonymous and, you know, interchangeable?” Plenty of thinkers, writers, and philosophers will tell us why one can be substituted for the other, or at least how closely they are related. For all of their overlap, though, differentiating between morals and ethics gives us important data about how we personally understand what is right and what is wrong, and how our context evaluates the relative helpfulness or harmfulness of specific actions.

      There's a Whitney Houston song whose title puts it even more simply: “It's Not Right, But It's Okay.” The action is morally wrong, yes, but limited in harm and therefore generally acceptable (or at least not unacceptable).

      All of this is complicated by the leader's understanding of the responsibilities of their role in a complex operating context: for and on behalf of whom am I working? Carefully interrogating these three dimensions enables the leader to make the best possible decisions in service of addressing the many, varied needs of a constellation of stakeholders.

      The leader's impulse, then, might be to shy away from taking any potentially controversial stances, but that doesn't work either; fairly or not, our current ethical context interprets silence or inaction as an opinion in and of itself.

      As a personal sense of right and wrong is also a driver of decision-making, considering the development of one's own morality and the source of its influences is essential. How might someone with a different upbringing, set of life experiences, personal or family values, or educational influences perceive the same question differently? Not incidentally, this is among the strong arguments for surrounding oneself with a diverse team and cultivating an inclusive and psychologically safe culture that elicits these perspectives as a matter of course.

      Perhaps most obviously, clarifying the requirements and expectations of one's role is essential.


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