6 Damaging Mistakes Managers Make With Informed Decision-Making: How Avoiding Them Boosts Team Morale and Performance
Great managers make fast decisions. Bad managers use that as an excuse to stay uninformed.
When you skip on context, you do more harm than good.
You create extra work for your team and leave them feeling whiplashed.
Uninformed decision-making looks like this.
❌ Making new hires without consulting your team
→ Poor fit hires
❌ Changing workflows without being part of the processes
→ Unnecessary work and bottlenecks
❌ Setting team goals instead of coaching them through goal setting
→ Unrealistic, unmotivating goals
❌ Reducing costs without buy-in from whos taking that workload
→ Reduced performance and team morale
❌ Making decisions based on data without human input
→ Direction that isnt practical and designed to fail
❌ Increasing workloads without incorporating work-life balance
→ Burnout, low job satisfaction, turnover
These mistakes are easily avoidable. Heres how you stay in the loop.
- Encourage transparency, dont foster a culture of secrecy and siloing
- Empower your team, dont hoard all decision-making power
- Attend meetings, dont be uninformed about team progress
- Ask questions, dont assume you know everything
- Get involved, dont be a disconnected leader
- Seek feedback, dont let problems fester
Making fast decisions from an ivory tower without context is a fast track to losing your teams respect. Do this enough and you will lose your best people.
As leaders, its essential to stay engaged, ask the right questions, and understand our teams before making major decisions.
And if youre doing it right, your talented and empowered team should be making more of these decisions for you.
Remember, a team that feels heard and valued will always outperform one that doesnt.
