Your personal and professional aspirations should be pursued against a background of careful decision-making. In your quest for success you will be continuously faced with options – the decisions you make will directly determine the effectiveness of the direction and strategy you implement. You should always aim to make decisions on the basis of “doing the right thing” and “for the right reason” – this inspires and motivates others to follow. Such a mindset and approach will, without exception, build a loyal and dedicated following. Leadership of this nature drives ‘followership’. With the right people behind you and supporting you, your journey becomes much easier.
Effective leadership means making lots of decisions, many of which will have to be explained because they impact on people’s lives and wellbeing. Decision making must be based on what is best for the mission in hand decisions that are decent, honourable, communicated with respect and in the best interests of all concerned. Beware, not everyone will agree with your course of action.
If you are constantly analysing what impact you will have on each and every person in your community then procrastination will prevail. Under these circumstances, decision making becomes long and drawn out, nothing gets done. You then become frustrated by lack of progress towards your goals.
As long as each decision you make is guided by your own personal creed, then you can be safe in the knowledge that you have made it in the right spirit and with no intent to negatively effect others unnecessarily. However some decisions will be unpopular ones and this cannot be avoided. Trying to please everyone and explain your reasoning in detail is simply not feasible – it takes too much time and effort. It also dilutes your effectiveness as a leader.