Probably a manager’s biggest responsibility is to solve problems and make decisions. You are likely to do this in some form every day. Maybe a team member calls in sick and you need to apportion that day’s work to others. Or an important engineering process fails and you must decide what to do next. Or your manager has either cut your budget or increased it, and it’s your job to decide where to cut or add. Possibly, on some days, all of the above and more come your way.
Leadership involves sorting through competing demands and making the best decisions you can, given your resources and your current information. How well you analyze problem situations, and the success of your decisions, will impact your team’s functioning and may even influence the rest of your organization.
Naturally effective leaders or managers probably enjoy the challenge of ambiguous situations and thrive on the exhilaration of analyzing complex problems. Even if you these skills don’t come naturally to you, however, you can still be an effective leader or manager. Like all management and leadership skills, these can be learned.
It might be helpful to decide whether your biggest struggle is with decision making or analyzing complex problems. These skills overlap but may be approached somewhat differently. For example, if you don’t like making decisions, you may be afraid of making a mistake. Maybe a past decision hasn’t turned out well. The truth is that everyone makes mistakes, but that doesn’t allow you to avoid decision-making. If this is your concern, try these tips:
If analyzing a situation is more difficult for you than making decisions, you may struggle with differentiating important details from irrelevant ones. You may feel overwhelmed with data and not know how to move forward. If this is your concern, try these tips:
However you decide to proceed, realize that analyzing problems and making decisions are a large part of your role as manager or leader. With practice and awareness, you will improve.