Decision Making and Dilemmas of Leadership

It is important that leaders understand the dilemmas of leading others. Consider, for example, a call center that tracks dropped call rates as a means to infer service quality. Some customers have no tolerance to wait in queue for a phone representative and, when their perception of being on hold exceeds what they recognize as reasonable, they hang up. This is of concern to the organization because there is a link between higher dropped call or abandon rates and customer satisfaction. 

There are options available to improve call center abandon rates. One choice is to overstaff the center and increase the number of service representatives beyond the requirements for peak call times, which is an expensive and ill-advised tactic. Another is to force representatives to stay at their desks – no restroom breaks without seeking approval from supervisors. Supervisors monitor the calls and only allow breaks when volumes do not exceed capacity.  Another is to train staff to manage the time it takes to service a customer; quicker service turnaround translates to a greater number of customers serviced in a day. Unfortunately, a hurried feeling leaves the customer feeling unimportant.

Leaders react in a number of ways to manage this and other similar dealings. Some may pressure the call center workers to do better. The concept of forcing, pressuring and demanding of staff is contrary to the very thing a leader should be doing. The dichotomy between what a leader should do and the alternatives is representative of a dilemma of leadership. That is, leaders (by their position in the hierarchy of the organization) have the legitimate authority or power to pressure workers to do better, but how much and in what way should it be exercised?¹

When to use or not use power and how to use it is a daily struggle. In fact, the “gold standard” of leadership, or transformational leadership (TFL) style, calls for a different relationship between follower and leader more akin to a partnership.² Research has consistently demonstrated TFL as the more effective style because it often leads to increased productivity, job satisfaction and organizational citizenship behavior.² Even though this has become common knowledge, leaders still feel compelled to “push” while behaving as a controller rather than a partner.

This is a leader’s quandary. When things need to get done, how much should leaders push? A leader should be personally attentive to individuals and their needs and it is best to empower rather than control, but how can leaders maintain productivity using this position?  What is the balance between control, empowerment, motivation and being concerned with a worker’s welfare? For example, can a leader be family-friendly while insisting that the worker come to work when he/she has a sick child at home? One of the main challenges faced by leaders in this high-wire act is the achievement of outcomes while also maintaining forward momentum. 

Fortunately, research in leadership is designed to offer clues and advice to maneuver through the challenges, and the field of organizational behavior has identified a number of models and techniques to assist. One such model is the “normative decision-making model” developed by Vroom and Jago in 1988, its earlier version by Vroom and Yetton (1973). ³ The model is designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making and is based on the truism that people tend to support that which they help create (mentioned in previous publications). It guides the leader to consider the level of involvement that workers should have in a given decision for an optimal outcome; that is, for certain decisions the leader is wise to make a decision alone. On other decisions, he or she should give the workers the right to decide based on consensus (perhaps with the leader as part of the group). In the latter circumstance, the leader plays the role of participant rather than decision maker.³

The model describes different decision involvement levels for leaders to select. Here is a summary of the less-complicated earlier model: (1) make decision alone, (2) seek information from individual stakeholders, individually and in a group, but reserve the right to make the final decision, (3) consult with individuals but reserve the decision rights, and (4) delegate the decision to a group of stakeholders with the leader acting as an equal participant.³

 

Including workers in decisions – a form of participative leadership – is an important motivational strategy. Generally, the model assists the leader in selecting the level of involvement by following a set of rules. For example, the level of commitment and support the leader needs from the workers to accomplish the task is one way to calibrate the involvement level. For example, if the leader needs to make a decision between one manufacturer of pens and pencils over another, it would be safe for the leader to make the decision alone. He/she has the necessary information, the decision does not require precision or ongoing support from the workers, and generally no one cares which manufacturer is chosen. Thus, the efficient and effective approach is to make the decision and move on.³  

Another factor is the amount of information the leader has to make a decision. If the leader has only a fraction of the information (and expertise) to make the decision, his/her need to include others in making the decision is magnified.³ Leaders in most business situations rarely have all of the knowledge required to make decisions, necessitating the involvement from those in the know.

Another is the importance of the decision, along with the quality of the decision. When a decision must meet a high-quality standard, such as when acquiring another business, entering a new market or selecting a store location, a large contingency of participants is necessary. The leader, who would not have all of the knowledge, needs a quality decision and often needs ongoing support to make these kinds of decisions work. Further, the need for involvement is more pronounced when the problem is not structured. Unstructured decisions mean there is no single path to a solution and the steps are not easily defined. In these situations, more workers need to be involved.³

The normative decision model provides leaders a decision tree to pinpoint the most optimal participation level. Of course, a leader should never blindly follow an answer provided by a model; instead, leaders need to use the tool and consider the consequences of involvement depending on the specific situation and sought-after outcome. To learn more about the decision model, more good sources can be found at:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_91.htm

This website combines the earlier and later versions of the model but leans more toward the later Vroom Jago version.

Leaders face real dilemmas in their leadership and must continually choose one behavior over another. What makes leadership so difficult is making the right selection of how much to control or empower and how much to push or stand back; these dilemmas are part of the role. Leaders can discover different ways to respond by using models such as the normative decision model. 

Please feel free to make comments.

References

¹ Arvisais, M.A. (2007). Narcissism as a Trait of Full-Range Leadership: A Historiometric Investigation. Unpublished manuscript, Ann Arbor, Mich.

² Robbins, S., & Judge, T. (2011). Organizational Behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

³ Yukl, G. (2006). Leadership in Organizations (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River. NJ: Pearson Education.