Leadership is visible in the decisions people can make

A useful way to assess leadership is to look at what happens when the leader leaves the room. Can people make a sensible decision? Do they understand what matters, where their authority ends and when to ask for help?

These questions make leadership practical. They connect strategy to the choices people face during an ordinary working day. A team can understand the ambition and still struggle to act if every meaningful choice requires another meeting.

Google’s re:Work guide on team effectiveness identifies structure and clarity among the findings from its own team research. That is a company-specific finding, rather than a guarantee for every organisation. It is a useful prompt to examine whether people understand their responsibilities and the decisions they can make.

Make the boundary clear

“Use your judgement” sounds empowering. Its usefulness depends on the boundaries around that judgement.

Consider a hypothetical account manager handling a customer complaint. They might have authority to offer a service credit within an agreed limit, provided they record the reason and tell the delivery lead. A larger concession might require commercial approval. A concern involving personal data would follow a separate escalation route.

That gives the account manager something usable: a decision they can make, conditions they must respect and a clear point at which to involve someone else.

Leaders should be able to explain these boundaries in plain language. If the explanation needs a long policy document before anyone can act, the decision may need simplifying.

Explain the trade-off

Priorities become useful when they help people choose between competing demands.

Imagine a team deciding whether to add another feature before a customer launch. “Quality matters” offers limited guidance. A clearer instruction might be that the launch must deliver the agreed customer outcome reliably, with additional features considered after that standard is met.

The leader also needs to explain the commercial reasoning. Perhaps the customer has a fixed training date. Perhaps a failed first experience would create more work than a smaller initial release.

With that context, the team can assess a new request without reconstructing the strategy from scratch. They can also challenge the priority if the circumstances change.

Review the reasoning as well as the outcome

Giving someone authority includes accepting that reasonable decisions can produce disappointing results.

Suppose a hypothetical project lead chooses one supplier over another using the information available. The chosen supplier later misses a deadline. I would want the review to examine the selection criteria, warning signs, contractual protections and contingency plan.

Judging the decision solely by its outcome risks teaching people to protect themselves. Examining the reasoning gives the organisation something it can improve.

Accountability still matters. People should explain their choices and act on what they learn. Leaders should apply the same standard to their own decisions, especially when their assumptions shaped the outcome.

Leadership becomes visible through this combination of authority, context and review. People know which decisions belong to them. They understand the trade-offs. They can raise uncertainty without disguising it.

That is a useful ambition for any leadership team: make the next sensible decision easier for the people doing the work.

More about my work

This is a new article revisiting a subject from the site’s earlier archive.