How Can You Trust & Vet Your Own Judgement As A Business Leader?

The burden of leadership is that you can never be 100% sure you’re making the right call, but you have to act as if you are anyway. This is because while a leader should always consider multiple angles and never be averse to changing their mind when a decision is made, it has to be followed through for anything to work.

Changing operational capacities ten times a day based on shifting ideas (unless very necessary new information comes to light) helps no one. We accept that sometimes, this means we could make the wrong call because we can never have enough information to be 100% sure we’ll always be perfect.

So is leadership mostly about luck? Not particularly, it’s about managing risk, considering rewards, selling your ideas, motivating those under you, and remaining willing to accept responsibility as time goes on. So far, so good. 

But how can you continue to trust your judgment as a business leader? Well, part of that involves vetting the information you get and reflecting on decisions made. In this post, we’ll discuss that and more:

Carefully Log Your Reasoning

It can be incredibly helpful to start keeping a journal or decision log where you document the key choices, data points, and thought processes that guided your major decisions as a leader. Having that reasoning written out allows you to revisit and re-evaluate how you arrived at a particular course of action down the line, and this genuinely stops you from overly questioning if you made a decision out of stress or worry. The ability to examine your own logic on the page or screen provides a valuable perspective that may be difficult to gain otherwise – and sometimes, being certain you made the right decision despite an unwanted outcome is a very helpful realization.

Understand Why Failures Took Place

Failures are, unfortunately, an unavoidable part of leadership, even for the most seasoned professionals. Don’t allow yourself to dwell solely on the setback itself, as it’s wise to thoroughly investigate the root causes behind the issue instead. If you can review that failure, all the while inviting diverse viewpoints from your team, you’ll be better equipped to see areas where your judgment may have been impacted by genuine bias. For example, maybe you thought your cybersecurity practices were fine until a full cybersecurity audit shows exactly why you were wrong and how you could have prevented a breach. It’s a hard lesson, but one you’ll certainly learn.

Don’t Take Success For Granted

While celebrating victories is nothing to be ashamed of, it is equally important not to take success for granted. Make an effort to consider the factors that aligned to produce a favorable outcome is just as helpful as figurng out why you were successful. Recognize what you had control over, where the luck came, and where contributions from your team were provided. It will all make a real difference, and then you can give yourself real credit where your leadership is concerned. This means you begin to trust yourself, and even learn more about your own business approach. That’s a healthy outcome to gain.

With this advice, you’ll be certain to vet and trust your own judgement as a business leader.