Leaders often fall into the Imposter Trap when making decisions.  The Imposter Trap is one in which an individual brings about the exact failing they wish to avoid.  In the case of decision-making, leaders often feel that since they are the leader they must know everything and make all the decisions.  As a result of this kind of thinking they do not allow themselves the opportunity to ask all the questions that they should or gather all the necessary input from other people in making their decisions.  Naturally, if they did this, it would demonstrate to everyone else that they do not know everything and are therefore incompetent (a bit of sarcasm there).  Consequently, they do not accumulate all the information they need to make a particular decision and they make the wrong decision.  They cause themselves to fail and become incompetent…the exact thing that they sought to avoid.

The question becomes, how does one avoid this trap?  The answer is simple and involves a couple of steps.  First, never be too proud to ask questions.  I once had a boss, the Chairman and CEO of a Fortune 100 company, who asked questions all the time.  He never let anything go that he did not understand.  The first few times I heard some of his questions I thought, “Wow, I can’t believe he doesn’t know this.”  In a very short time I found that he never expected himself to know everything.  He never worried that people might think he was stupid or inexperienced.  He was expert at asking the right questions, getting all the information he needed, and then drawing the right conclusions.  The ultimate outcome was that people respected his decisions because they were well thought out.

The second aspect of this approach involves hiring well and surrounding yourself with people who are excellent at their jobs.  By hiring people who are better than you are at their job you can rely on getting the best input possible for making decisions and leading your business.  If you hire people that are less competent than you in their role, then you end up doing their job more often than they and you will not have the support you need to lead the business and make the right decisions.

The final step requires involving the right people in accumulating the information you need.  This changes from one decision to the next and, therefore, must be thought through each time.  Going back to our post on Inclusion, the simple approach to identifying those whose input you should seek requires simply asking yourself “Who has a stake in this decision….who is going to be effected by it?”  They are your constituents.

Remember, being the Leader does not mean that you have to know everything.  It simply means that you must employ effective processes that enable the organization to move in the direction in which you want to go.