Improving Our “Signals” and “Beings”

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When you think of delegation, do you limit your thoughts to organizational leadership? Do you think delegating activities is only a skill organizational leaders should know? Book after book has been written on delegating activities in a business context. However, the act of delegating is a powerful skill any person should learn for their personal and career success.

Delegation refers to transferring the decision making process to someone else. We see that it is simply the transference of responsibility to another person. It allows you to get more done in less time than if you tried to do the activity yourself. There is not enough time in a day to do everything by yourself that needs doing.

Nonetheless, this article does not focus on the view point of decision making in efficiently running a business. The article is about empowering anybody to make decisions on their own while not subjecting them, or anyone else, to damage. It is about learning to avoid turning yourself or somebody else into a cantankerous controlling individual to get people doing things.

You do not need to be a manager running a department or leader guiding a team for delegating decision making to be of use to you. Everyday we are flooded with requests. Too frequently we fail to say “no” and as a result, we go through mental and emotional havoc. Moreover, effective decision making skills allows you to create responsibility in people making them stand on their own two feet. Being able to create self-reliance in people is one of the most empowering skills you can develop.

As a leader, manager, parent, husband, wife, teacher, or human being on this planet (not that a manager isn’t a human being – though some may disagree), learning about the decision tree of leadership will be of help to you. Whenever you transfer responsibility and other duties, under safe circumstances, that lead to feelings of importance in people, you increase your personal magnetism and make people like you. With that said, let’s move onto describing the decision tree of leadership.

The Decision Tree of Leadership

Since reading Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s The New Psycho-cybernetics and Michael Hall’s Mind-lines, I have experienced the realization of how powerful metaphors can be in learning and implementing a skill. To overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed, Maxwell Maltz provided a powerful metaphor and visualization of an hourglass. No matter how much sand there is in the timer, it will only pour through grain by grain. One by one gets things done.

When we create a metaphor that is similar to a problem, we draw associations and learn something new from old information. This is abductive thinking, a creative process whereby we think of what could be. Symbols are used to indirectly mean something else. What this means for us in layman’s terms is our knowledge about a tree has the potential to help us better empower people!

Think of a simple tree. Each day decisions are made to keep it green and healthy. For the purpose of this metaphor, we categorize a tree into four parts: 1) roots, 2) trunk, 3) branches, and 4) leafs. Literally from the ground up we have:

Roots: Root decisions have the most potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization. They are made from a lot of input and consultation with others. Once an outcome is determined to be the best, the person responsible makes the root decision. Each person is kept up-to-date with the results of the decision.

Trunk: After roots are the tree’s trunk. Trunk decisions have the potential to hurt an individual, group, or organization like root decisions, though to a lesser extent. A trunk decision can take into account other people’s input but the ultimate decision is made by the person in charge. Who is in charge depends on who can initiate or omit the action. A parent can be in charge, but a trunk decision for the teen in deciding to find a job is made by their teenager. The outcome of trunk decisions should be reported immediately.

Branches: Branch decisions are very similar to trunk decisions. The main difference is the timeliness of the decision. A branch decision doesn’t have to be reported immediately once the decision is made. The person making the decision can take action immediately without other people’s suggestions. A teen deciding to get a job is a trunk decision, not a branch decision, because the teen is the one who acts on the decision while his/her parents are influenced by the decision.

Leafs: Leaf decisions are clear and simple. Sometimes the person has faced and solved similar problems in the past. A leaf decision is the outer-most and highest level of decision making a person can achieve. It involves making a decision and acting on it without consulting anyone. Unlike other parts of the tree that require the input of others, leaf decisions are pure independence. The person making the leaf decision does not need to report to upper management or notify someone what has been done.

The foundation of a tree is its roots. Without its roots a tree will quickly die. After roots is the tree’s trunk. Tree trunks are important in maintaining the tree’s strength. Next, the trunk leads to many branches. The branches of a tree shape how it looks and need to be maintained. Lastly, leafs grow from branches. Should a leaf or branch die, the whole tree doesn’t suffer. However, if the roots or trunk of the tree sustain serious injury, then the livelihood of the tree is jeopardized.

In terms of decision making, the leaf decision doesn’t necessarily mean it is less important than a trunk decision. Rather, it explains the ramifications of the decision. Leafs can die while the whole tree lives. If roots die so does the tree.

The decision tree of leadership doesn’t takeaway a person’s ability to impact his or her family, marriage, friends, or organization. It encourages leadership while maintaining a finger tip of control. We hate being controlled and having to report everything we do to a superior. The decision tree of leadership creates freedom and empowers people to become responsible and influential. The outcome of a leaf decision can still be life-changing. However, your family shouldn’t have to suffer because you made a leaf decision on behalf of your family that should have been a root decision.

Any teenager or employee at some time experiences a shift in self-reliance where their dependence on people change. Teens desperately want freedom from their parents while employees wish their overbearing bosses would release them from their controlling grasp. A male teen wants to become his own person, but you and I know that giving someone pure independence isn’t a safe choice. Mistakes get made and people get hurt. The decision tree of leadership will provide you with a lovely conceptual understanding of empowering another person so that you grant a person their desired level of independence while at the same time not making you seem like a grumpy controlling onlooker.

In adult love relationships, I often see something I call child-parent dependency. Such relationships have one individual, termed the “child”, who does things that are in compliance with the other individual, termed the “parent”. The “parent” dictates many circumstances of the relationship. The “child” of the relationship may feel comfortable being told what to do or he/she may lack assertive skills. When an important decision needs to be made by the “child”, he/she consults with the “parent” on the problem or shifts all responsibility back onto the “parent”.

Passive individuals require guidance by “parents” of their relationship due to a lack of definiteness. On one hand you have the “parent” who tells the “child” to do something because the “child” needs a decision to be made and action to be taken. On the other hand, the“child” hates being told what to do by the “parent” and will find an excuse to avoid the task whether through silence, avoidance, or forgetfulness. Again, this solving this problem comes down to managing self-reliance. Such a situation is one that will benefit from the decision tree of leadership.

A group, namely an organization, that follows the decision tree of leadership will benefit for several reasons. Firstly, employees have frequently voiced their pain of not having the power to implement actions that they are responsible for. To create any change, growth, or even to conduct a simple daily activity, an employee monitored from their boss’s hawk eye requires their superior’s approval. If you want employees or members of a group to enjoy what they are doing and feel a sense of pride, ownership, and responsibility, you need to empower them by using the decision tree of leadership.

The second benefit of using the decision tree of leadership is the clarity it establishes. When expectations are made clear that are empowering to an individual, the individual knows what is expected of him/her and works to achieve those expectations. As humans we want to make an impact and we need to know where it is that we can impact on. Defining the level of authority establishes clear boundaries and expectations. If you lack expectations and clarity, you are more to blame for a problematic decision than the person who made the final decision.

The third benefit is the personal and professional development the model builds in an individual. By communicating the decision tree of leadership to an appropriate person in your group, they develop self-reliance and confidence. They become motivated to grow and achieve more leaf decisions.

The fourth benefit is it increases the likelihood of good decisions being made. Mistakes often originate from inexperience and a lack of knowledge. A primary reason we control a person by making their decisions for them is our lack of faith in the person’s decision making skills. Parents who control their teens lives act from fear in their teen’s supposed inability to make correct life decisions. A lot of unnecessary conflict can be reduced through better preparation. The decision tree of leadership teaches people to swim in shallow water before venturing into the deep end. Once they get out to the deep end, they know no one is holding their hand which makes it all the more satisfying.

The fifth benefit is the resources it frees up. People higher in the hierarchy do not get bothered by decisions that those lower in the hierarchy can solve. The purpose of the model is to get people making leaf decisions as much as possible when appropriate. Managers and executives are left with time that can be used to solve more important decisions.

The sixth benefit, and one of the most powerful reasons for using the decision tree of leadership, is the large degree of personal accountability the method creates. A lack of personal accountability causes the blame-game and the involved group to not move forward as they fail to learn from past mistakes. The decision tree clearly empowers people to make decisions creating personal accountability. Gary Horsfall wrote a paper titled Accountability: The Force Behind Empowerment that was published in the Hospital Materiel Management Quarterly. In it he boldly states, “The driving force behind any and all successful programs, initiatives and companies is accountability… It is not possible in an environment where people feel that they have little or no control over their own destiny.”

Now you are hopefully aware of what the decision tree of leadership is and the power it has in transforming an organization or similar group. Now I’m going to share with you a quick step-by-step process for implementing the method then I’ll provide some real-life examples of what decisions fit into which category of the model. Lastly, I’ll finish of the article with an exercise to help you begin using the method as I want to help you go from intellectualizing the information to physical behavioral change and results.

To start off using the method, you firstly want to mention a new method you have learned that will improve the family, organization, or team. They may not care what stuff you have learned so you need to tune them into their favorite radio station: WIIFM (what’s in it for me). Tell them that if they give the method a shot, they will come to have more freedom, independence, and personal power.

Next, explain the decision tree to the person (or just email them the link to this page). Once you have done that, ask the person what they think how their most common decisions are categorized. Are they leaf, branch, trunk, or root decisions? Mutually working out a solution here is the secret to its ongoing implementation. When we make a choice on our own, instead of being forced into making a choice, we stand by it stronger and for longer.

The Decision Tree of Leadership In Action

Okay, now to provide a few examples of the decision categories. I’ll use a teenager and a parent to demonstrate the decision tree because the majority of people should relate to and understand the example. As you read the examples, keep in mind that the decisions made by one family or an organization will be differently categorized for different families or organizations. Individuals have different personality characteristics and situations vary.

In this example, Julie is a parent to her teenager Sam. A leaf decision for Sam could be what he decides to do in his spare time. He’s shown in the past that he doesn’t need to be babied around in deciding what he should do in his free time. Though, you can probably see that this leaf decision could also be a branch decision because Sam may need his mum’s permission if she can drive him to the local sports field.

A branch decision for Sam could be deciding what University to attend. While some parents control their child’s education more so than others because of price and other variables that differ between countries, the university Sam decides must fit in with what he wants. Once he has made the decision, it would be helpful for his family and parents to know his decision as soon as possible, though he is not required to tell them immediately. Sam can ask for other’s opinions as to what they think, but it is clearly all up to Sam to decide.

One possible trunk decision for Sam is housework. Julie gives Sam a moderate amount of freedom to choose what chores he wants to do. Sam is influenced, not controlled, by his mum’s input into the decision. Whether Sam does or fails to do the chores, his final decision affects his family to a minor extent.

A root decision for Sam could be borrowing his parent’s car. The implications of taking his parent’s car without permission greatly affects Sam’s family. One possible affect is them being stuck at home with no means of transport to get somewhere important. Safety is also an issue as well as Sam’s parents being concerned for his whereabouts.

It may be tough in deciding whether a decision is a leaf or branch, branch or trunk, trunk or root decision, but it doesn’t really matter if you’re not precise. In this model, close enough is good enough provided that you have mutual agreement. I repeat, ensure that you have mutual agreement on what decisions should be in what category.

To begin implementing the decision tree of leadership in your family, organization, or other type of group, here is a simple exercise to do. Over the next week, write down your most common branch, trunk, and root decisions. Leaf decisions can probably be ignored because there may be to many of them that you won’t want to write them down. Once you write them down, you’ll begin to see what areas you or other people are independent in and how your many decisions affects someone else in the group. The exercise will help categorize and track what is going on.

Overall, the grand purpose of the decision tree is to establish freedom and personal growth. We hate being controlled and made to feel like a caged animal at the zoo. The decision tree of leadership empowers people to make decisions that they would like to make or once could not make. By following the decision tree of leadership, you’ll be on your way to nurturing growing and healthy relationships that aren’t constricted by the thorns of controlling individuals.

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