Introduction to Employing Differences

[00:00:03] Karen: Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

[00:00:09] Paul: I'm Paul Tevis. 

[00:00:10] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig.

[00:00:12] Paul: Each episode we start with a question and see where it takes us. 

The Complexity of Decision-Making

[00:00:15] Paul: This week's question is, can you decide? 

[00:00:19] Karen: So this is one of those questions that the question itself, can you decide, meaning, can I not decide, can you do it for me or for us, or on behalf of the group that I'm a part of? Is part of the question. The other part of the question is, if I'm thinking to myself, can you decide. Should I say that out loud?

[00:00:39] Karen: Like, is that actually the right path to hand off that decision to somebody else? So we wanna talk about, I think both layers of that, that kind of tack onto each other. 

Delegating Decisions: Challenges and Considerations

[00:00:49] Karen: And the overall premise here is that if you hand off a decision or if you accept the handoff of a decision, that's probably not quite as clean as it seems like that there's a lot of layers in there and a lot of ways that can go badly.

[00:01:07] Karen: And so we wanna talk about what those are, perhaps to avoid them, or at the very least, to not be surprised and completely thrown off when they occur.

[00:01:18] Paul: I think the not being surprised by them when they occur is perhaps the more realistic option here, because what we're really talking about is when, for example, I am in theory asking you to make a decision on my behalf. I'm wanting to delegate that decision to you. I'm likely to be affected by it in some way or care about it in some way.

[00:01:39] Paul: If I really don't care, then this really isn't a problem. 

Personal Accountability in Decision-Making

[00:01:42] Paul: If I'm not accountable for the result, if it's not gonna impact me at all, then I think it's actually super easy for me to hand it off. But when you are being asked to make a decision on my behalf, that's gonna maybe affect me way more than it's gonna affect you.

[00:01:58] Paul: I think that's where we start to run into issues and those can really come out of kind of two places, right? One is you might not be in a place where you are willing or able to make that decision on my behalf for whatever reason. And the other one is I might have thought I was willing and able to let you make that decision and I might discover that I'm not. 

The Reluctance to Decide for Others

[00:02:23] Karen: Yeah, I think all of that's true and I'm gonna bring up another piece because as much as I might be ready to have somebody else decide, it is actually a rational question to say, can you decide this for me? Because there are people who actually can't. I once, for logistics reasons, it would've been very convenient if someone else would've ordered my lunch for me.

[00:02:49] Karen: And this is someone who is very aware of other people and their preferences and knew me well, and I was really confident that if they would order my lunch, I, I mean, I get the thing I would've ordered, but I certainly would get a thing I'd be happy to eat for lunch. And logistically. I couldn't look at a menu at a time that would make it convenient.

[00:03:08] Karen: Like that would've made the logistics way easier. So I said to her, just order my lunch. you just pick and it'll be great and we'll be happy. And she simply couldn't do it. It is like not in her makeup to make a decision on behalf of someone else. So she sent me a menu. She like, she facilitated, she helped in all the ways that she could.

[00:03:30] Karen: And I had to make my own decision about lunch because literally the answer to the question is, can you decide the answer in that case of that individual was, no, nope. I don't make decisions for other people. I don't.

[00:03:42] Paul: And I think that that's an important thing to know, like when you're working with somebody. And I think those are also like situational, right? I think for some of them it's like, I'm willing to make these types of decisions for somebody else. And there are other words, but not these, right?

Boundaries in Professional Decision-Making

[00:03:56] Paul: For example, one of the bright lines that I draw in my coaching engagements, like whenever I'm working with executives, like one of the things I tell them is, I will not tell you whether or not you should hire or fire someone because you have to live with the consequences of that decision. I will actually share my opinion on lots of other things.

[00:04:16] Paul: I will also help you do your best thinking around that. But that's a case where, no, I can't decide for them should you fire this person or not. Because it's something that they're gonna have to live with the consequences of, and I'm not going to. And that's just a decision that I've made in my practice that I'm not gonna advise them around that.

[00:04:35] Paul: So I think it is also, sometimes it's a case of, you know, I'm not temperamentally capable of making decisions for you, but there are also times where I've just drawn boundaries about how I won't. I think that that temperament thing, is sometimes a case where we've drawn those boundaries really, really, really broadly, usually because of something that's happened in our past, right?

Learning from Past Decision-Making Experiences

[00:04:56] Paul: Where we've made a decision for somebody else and something went bad and we've consciously or unconsciously said, never again. I'm never doing that. I will suggest, I will advise, I will throw things out there, I will facilitate, but I will never make a decision for somebody else. 

[00:05:12] Karen: Yeah, so I think just being aware, I mean, I'm someone who's pretty happy to hand off a decision and I tell myself at least that I'm pretty good at knowing when I am good to hand it off and when I'm not gonna be good to hand it off. But it's been a learning for me that just because I am a hundred percent willing to hand it off and a hundred percent confident in their ability to make it, doesn't mean that it's something they're willing to do.

[00:05:34] Karen: So I think in that sense, the can you decide or would you be willing to decide for me. It is a useful question, and it's not just a request. It is actually an ask for information. And hopefully, they can tell me, yeah, I'm not gonna decide, or sure I will whichever way. But I think just knowing that we don't necessarily, I guess I tend to start from the premise that if I'm happy for them to decide it works and there is another side of that and I need to be aware that they may not be happy to decide for me.

The Importance of Trust and Competence

[00:06:04] Paul: This gets into you, you've pointed at two things that I think are often that need to be true when we wanna delegate something to someone, right? Which is that we need to trust them. You know, in the sense of like, we think that they have our interests at heart.

[00:06:17] Paul: Like they think that they're actually gonna look out for us. You know, that. And then also that we believe that they're competent to make the decision. Right. And I think that oftentimes, like that we may stop our calculus there. And you're kind of pointing to the fact that we also need to ask ourselves, in the abstract, we might trust them, we might trust their judgment, we might trust their skill and their, their competence to do this thing for us, but how do they feel about doing it?

[00:06:42] Paul: I think is also another important, you know, they want us to trust them to that degree. 

[00:06:47] Karen: So assuming that what's going on on their side is sure that is a responsibility they are willing and able to take on. 

Handling Decision-Making Fatigue

[00:06:56] Karen: Then there's the piece about getting honest with myself about whether I'm really willing to let it go because I think one of the reasons this questions comes up is because decisions are work like that they take effort and energy and time.

[00:07:12] Karen: And most of us would be better off at least in some ways if we made fewer of a thumb. And so some of this is, it would be so nice to just hand off. I don't wanna think about it. I mean, this is sort of the, I mean like can you decide is also inherent and will you just deal with it? Don't talk to me. I don't wanna know.

[00:07:33] Karen: I'm busy with other things. And I can certainly get there. I've been known to answer the question, what do you want for dinner with I want to not decide. Like that's the thing I want most because decision is something I have run out of capacity for today. But that instinct has to be weighed against what might happen because however much I may trust someone else, they will never be exactly me.

[00:08:00] Paul: Yeah. This is that other half, that second thing that we talked about, which is the whole like, I might think in the abstract, I just want this other person to decide something, but if I haven't really thought through, like what might they come back with that I might not be okay with. I might get surprised.

[00:08:18] Paul: And then we've gotta deal with whatever happens there, right? Where it's, I've asked you to decide this thing. I say, oh, could you just decide this? And you go, absolutely great. And you come back And, I say, well, what did you decide? And you say, I did this thing. And I go, that was a terrible idea.

[00:08:33] Paul: Why did you do that? How could you possibly, right? Which is not, you know, not what we want. And so I think there's two pieces to that. 

Setting Constraints for Better Decisions

[00:08:40] Paul: Like one of them is what you're pointing out here, which is, maybe before we ask someone else to decide for us, we wanna think through what are the possible outcomes here that I'm not okay with.

[00:08:54] Paul: Like oftentimes we want someone else to decide because we feel like we're good with whatever the range of outcomes is, like whatever they might decide. But that does mean that we need to start thinking deeply about what might they come up with that we weren't even thinking about. How do we expand our range of possible outcomes given that someone with a different set of experiences, a different set of priorities, all of these things is gonna be looking at this situation.

[00:09:22] Paul: They're gonna come up with different options that we hadn't thought of. Are we really okay with all of those? And so my usual advice in that situation is before handing off those things, I like to give some constraints. Some things about going back to the dinner example, which we seem to talk about a lot.

[00:09:40] Paul: You know, I might say something like, I would really like it for you to decide. The only thing that I care about is I wanna be able to have something that has some fresh vegetables in it. Other than that, I'm good. Because now the other person's got something to work with and they're gonna come back with.

[00:09:55] Paul: Great. So I ordered from the barbecue place and I only got beans and sausage and whatever have you. Right? And there's not a vegetable in the thing, which is like, I didn't even realize that that wasn't what I didn't want until we got there. So I think one of the key things is to start to think about what are those range of things that could happen and give some constraints, some guidance, some guardrails the other person can work within. 'Cause I think that also can make the other person more willing to make a decision if you've narrowed their set of possibilities a little bit.

[00:10:25] Karen: Yeah. 

The Role of Communication in Decision-Making

[00:10:26] Karen: And I think that's also useful advice for the person on the receiving end of the question, which is, okay, I'll make the decision, but I need to know these things. Is there a price limitation? Is there a particular ingredient you wanna avoid or make sure we have? You know, like, either person can elicit the conversation about those constraints.

[00:10:45] Karen: And that can be useful. And then I think the next piece once we have the constraints is, okay, so we've got the constraints, we've made the agreement. Somebody's gonna go make a decision for somebody else. Be prepared for that to go wrong as we're not good at this. Like we say, think through all the things that might go wrong or that you might not have thought of.

[00:11:08] Karen: Well, think of all the things you might not have thought of as actually a tough assignment.

[00:11:11] Paul: Right. It's an infinite number of things I haven't thought of. 

[00:11:15] Karen: Yeah.

[00:11:17] Karen: And so a percentage of the time this is gonna go wrong. 

Repairing Relationships After Decisions Go Wrong

[00:11:33] Karen: So I think another piece of this is if you're gonna ask somebody else to make decisions for you, you wanna make sure that relationally you have enough of a skillset to clean up the mess when they do something you didn't expect or you care about, something they didn't think you cared about.

[00:11:40] Karen: Or like you don't know each other as well as you think, you can be married to somebody for decades and still run into this problem. In fact, I think that's one of the places it shows up most, but it also shows up in business and various types of groups and organizations. And so I think we should talk a little bit about, okay, a decision got made, somebody wasn't happy with it.

[00:12:01] Karen: The person who made the decision realizes whether 'cause they said it or read it a facial expression or whatever it was. Now what?

[00:12:09] Paul: And I think for me, there is that graceful bit of how do I take it back? Right? Like, look, I know I said I wanted you to make this decision. 

Taking Responsibility for Delegated Decisions

[00:12:18] Paul: And I think being able to, for me, the way that I try to approach that and the way that I coach people to approach that is if I've handed off the decision to somebody and they've made a decision that I'm not okay with, I need to take responsibility for that.

[00:12:31] Paul: Like, I need to take it, right? This is where I call my bad, right? Where I need to say like, oh, okay, I know I asked you to do this thing and I gave you these constraints. I realize now that I didn't articulate something because I just didn't know it, right? This is something that I coach a lot of folks when they're trying to delegate work to their employees, right?

[00:12:50] Paul: Who've never done this before. There's no way you're gonna give perfect constructions the first time, or even the first seven times, because often you personally are making those decisions with all kinds of unconscious things going on. You can't bring those to your conscious attention.

[00:13:07] Paul: To then articulate them to another person. You actually only know that you didn't want the thing when it shows up on your doorstep. And so being able to gracefully say, my bad, I didn't realize this, this isn't your fault. Like, I'm not gonna hold this against you. Because I think one of the things that keeps people from wanting to accept decision making rights on somebody else's behalf is fear of blame.

[00:13:32] Paul: So you've gotta take the blame out, right? And say, this isn't your fault, my bad. And also, you've gotta do the repair around the fact that you had granted them this, you know, this authority, this decision making sort of thing, and you're taking it back and that is gonna damage the space, the relationship.

[00:13:49] Paul: And you need to be able to repair that. I know, I said I was gonna have you to make this decision. I realize now that I actually wasn't ready to give that decision up because this, that, and the other thing. I'm sorry. What do we need to do? And this is where you go through the repair sorts of things that we've talked about before.

[00:14:05] Paul: So I think being able to admit it's on you, and then to find out from the other person, how was it for them to have you take the decision back? 

[00:14:15] Karen: Yep. And I think that this kind of points to a parameter of, if it goes badly, what are the stakes there? So that I can know, like going in, okay, this is cleanupable, or I can live with like that maybe that something happens that I don't expect. But you know, this is a small piece of my life.

[00:14:38] Karen: It's not a giant piece of my life. So even if I can't predict what might go badly about it, it's a small enough piece that even if the whole thing collapses, which I totally don't expect, I'll live with that. So there's the cleanup around, we need to go back and unmake that decision and remake it, or there's the cleanup around, I'm gonna live with the thing that, you know, it would've been better if I'd made the decision myself.

[00:15:03] Karen: And one of the stories I like to hold onto with that is there were good reasons I didn't make the decision. And those benefits that the power differential shifted, you know, like I shifted some power away from myself. That was probably good for the relationship. That I didn't have to put the time and energy and take up my capacity making decisions, that was probably a good thing.

[00:15:25] Karen: Those positives might very well be worth whatever negative occurred because a suboptimal decision was made. 

Assessing the Impact of Decisions

[00:15:32] Paul: Yeah, I think that the thinking about the impact of that decision is also important. Emily Webber has this wonderful way of thinking about decisions where she says, is this a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo? Right? Which is a great way of thinking about it. It's like, if I ask you to pick out a hat for me, and you pick a hat that I don't like.

[00:15:51] Paul: I'm not gonna bother probably to pick a new one, right? I may just live with it. I go, okay, but for next time, how about we go with this? Or it's an easily changeable decision. Like it doesn't really have a whole lot long-term impact. And I should be much more willing to ask you to just make decisions that are at the hat level for me if it's not right, if it's more like a haircut where I'm gonna have to live with this for a little while.

[00:16:15] Paul: But eventually, you know, the consequences aren't gonna last for forever. Like, I might wanna do a little more thinking about it. A tattoo on the other hand, like, that's one of those cases where you might've picked it out for me and I go, okay, no, hold on. I'm taking it back. Or I go, maybe I'm just not gonna hand that decision off.

[00:16:33] Paul: I think that's a, thinking about the impact and like the consequences of a wrong decision. I think it's a useful barometer for us to kind of go, what would happen in this case? Could I live with it? Would I have to suffer for a little while, or is this just gonna be intolerable if it comes back a way that I don't want?

[00:16:49] Paul: Because I think that does point to not only the redo of the decision, but also the potential damage to relationship.

Conclusion: Can You Decide?

[00:16:55] Karen: Yeah, so we started with the question of: can you decide? And we're looking at first, the actual, literal answer to the question. Are they a person who has the capacity to make a decision on my behalf or on behalf of the group that I otherwise might be involved in? And if I'm asking someone else to decide and they're willing to take that on, what parameters, what constraints, what boundaries do I need to put with that?

[00:17:20] Karen: So I'd like you to decide within this box, within this finite number of choices you pick. And if I'm not gonna put any parameters on it, I better have done a really good job of thinking through what are the range of things they might pick, and am I gonna be willing to live with any of those? And then recognizing that even if we do the parameters thing pretty well, it's gonna go bad a percentage of the time.

[00:17:48] Karen: That a thing that I didn't think of is gonna get decided, or a circumstance they didn't expect is gonna be in play. And they're gonna have to decide something without, you know, in a different set of constraints that we didn't think about or whatever, and they're gonna come back with a decision that I'm not happy about.

[00:18:03] Karen: And that is going to create a rift in the relationship. There's going to be a thing there that needs to be repaired, and the first step of that repair is for me as the person who handed off the decision to take the blame for that. The problem isn't that they made a bad decision. The problem is that I gave them the ability to make the decision that that was the thing that was wrong.

[00:18:27] Karen: Was my handing off the decision, not the what they did. So if you can get the blame out of the equation and then just check in with them, like, I set you up for this. You did the thing I asked and then I'm not happy with you. How do we clean that up? How do we make that feel safe? How do we rebuild the trust between us, so that we can go on working together or whatever our relationship is, make that functional again?

[00:18:51] Karen: And part of that is paying attention to impact. Is it a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo? I love that frame. And use that both to decide should I be even asking to offload the decision and what parameters do I need around it? And if the decision comes back and then I realize, oh, I don't like the decision that was made.

[00:19:14] Karen: Do I need to ask it to be changed or can I live with it? Recognizing that the benefits of I didn't have to make the decision, I didn't use up that capacity. The person that did get to make the decision had some amount of increased power or dynamic in the relationship. All those goods are more important than doing the optimal thing in whatever the decision was.

[00:19:41] Karen: And if I can stay in that space and be happy that the decision got made, even if it was made differently than I would've made it, then it's gonna work. And then it really is the case that they can decide. 

[00:19:52] Paul: Well, that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

[00:19:56] Karen: And I'm Karen Gimnig, and this has been Employing Differences.