The 3 step framework I used to make unpopular decision

In partnership with

Ahoy,

I was asked this question the other day and it really made me think, this isn’t an uncommon position for leaders to be in…

“Can you give me an example of a time where you had to make an unpopular decision, and how did you deal with that?”

Today I want to take the time to go through the example I gave, and how I decided on the approach that I took.

Hopefully, this can help better prepare you for when you inevitably have to make those unpopular decisions.

It’s a common saying among submariners that you have to behave like the submarine is always trying to fight you back.

What do we mean by this?

We mean, a submarine is a dangerous place to be, high pressured systems, explosives, nuclear reactors!

Plenty of things that can lead to you having a bad day.

And things generally like to go wrong…

Not crazy wrong, relax, we’re not having nuclear emergencies on the daily!

What I mean is, it is very easy for a mistake to be made or for a system defect to occur, and if the crew aren’t switched on, it can cause problems.

So when we say the submarine fights back, we mean defects happen and if the crew aren’t prepared and maintaining appropriate safety procedures, it could be dangerous.

In order to ensure the crew is prepared for a potential emergency like a fire or flood for example, we train.

We train a lot.

Every day, those remaining on the boat overnight will carry out drills to make sure they are ready to react if the submarine decides to fight back.

I’m talking here with regards to when the boat is alongside.

Training every day can be tiring…

We don’t always want to put out pretend fires, sometimes we just want to relax after a long day.

Especially when it’s the weekend and all your friends are enjoying themselves but you’re doing your third 24 hour shift this week down the boat…

As an officer, I would often be in charge of the team left to look after the boat for 24 hour periods, and as such, was in charge of running the training serials.

So here was the unpopular decision I had to make countless times on board the boat.

We are going to train, even though it’s a Sunday.

Here’s what that looked like.

If I was working the Sunday then I would have also had the duty earlier in the week as well, were we would have run a full practise drill.

Depending how the drills had gone throughout the week would affect how I made the decision.

If we weren’t up to scratch, best believe we were doing a full run though of some challenging drills.

But if the team were still having to work a lot on Sunday, and the drills were good during the week, I would have one of the junior members deliver a brief for the rest of the team on a safety related topic.

Obviously option 2 was preferred by the team but, still, nobody wants to do anything on Sunday!

Neither are popular, one is just not as bad as the other.

Some people get nervous about making an unpopular decision, and honestly, so did I. But here’s how I dealt with it.

Is the unpopular decision actually what’s best for the team?

If yes, then you can comfort yourself knowing that you are actually looking out for the team, even if it’s not immediately clear to them.

In my example, it is clearly important that the team is prepared to deal with any potential emergencies. Being prepared could quite literally keep them alive.

So am I the bad guy for getting them out of the mess and having them run around for an hour? Well as much as they don’t like it, ultimately it’s for them.

And if you do the job of explaining why something is happening (as I always advocate you do!) then ultimately people will understand and it wont be such an unpopular decision.

But it is also about finding balance.

It wouldn’t benefit the team to continuously thrash them when they’ve been performing well and are exhausted. So in that case, we step back slightly. I still want to achieve certain aims, in this case that’s keeping them up to date with safety procedures, but we don’t have to go all out all of the time if it’s not necessary.

It can be a difficult balance to find but just try to follow these steps and you wont be too far off:

1. If possible ensure you’re making the decision based on what’s best for the team.

2. Start by explaining why you’re having to make a certain decision.

3. Try to find the balance point.

I hope you learned something from this one.

As always, have a great day.

Reece