about these choices make us better at what we do – and who we are?
It doesn't matter if you think these decisions are right or if anyone agrees – the whole point is that lots of people don't and won't agree. That's what makes these decisions difficult. They are subjective, and subjective decision-making is not helped by pretending to objectivity. We can't do it. We're human, we're fallible. Our lives, identities, and experiences shape the way we see the world. There's no such thing as human objectivity. So then, we want to look to science. Science, after all, can be objective. There are hard facts in the world of science. We follow the impulse to want to rely on something seemingly scientific, seemingly objective. And so we look to things like machine learning and artificial intelligence, hoping that they can somehow tell us what to do about the hard stuff, either forgetting that these technologies are themselves still created and programmed by humans (with all of our biases and fallibilities) and ignoring the fact that they still can't tell us what to do about the really hard stuff – the subjective stuff. An algorithm can give us answers – perhaps even the best answers that do the least harm – but it cannot tell us how a group of humans, each with different backgrounds and identities and experiences, will feel about those answers. And that means that perhaps it hasn't given us answers at all.
There is ample and increasing evidence that the best decisions are made by so-called centaurs3 – part human, part machine – building on the superior analytical capability (and, perhaps more importantly, speed) of technologies and the essential empathy and experience-based intuition of humans.
But they still can't tell us how to feel or what to do when we think something is just plain wrong. That requires us to rely on our judgment – the blend of spotting and recognizing issues (anticipating and responding to the practical environment decisively and realistically); the rigor of our cognition (processing and making sense of complexity, insight, and nuance in a balanced way); and framing (seeing broader themes and perspectives, distilling clarity from ambiguity). Our ability to make those judgments skillfully is informed by what's going on inside of us, what's going on around us, and what we understand is expected of us.
So rather than looking for ways to make decisions more objectively, every one of us who has a difficult choice to make should instead focus on how to build and sharpen the ability to make subjective decisions with greater skill.
How We Make Decisions Now
Plenty of decision-making frameworks implore leaders to use seemingly objective information more thoughtfully, and seek to help individuals to mitigate bias,4 decide differently in the moment versus over time,5 or make rigorous use of data.6 We've established that these models are less direct in addressing the equal complexity and tremendous importance of the intentionally subjective aspects of leadership decision-making. The notion of making “good” decisions – a demand of every leadership role – is addressed in part by understanding our sources for making subjective decisions and by finding ways to ensure integrity among them – especially when these sources are in apparent conflict.
For starters, every leadership decision is imbued with both ethics (contextual principles about what is acceptable in our organizations and our societies) and morals (our own internal sense of what is right and what is wrong, shaped by upbringing, family, community, identity, faith, and more).
“But wait,” you say, “aren't ethics and morals synonymous and, you know, interchangeable?” Plenty of thinkers, writers, and philosophers will tell us why one can be substituted for the other, or at least how closely they are related. For all of their overlap, though, differentiating between morals and ethics gives us important data about how we personally understand what is right and what is wrong, and how our context evaluates the relative helpfulness or harmfulness of specific actions.
There's a Whitney Houston song whose title puts it even more simply: “It's Not Right, But It's Okay.” The action is morally wrong, yes, but limited in harm and therefore generally acceptable (or at least not unacceptable).
All of this is complicated by the leader's understanding of the responsibilities of their role in a complex operating context: for and on behalf of whom am I working? Carefully interrogating these three dimensions enables the leader to make the best possible decisions in service of addressing the many, varied needs of a constellation of stakeholders.
As our operating context changes – and it is changing faster than ever before – it is incumbent upon every leader to clarify their understanding of the evolving ethical framework that said context demands. For instance, as recently as a few years ago, an apolitical approach to social controversy was broadly perceived as the right ethical framework for leaders; today, many employees and consumers demand that their leaders take a strong stance on complex issues that are of importance to them. And since those employees and consumers don't generally hold identical views themselves, a leader who appears to be political inevitably satisfies some stakeholders and alienates others.
The leader's impulse, then, might be to shy away from taking any potentially controversial stances, but that doesn't work either; fairly or not, our current ethical context interprets silence or inaction as an opinion in and of itself.
As a personal sense of right and wrong is also a driver of decision-making, considering the development of one's own morality and the source of its influences is essential. How might someone with a different upbringing, set of life experiences, personal or family values, or educational influences perceive the same question differently? Not incidentally, this is among the strong arguments for surrounding oneself with a diverse team and cultivating an inclusive and psychologically safe culture that elicits these perspectives as a matter of course.
Perhaps most obviously, clarifying the requirements and expectations of one's role is essential. Is the leader obligated to all stakeholders equally? What results do shareholders expect, and do their expectations outweigh those of others in the stakeholder constellation? Should employees, customers, and communities be treated with the same regard as owners and investors? And what happens when these needs are in conflict?
For instance, consider a CEO facing the decision of whether to lay off employees in a recession. Filtered through the lens of morality, she might feel that taking away an individual's livelihood at such a time would be immoral. Ethics, however, demand that leaders sacrifice the well-being of a few individuals to protect the rest of the organization. If she believes her role requires her to protect the interests of as many of the organization's key stakeholders as possible – including shareholders, employees, customers, and community members – then her determination about whether her job demands laying off employees might seem inherently conflicted. Accordingly, her role requirements align with ethics, even where her personal morality diverges. This apparent congruence of only two dimensions leaves the CEO with two acceptable options:
1 Explicitly leverage the influence that accompanies her role to transparently attempt to persuade key stakeholders to align expectations of her role with her personal morality.
2 Sacrifice her individual views for the greater good implied at the intersection of collective ethics and her role responsibilities.
Following her morals despite a conflict with her role will get her fired, so that's not in the option set here. The available choices are to use her morality to influence the expectations of her role or to decide to sacrifice her morality; either option requires reconciliation or acceptance of divergent views.
A hiring manager may know that his role demands protecting the financial, social, and structural interests of his institution by ensuring the
