How to become a Better Boss

By Michael Mankins

It’s a time-honoured precept of good management: Teach your team members or direct reports to take on some of your responsibilities. Doing so builds their skills and expands their horizons; it also frees you up to focus on higher-order or longer-term issues.

One key to successful delegation is to coach team members on making and executing critical decisions. If people can learn the craft of decisions – making good choices, making them quickly and implementing them effectively – they will find their work far more satisfying. And your unit will be far more productive, because every decision won’t depend on you.

Many people, of course, don’t handle decisions well. They may act too quickly, failing to think through the options and implications. They may try to deflect responsibility or pawn off the decision on someone else, often their boss. (“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”) So to build your team’s decision capabilities, you’ll have to start from the very beginning. Here’s what’s involved:

Work with your team to identify the most important decisions.
Every unit or function in an organisation must make critical decisions. Some of these are big, strategic choices, such as determining the allocation of marketing dollars or choosing which IT system upgrades to buy. Others are everyday decisions that add up to a lot of value over time, such as how to handle customer service requests. A useful coaching tool is to create a decision architecture with your team that captures your unit’s critical decisions. Begin by listing all the decisions your unit must make; then winnow the list by determining which ones involve the most value and which require the most attention. Those that make the cut will be your critical decisions – the ones that absolutely must work right if your team is to be successful.

As a group, assess how those decisions are made and executed today.
Are they made in meetings, or by individuals? Do you yourself have to make most of them? Figure out not only who makes the decisions but who plays other key roles, such as creating a recommendation or offering input. Then analyse the decision-making process itself. What sort of information is required before anyone can make a decision? Do decision makers get that information at the right time and in a useful form? A good way to help team members answer these questions is to evaluate each part of the decision process. Ask them whether the decisions in question are usually right – that is, whether they typically result in the desired outcome. Ask whether they are made and executed in a timely fashion, and whether they involve too much or too little effort, given the decision’s value.

Define key roles for your critical decisions going forward. Your team members may not understand that every major decision usually involves several key roles. There’s the recommender, who gathers input from people with knowledge about the issue and proposes a course of action. There’s often someone who must agree to the recommendation before it can go forward. There’s the decision maker, and there are the people who will implement the decision. We like to assemble all these roles into an out-of-sequence but easy-to-remember acronym – RAPID®, for Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input and Decide. Once people get used to the language, you’ll find they use it easily, as in “I have the R for that decision – Sheila has the D.” The common language makes it easy for the group to agree on who should play each role.

Coach team members on good decision disciplines.
Every major decision needs to be framed correctly – not “what should we do?” but “what are the best options in light of this specific goal?” A significant decision is likely to require a robust set of facts before it can be made. Gathering this information can take time – time that will need to be accounted for to keep the decision process on track. Decisions should be made according to criteria that are agreed on in advance. A leader shouldn’t jump in and make a decision the first time people get stuck, but should instead reinforce his confidence in the team that they have the expertise and skills to work it out. Setting guidelines for a decision – “as long as you stay within the guidelines you have full responsibility” – will help keep escalation to a minimum. Put these disciplines together, and you can reset each major decision accordingly.

Helping people learn the craft of decisions is a significant investment of time. You will have to role model the right behaviors and decision disciplines to make sure that they stick. But coaching your team to make and execute critical decisions well not only makes you a better boss; it also leads to higher productivity and engagement. Because your people are more effective and engaged, you can focus more on the big picture than on the daily details of management.

Michael Mankins leads Bain’s Organization practice in the Americas and is a partner in the firm’s San Francisco office. He is coauthor of ‘Decide & Deliver: 5 Steps to Breakthrough Performance in Your Organization’ (Harvard Business Review Press, 2010). Cornelia de Ruiter is manager of the Organization practice for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She is based in London.

7 Ways to Talk Less and Get More from Customers.

1. Be distinct from the competition. 

When prospects perceive you as similar to other salespeople, you are in trouble. As a result, your goal is to be perceived as totally distinct from the competition. The next time a prospect asks you why he should do business with you, you should reply, “I’m not sure that you should. Would it be okay if I asked you a few questions to better understand your situation?”

This approach is different, more credible, and immediately separates you from other salespeople. 

2. Understand your prospect’s challenges. 

Most salespeople spend their time trying to persuade prospects rather than taking the time to understand the problem that the prospect is facing. Remember: Prospects are looking to solve certain challenges; they are not looking to be sold. Take the time to learn about their key problems first.

3. Understand their goals. 

When a prospect solves his challenges, he can then achieve his goals. Once you’ve fully understood the prospect’s challenges, it’s time to understand what he’s looking to accomplish. Whether you sell to consumers or businesses, all prospects are looking to accomplish specific goals with your product or service. Understand what those goals are.

4. Develop a workable budget. 

Many salespeople simply quote a price to their prospect without ever having a good conversation about money conversation. This approach is costing you thousands -- maybe even millions -- of dollars in lost sales. From now on, help prospective customers develop a budget to solve their challenges and accomplish their goals. It doesn’t have to be an exact number. A range will do. This will help you determine whether someone is qualified for your service or product before you present your solution.

5. Understand their decision-making process. 

Many entrepreneurs and sales people feel stuck when potential customers tell them they need to "run it by a committee” before committing to anything. In most cases, the salespeople had no idea that a committee was even involved in making the decision. Well, whose fault is that? Salespeople rarely ask what the prospect’s decision making process is -- but they should. Here are two examples of good questions to ask: “Who else is involved in this decision?” and “How do you typically make decisions like this?”

6. Make sure they're committed to their goals. 

Before you get to a presentation of your product or service, you want to be sure that the prospect is committed to solving her challenges and achieving her goals. If they aren't, you're wasting your time by even presenting a solution. Your time will be better spent with other prospects who are committed to solving their challenges and achieving their goals. Before you present your solution, ask, “How committed are you to actually solving these challenges right now?”

7. Keep it short. 

Most salespeople spend most of their sales meetings presenting. That’s why they’re doing all of the talking in the first place. Rather than spending most of your time presenting, spend the majority of your time doing steps one through six. Get to really understand the prospect’s situation and decide whether he's invested in finding a solution. Then give a presentation based on solving his challenges and achieving his goals. Don’t present anything else. The prospect doesn’t care about every single feature and benefit of your product or service. He only cares about accomplishing his goals. So keep it short.

Putting all of these ideas into practice requires that you actually talk less. A great salesperson will talk no more than 20 percent of the time in a selling situation. Close your mouth a little more and you might just find you'll close many more deals as a result.