How to Fix Bad Judgment
Successful nonprofits rely on individuals to make good decisions. Those decisions are shaped by mission, values, goals, plans and policies—but these need to be thoughtfully applied to particular, sometimes messy, situations if they are to truly benefit the organization and its work. A person’s ability to make such decisions on a regular basis is the essence of good judgment.
Managers are accountable for the judgment of their team members. The ability to delegate work and responsibility is grounded in the manager’s confidence that team members will exercise good judgment. When judgment is bad, delegating is irresponsible and so the team member is unable to perform their job. It must be addressed. But how?
Better Judgment Through Alignment
Tackling bad judgment starts with two principles:
Bad judgment is in the eye of the beholder. A team member’s judgment is bad when their choices fall outside of the range of options that the manager deems acceptable. In other words, judgment is good to the extent that it aligns with that of the manager and bad when it doesn’t.
Bad judgment is a result—a symptom—and not the problem itself. The challenge is to figure out what the underlying problem really is.
Frustration with judgment often reflects the lack of alignment between team member and manager regarding perceptions or processing. Perceptions are understandings of the situation, the desired objectives and of the associated risks. When these perceptions don’t align, judgments will also be different. Similarly, when processing of those perceptions by a team member doesn’t align with the manager’s, the results can be judgments that the manager finds unacceptable.
Perceptions. If a team member’s understanding of circumstances, objectives and/or risks differs from that of the manager, there’s no reason to expect them to come to similar judgments. These perceptions can differ for a number of reasons, most of them quite manageable:
Understanding the Situation. Every situation is a combination of signal and noise. But how to know which is which? New situations can be challenging for anyone to decipher. Explicit and implicit biases and misapplying lessons from prior events may also result in assessments that interfere with good judgments.
Shared Objectives. A difference in judgment may indicate a lack of alignment around intent. When managers fail to effectively share objectives, values and priorities, team members are left to decide for themselves what these should be. Small wonder when their efforts don’t correspond to the manager’s desires!
Risks. People perceive dangers differently, depending on personalities, prior experiences and roles in an organization. Risks that are obvious to some may be completely invisible to others, and so aren’t factored in when judgments are made.
It’s not essential to know at the outset exactly which—if any—of these alignment issues are contributing to bad judgment. Managers should address any—and all—of them with the same approach:
Ask questions. Managers often assume they know what’s in their team members’ heads. Bad judgments are clear evidence that these assumptions are probably wrong. Questions enable a manager to better ground their assumptions in reality—How did you see the situation? What were the most important things you were trying to accomplish? What concerns were foremost in your mind when you made that decision?
Fill in the gaps. The answers to these questions enable the manager to address gaps that they may not have known existed. No matter the reason for the gap, focus on what information the team member should have had to enable good judgment and how to ensure that such information is available going forward.
Check in. Having identified and then filled in the gaps, this is a good time to ask what the team member would have done differently had they had the new information. This will indicate if the lack of alignment around perceptions is really a root cause or if the problem is elsewhere.
Share your judgment, and how got there. Even if the team member is now able to present an appropriate judgment, sharing what your judgment would have been can have great value. Use the opportunity to highlight that a range of judgments exists, not just one right answer. In explaining your perspective, you are also equipping your team member to perceive future events in ways closer to how you see things.
Reviewing perceptions should not just be remedial. Effective managers work constantly to improve alignment around perceptions through planning, regular check-ins, direct support of decision-making and by encouraging reflections after the fact. The better that views of the situation, objectives and risks align, the more judgments are likely to align as well.
Processing. Aligning how a team member processes perceptions to more closely resemble how a manager does so is difficult, sensitive work. Most people are rather attached to how they think and don’t always react well when that’s challenged, even by their managers. Rather than approaching holistically, keep the intervention as limited as possible. Guide the team member to verbalize their thinking, both so that the manager can intercede effectively and the team member can become more self-aware. Here are just a few examples:
Jumping to a conclusion. Team members who are uncomfortable or inexperienced making judgments will often embrace the first choice that comes to mind. Managers can push back on snap decisions, require deliberation and ask staff to identify multiple options. Practice weighing options and articulating trade-offs improves the ability for team members to slow themselves down and come to better judgments.
Giving in to fears. Team members may fear looking bad, making others mad, not being liked, standing out, not standing out, etc. They may be unaware that such fears are adversely impacting their judgments, as these fears manifest as secret objectives and hidden risks. Managers can support staff in naming their fears, so they can be brought into the decision-making process, and addressed. The better able a manager and team member are to discuss fears, the more they can be separated from the judgments.
Pleasing the boss. Prioritizing what anyone else—including the manager—would think interferes with one’s own processing of perceptions. Instead of directly addressing the situation, the team member is attempting mind reading. The challenge is exacerbated when a manager’s own processing isn’t entirely clear. Ask the team member to explain their decision-making even if the judgments match the manager’s, provide transparent goal posts, and work to broaden the range of acceptable judgments, so that matching the manager’s ideal choice becomes less necessary.
Other Judgment Challenges. Not all judgment challenges can be addressed by focusing on alignment. Look out for:
Technical difficulties. A tougher problem is when the team member lacks the expertise to reliably make good judgments in their field. The management challenge here is exacerbated when the manager also lacks the necessary expertise.
Bad luck. Sometimes what appears to be poor judgment is mostly bad luck. Hiring decisions that end badly or risks that seemed unlikely that actually come to pass. Easy to see the “mistake” in retrospect, but no real reason to believe the judgment was bad at the time it was made. When this is the case, it may be the team member’s confidence in themselves that will need supporting.
The Manager. Bad judgments are those that differ from that of the manager. While the manager’s judgments are certainly entitled to deference, they won’t always be the best. Managers benefit from being skeptical of their own judgments and open to learning from their team members. Not only can this lead to better results, it’s fantastic modeling to team members.
Bad judgment can’t always be fixed. Sometimes the causes are too elusive, the lack of alignment too great to justify investing scarce management resources. But understanding bad judgment as a result rather than the problem itself means that you have more options than you thought.