Empower Your Team Through Better Decision-Making with Chris Seifert
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Chris Seifert, author of "Enabling Empowerment," shares insights on fostering a culture of effective decision-making and ending micromanagement.
Seifert’s diverse background includes roles as a U.S. Navy submarine officer, manufacturing plant manager, and VP of Operations, providing practical solutions to build empowered teams.
Key Leadership Insights
Effective Decision-Making:
The most critical trait for successful leadership teams is the ability to make good, efficient decisions with positive ROI.
Leaders should avoid paralysis by analysis and focus on making the best decision with available information.
Managing Uncertainty:
Embrace uncertainty by assessing the range of possible outcomes rather than seeking a single 'perfect' decision.
Utilize tools like confidence intervals and sensitivity analysis to make informed choices.
Addressing Micromanagement
Causes of Micromanagement:
Often stems from necessity rather than personality flaws; leaders step in when team performance falters.
The cycle continues as teams become reliant on the leader for decision-making, leading to a downward spiral.
Breaking the Cycle:
Teach and coach teams to make better decisions.
Create environments where employees are encouraged to make recommendations rather than ask for directives.
Framework for Decision-Making
Decision-Making Framework:
Step 1: Frame the Problem – Define the issue without leading to a predetermined outcome.
Step 2: Brainstorm Alternatives – Avoid biases like anchoring and confirmation bias.
Step 3: Identify Key Drivers – Focus on variables that significantly impact the decision.
Step 4: Assess Outcomes – Consider the best and worst scenarios to mitigate risks.
Step 5: Conduct Economic Analysis – Evaluate alternatives based on ROI.
Step 6: Show Your Work – Document the decision-making process to combat hindsight bias.
Scaling the Framework:
The framework is adaptable for both large, strategic decisions and quick, on-the-spot choices.
Overcoming Micromanagement
Self-Assessment:
Leaders often don't realize they are micromanaging; common signs include teams frequently asking, “What should I do?”
Foster a culture where team members make informed recommendations rather than simply following orders.
For the Micromanaged:
Focus on making strong recommendations to gain the leader’s trust and reduce micromanagement tendencies.
Assume positive intent from leaders and take control of what you can improve in your decision-making process.
Building a Principled Entrepreneurial Culture
Ownership Mentality:
Create a culture where employees act like owners, taking responsibility for outcomes and engaging in entrepreneurial thinking.
Encourage team members to make recommendations and own the results, fostering a sense of investment and reducing dependency.
Teaching Decision-Making
Training Approach:
Combine classroom training with one-on-one coaching to introduce the decision-making framework effectively.
Model the framework in leadership decisions to reinforce its use throughout the organization.
Empowerment Challenges
Requirements for Empowerment:
Intent – Leaders must genuinely want an empowered environment.
Capability – Teams must be capable of making sound decisions.
Capacity – Leaders need time and resources to coach and develop their teams effectively.
About Enabling Empowerment
Seifert’s company, Enabling Empowerment, offers training, workshops, coaching, and organizational transformation services focused on decision-making and leadership development.
Resources such as templates for economic analysis and decision frameworks are available on the company’s website.
www.enablingempowerment.com
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Mike Goldman: Chris Seifert is the author of Enabling Empowerment, a leadership playbook for ending micromanagement and empowering decision makers. His vision is to equip leaders with transformative strategies and decision making training to build a culture of principled entrepreneurship. Drawing from his diverse experiences as a U S Navy submarine officer, manufacturing plant manager, vice president of operations and consulting firm partner, Chris provides practical solutions to foster engaged, invested, and empowered team.
Super excited about this topic. Chris,
Chris Seifert: Oh, thanks so much for having me, Mike. It's an honor.
Mike Goldman: As always, my first question is Chris, from all of your experience from submarine officer, you know, on through what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Chris Seifert: Yeah, the, so it's really interesting. You just posed this to me because I've been doing a lot of thinking about it. but I would, I think I would have to say the most important characteristic is that they're good, effective decision makers. and by that, I mean, they can make decisions quickly, efficiently, and their decisions, you know, more often than not have good outcomes, right.
They have positive return on investment. and when I say this thing, I actually posed a question on LinkedIn this morning about Would you rather work for a, a boss that is a jerk, but is a great decision maker? Or a boss that is really nice, but is an idiot. And, so far, I think about two thirds of the people have come back with, I'd rather work for a jerk.
Who's who makes good decisions than a nice idiot. Right. Because at the end of the day,
Mike Goldman: How many, how many said neither
Chris Seifert: I told, I, well, I told them you have to pick, and I think, look, I think obviously we, you know, we don't want to have to choose, right. We'd rather have the leader. That's both. but I really was, I find sometimes it's really To make people to force, to make a choice is really good at helping me, you know, prioritize things, right.
Mike Goldman: To understand that if I had to have one or the other, what is the one that is just the most important? What I find important and interesting about that. And I
Chris Seifert: into this a little bit. We're going to talk about
and empowerment, but I know a big part of your. Process, you know, is about decision
Right.
Mike Goldman: making is what I tend to find is there, there are leaders who believe there is one right decision
Mm hmm.and they need to make sure they're making that one right decision versus.
We need to make a decision, the best decision we could make in the moment, and we will execute and make it right or zig and zag as we need to, what do you find out there? Do you find as I do that some people are paralyzed by thinking there's one perfect right decision? I mean, what do you find?
And how do you define what the best decision is?
Chris Seifert: Well, the best decision, let me start with that part. We have to define the best decision by the criteria of the company, right? I mean, so. Every organization has different goals and values and objectives. And so, you know, how well does a decision align with those? and, you know, what kind of results does it deliver?
I think the biggest thing that, that is, that drives, that, that challenge for people is how they've, how they handle uncertainty, right. the only thing I know for sure is that we don't know everything that we need to know to make a right decision and that we're never, we're not going to know it.
Right. and so I really talk about ranges of outcomes. Right. what are the ranges of outcomes that this action could have versus the ranges of outcomes that this action could have? And how can I manage that range of outcomes? Right? so one of the things I tell people, the only thing I know about your forecast for some, Variable is it's wrong, right?
You don't know what your, the growth rate or electrical costs or whatever the variable is going to be three years from now , but we can probably come up with a 90 percent confidence interval for those estimates. And then we can say, what can we do to make sure. That we take advantage if we get the good estimate, what happens if, how do we protect ourselves if we get the bad and develop plans around those things, right?
And get comfortable that we're going to have to manage in uncertainty, right? Rather than saying, Hey, we're going to make this, you know, we, if you think you can see the future, you're going to be very frustrated, right? Cause it's not going to work. Yeah.
Mike Goldman: once that.he really hated when I did this, but he would never make a decision. He just wanted more and more information. And I finally got to that point and I said, all right, you're making a decision in five seconds, four, and he's like,
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: no way that you're making a decision.
So, so we're going to talk, I'm sure a little bit more about, about decision making, cause you've got a
Chris Seifert: Right.
Mike Goldman: around that, but I want to go back. You know, your book is about. enabling
empowerment, not micromanaging. you write about something called the micromanagement doom loop
Chris Seifert: Yes.
Mike Goldman: Talk a little bit more about what that is and
Chris Seifert: Sure. Sure. so look, the conventional wisdom is that, micromanagers are micromanagers because they have some personality defect, right? That they either are narcissists, they're, you know, real arrogant jerks that just think they know more than everybody or they have trust issues or whatever, right?
I mean, if you go out social media, that's what you're going to see. That's the narrative. What I have found is that's just not accurate. The most of the leaders that I have met that are micromanaging are doing it because they had to, right? They were put in a position where the team's performance was so bad that they had to step in and start making the decisions for the team.
The challenge is that they don't know how to get out of that right. Once they get into it, right? Because once you start making the decisions for the team, What happens? Well, one, they already weren't very good at making decisions. Now they're not getting practice and they're not getting coached and they're not getting developed, right?
Number two, they get very frustrated because they feel like they're not heard. They start to disengage. So now the leader is, they're now even more dependent on the leader to make decisions, right? so hey, leader finds, hey, we're getting in a bad place. I don't want this. let me give you back some. You know, decision making authority, our autonomy.
I want you to start making more decisions. Well, like I just said, we haven't been getting to practice, so it's going to be even worse than it was the last time. And we just start this downward spiral to where the team just becomes more and more dependent on the leader to make decisions, right? my analogy, simple analogy is.
It's like if your team, you know, if someone is drowning in a lake, right? And you're standing, you're the boss, the leader standing on the pier. That is not the time to teach the person how to swim, right? That is the time to jump in and drag them back to the pier and get them to safety. Right. But if you don't teach them how to swim, once they're back to safety, And you walk off the pier, they're just going to jump back into water and you're going to be doing it again.
Right.
And so that's where I talk about like figuring out, Hey, how do we help them make better decisions so that I don't have to keep stepping in and making decisions for them?
Mike Goldman: You, you used, I'm going to use two variations on the word that I think it's an interesting way to think that I hadn't thought about it. You talked about someone being a micromanager. But then you said someone who's micromanagingand what I want to hit on there is, do you find in leaders that you work with who are micromanaging, is it situational or to say someone is a micromanager is labeling that's who they are, right?
Which could be kind of dangerous, but to say they're micromanaging, do you find that leaders that micromanage typically do that as a habit? Across their team, or is it more, they're doing a great job with these four people, but they're micromanaging this fifth one.
Chris Seifert: I w I think there's definitely some folks that have developed it as a habit, right? I mean, if they started. Managing in that way, and we're successful from the get go, they don't know another way to get out of it right to just keep, you know, and like I said, you can't the one misnomer is that the way out of that culture where that micromanagement has created is that the way out of it is just to declare it.
Like, that's not going to work. You can't just stop back and say, I want you to start making more decisions. You have to fix the underlying root cause, which is they weren't making good decisions. Right. And that's why the leader has had to step in. but look, I have micromanaged, absolutely micromanaged situationally at times when I had to, I mean, when I had it, you know, there were times where I've taken over a plant.
Or I was a vice president and there was a plant that I was responsible for where, you know, they're losing money for months that people are getting hurt. Right. We're having major equipment downtime and you just, there comes a point where you have to say, look, this is not viable. We can't do this anymore.
You're going to have to start, I'm going to have to come in and start telling people what to do so that we can be safe and we can run, right? We can be stable. Once we get there, then I need to start figuring out what are the decisions that we're making that are so bad. How can, how do we stop making these bad decisions that got us here so that I can give you back this plant and step back away to the role I'm supposed to be doing.
Mike Goldman: is it always about decision
Chris Seifert: so absolutely. I've seen leaders that micromanage because as you said, they
that their team or a team member will make the right decision unless they're.
making it for them. But I've also seen folks micromanage if it's still the right word, I've seen folks micromanage because they're people that if you're not right on top of them, they're not going to get the work done. When they said they were going to get it done, or they're not going to get it done with a level of quality. Does that somehow still come back around to decision
Yeah,
Mike Goldman: is that
Chris Seifert: I, yeah, I think that's a little bit different because I would actually say I think that's enabling people to not be engaged. Right?
you know, one of the habits that I hate from leaders is leader sending out constant reminders about due dates. Okay. I was I'm a veteran. I was served on a submarine , right?
I was a veteran of the US Navy. I can tell you one thing my captain never did for me on a submarine was ever remind me of some of a due date, right? If we had a due date, the expectation was I got it done on time or I came to him before the due date and I told him I wasn't going to get it done by the due date.
And we worked on a, we negotiated an alternative, but to let the due date pass and not say anything, right? Was just not acceptable. Right. and I think any good team, I mean, that's just good professional behavior, right? Like if we make a commitment, you and I make a commitment to each other. I should either honor my commitment, or if I realize I'm not going to honor my commitment, I should come to you and tell you that.
Right. but the, what leaders I see often do instead of correcting that issue, instead of sitting down with the employee and having the conversation that we just had and saying, that's the expectation for how we work together. Right. What they do is they just start sending these constant like reminders to everybody.
Right. And the problem is it's usually one or two people on the team that are missing the due datesand not doing what they're supposed to do. And instead of having the conversation with those one or two people, it's, I'm going to send reminders to everybody. And now I've got 50 reminders every day in my, you know, in my email and, you know, it's just overwhelming.
Right. So,
Mike Goldman: And I would say if you've got someone who is not doing what they've committed to do, not hitting those target dates or getting you quality work, and you have to keep following up, whether it's You know, whether it's after the fact or it's sending out reminders to me, that's what you make us have the wrong person on your
Chris Seifert: yeah,
Mike Goldman: as opposed to we need to teach them how to make better decisions. wrong from an accountability standpoint or a skill level. There's something else
Chris Seifert: I, well, you know, I honestly though, I think you'd be surprised. I mean, There are many people who just have their, nobody's ever had that conversation with them. Right. That says, Hey, look, here's how it works with, right. When I make a commitment to you, I'm going to do it. And when you make one to me, you're going to, I mean, one of my, I share with them.
I'm like, Hey, listen, you, I've committed to give you a paycheck every two weeks. Right. You expect that paycheck's going to show up every two weeks. And if it doesn't, you would want me to tell you beforehand. So it's not a surprise. Right. And they say, yes, I said, I expect the same thing in return. I think that's fair.
Right. I mean, and I think that most people just, and I've never had somebody who wasn't like, you're a hundred percent right. That's absolutely fair. And that's how we should work. And when we don't work like that, let's just remind each other that. That's how we said we're going to work together rather than everybody start reminding everybody all the time about the stuff.
Right. So,
Mike Goldman: I very rarely, and I have, but I very rarely had leaders that admit to micromanaging.
Chris Seifert: They might
yeah,
Mike Goldman: but if I said, you know, if someone calls them out, not micromanaging, I'm just holding people accountable and making sure we get the job done and making sure we get the job done.
Right.
how can a leader gauge whether they are micromanaging? Cause I do think that's an area either. people don't understand it when they are, or maybe they do, and they're defensive about it. But is there a
Chris Seifert: sure.
Mike Goldman: whether you are
Chris Seifert: Yeah, I, so, I mean, I'll share some resources later, but I think I've actually, on the landing page, there'll be a link with this podcast. There's an actual survey of like, Hey, here's 10 signs that you have a micromanagement culture, right. But just two that are really, I think. That I'm always looking for in every conversation, every interaction I have with a team.
The first one is, are the, is a team asking the leader, what do you want me to do? I mean, that fundamentally they have been micromanaged if that's what they're doing. If that's the behavior that's acceptable, right. you know, I would, you know, you should always be striving. When I had an employee say, Hey, Chris, you know, this thing happened.
What do you want me to do? My response was always, well, I'd like you to make a recommendation. What do you recommend we do? Right. Never. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. It's not gonna work. We will talk through the problem together. Right. and come to a decision together. the second one. So if I, when I see that, like, you know, good sign for me, if I'm visiting a plant, hanging out in the plant manager's office , and there's people all day coming up to the door and saying, Hey, this thing broke.
What do you want me to do? I mean, I'll look at him and I'll go, man, we got a problem. Right. the second one is I hear people saying, Okay. You know, I just do, I just did what I'm told, right? I just do what I'm told. That's all I do. Right. And again, that tells me that we have a culture of micromanagement because you should never just do what you're told.
You should do it because you understand why we're doing it and that it's the right thing to do and what we're trying to accomplish. And if you don't understand those things, you should stop and ask. Right. And I think if a leader. Who's empowering their team is doing those saying, Hey, I want you to make recommendations to me and I don't want you to do what you're told that once you understand why you do it, you know, then you won't have the, you won't see those behaviors.
Those become unacceptable behaviors. In a team
Mike Goldman: So let's get to the, you said the underlying causewas, ineffective decision making.
Chris Seifert: Or not knowing how to make decisions. So the solution to that? yeah,
Mike Goldman: how do we help our teams become better at making decisions?
Chris Seifert: first off, decision making is a skill like any other. Right? It's something we learn. It's something we have to practice. I mean, it's not different from anything else like that. so, you know, that's what the first thing we need to do is understand that. And we need to, make sure that we're teaching people how, you know, the best ways to make decisions, right?
And there are absolutely right. There are frameworks that you can use to say, like, help you help yourself avoid.
common decision traps, right? So, let me just introduce this concept real quick of a decision trap. Decision traps are the things, the ways that our brain work that can cause us to make bad decisions, right?
So I'm just going to, a quick example. Do you know how to pronounce the capital of Kentucky? Is it Louisville or Louisville?
Mike Goldman: I've always said, always said Louisville, but if you're in Kentucky, it's like Louisville
Chris Seifert: this accent
right. That's true. That's right. I've had you over in Kentucky. Tell me that you actually pronounce it. Frankfort. Because the capital of Kentucky is Frankfort, not Louisville, okay?
Mike Goldman: look
Chris Seifert: Right, and so, that, that is called the framing trap, right? The way I frame a problem or a question has a dramatic impact on the outcome, on the answer that I will come to, right?
So when I frame problems like, I need to buy a new house, Right. Well, what kind of solutions can I come up with? Well, buy a new house or don't buy a new house. But if I frame it as my ratio of stuff to house is too high. Well, I get a bigger house. I could get rid of some stuff. I could find a place to store some stuff.
I mean, I got a bunch of solutions, right? So the way I frame a problem. Has a huge impact on the outcome and that's just 1 there's, a lot of the is based off the research of Daniel Kahneman, who wrote the book thinking fast and slow. and so, you know, there's, I've got a catalog about 25 30 common decision traps that I've structured the decision making framework around.
To help you avoid those decision traps and get better and faster at making decisions. And so, so first off, right, teaching people a framework and then giving them safe spaces to practice using that framework can develop that decision making skill. And those are the things that we need to do before we start trying to give them more autonomy, because if we start giving them more autonomy without enable, you know, enabling them first, then we're going to get bad results and we're going to get into that doom loop cycle.
Mike Goldman: So take us through kind of quickly, and then we could figure out if there's a few we want
Chris Seifert: Sure.
Mike Goldman: drill into, but what is that decision making framework that you're recommending
Chris Seifert: Absolutely.
Mike Goldman: we teach our
Chris Seifert: Sure.
So the first step is to frame the problem, right. To make sure that we've been very careful in the way we frame the problem to not lead us to, you know, a predetermined conclusion. the second thing is we need to brainstorm a range of creative alternatives, and I've got lots of best practices for doing that to avoid things like anchoring traps and confirmation bias and, availability bias and those kinds of traps.
once we've got our list of alternatives, then we need to start identifying what the key drivers are. And this is really important for you mentioned earlier about, you know, the boiling the ocean and right. Getting, you know, having to analyze everything to make the decision. Right. At the end of the day, there are typically only.
Three or four, just a couple of things that really will make the decision good or bad, right? like if we're right about this, the decisions, it's going to be good. And if we're wrong about this, it's going to be bad. So doing, you know, the analysis, and this is where you can use things like sensitivity analysis or other things to understand what are the couple variables that really.
Make this decision right or wrong. Okay. That's the third step. The fourth step then is now we know those couple of drivers to, to identify the range of alternate outcomes. So what's the best that could happen? What's the worst that could happen? How do we make sure we get the best? How do we make sure we mitigate the worst?
Right. And then we do that. We need to take all that data and that's, then we do our economic analysis where we determine, all right. Hey, right. This alternative has a 50 percent return on investment. This one only has a 20 percent return on investment. Right. And so now we should have narrowed it down to, Hey, we've got the one we're going to recommend.
the next step is to lay out, this is our plan for how we're going to go get it. And then I say, the last step of the process is to show your work, document what we just went through. Right? Because we're the last the right. The last decision trap. We're all susceptible to his hindsight bias, which is the belief that, we could have known things in the past that we couldn't have known.
Right? So one of the things that's so important is to write down what those alternatives you considered were, what the key drivers, what your assumptions were so that later. When we have the outcome, we can come back and say, what did we think? What did we think was going to happen?
What did happen? How can we learn from that?
Right. So we can be even better at making decisions in the future.
Mike Goldman: now, would you. Would you go through that process for every decision, just the big decisions like there, it would seem to me, and maybe you go through this process and, you know, in seconds,
Chris Seifert: Sure.
Mike Goldman: really quick in your head, or maybe not, but it would seem like there are some decisions where it might be, yeah, let's just make a decision and others where it might be,
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: got to think this thing through. Are you going through these steps regardless, or is there a certain type of decision where you're
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: steps,
Chris Seifert: the reason I refer to it as a framework and not a process is because you can use it, you can scale a framework, right? So meaning that, Hey. you know, we're making a decision about, you know, should we buy this piece of equipment or this, we're making a million dollar capital investment in a plant, right?
Okay. we're going to go through all those steps and it's going to be a lot of, there's going to be a considerable amount of rigor, right? I mean, we're going to like do quite a bit of supporting data on, you know, how, when we do our forecast for electrical costs for that thing, there's going to be quite a bit of supporting data on what we think it's going to be three years from now.
Right. versus. You know, Hey, I just had a machine go down and I need to figure out like, what am I going to do? How am I going to realign the manufacturing plant? Right. Or I had this issue with this facility, how am I going to deal with that? and, you know, we might still walk through the steps as a group in 10, 15 minutes.
Right. For that decision. And then there's some where, you know, just knowing, learning the tricks for each of the steps is going to help you on, you know, even simple decisions. Right. So, but I will say what I think the most successful organizations using this, they do typically draw some like fine lines and say, Hey.
When we make these decisions that are this significant, we are going to formally go through the decision making framework, meaning we're going to write it down, right? We're going to write down everything we thought about, so, and those might be around, you know, capital or safety or something like that, but typically that's how you scale it.
Mike Goldman: does this somehow help people that there are people that have trouble with. of the think
Chris Seifert: feet types of decisions. I'm on the phone with a client who's asking if instead of this, we can do this. Or could I just add this on? Or could we make this exception to what we normally do? And. People don't necessarily have the time to say, hold on, you know, let me call you back in 45 minutes. Cause I've got to go through my
Sure.
Mike Goldman: process to, to make a decision. They've got to make a decision in the moment. And there are people that are confident in doing that and are,and do that very well.
And other people that are not as confident and typically maybe based on confidence, they don't do too well with that decision. Is there something in this process that, that. Helps those people with the quicker decisions that not be as impactful. A decision as the multimillion dollar, which piece of equipment are we going to buy, but it may come up 15 times a
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: versus, you know,
Chris Seifert: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, so again, I think, like I said, I think decision making is a skill where, you know, the more you do it, the better you get. Right. So, so, and the more you're practicing on those big formal decisions, using the decision making framework, you inherently are using it for, you know, you start using it everything.
Right. I mean, to be honest with you, look, I think it's one of those things, like once you've ever had those things where once you think a certain way, like you can't. Unthink that way. Do you know what I mean? it's a lot like that. I mean, I know there's things about for me, like once I understood, you know, what an operational excellence management system was, I couldn't understand.
I got, how do businesses run without this? Right. I don't understand. so I would say to some degree, like once you learn to think a certain way, I, it's almost hard for you to identify with people who don't think a certain way, but I will say that's where having a common decision making framework.
Is so valuable because when you think about problems the same way I do, it's so much easier for us to collaborate, right? Because when you start explaining what you're thinking to me, I think the same way, right? I'm thinking what, you know, when, anytime an employee comes to me or anybody comes to me and starts saying, Hey, you know, asking me about a decision, right?
First step in my head is always what's the problem we're trying to solve. Right. Cause that's the first step of my decision making. what's the problem we're trying to solve. I don't want to,you're losing me in details and features. What is the problem we're trying to solve? Then they tell me that.
Okay, great. What other alternatives have we considered? I mean, I can't help, but think that way. Right. and take them back through that. the side part is when people have worked with me, they know that they better explain their decision to me that way, because I'm going to, I'm going to go back to what's the problem we're trying to solve.
Why do you want me to do this? Right. so they probably should just lead with here's the problem I'm trying to solve, right. And make it more efficient. So,
Mike Goldman: So you just kind of alluded to this and I want to hit on it. what's the best way. To teach someone this framework for making decisions is it, and I'm sure to some degree, they're both good ways, but do you find, is it sitting down and saying, look, all right, everybody, here's the way we're going to solve problem.
First, we're going to frame it. A great question to ask is what's the real problem here. You know, what are we trying to solve for, you know, and then we're going to, we're going to brainstorm alternate, you know, is it taking someone through and literally kind of communicating and teaching them the steps? Or is a better way to model it for them in your own decision making? Again, I'm sure the real answer is
Chris Seifert: both, but what do you find works best?
yeah. So the one on one coaching through decisions is absolutely. Right. The most effective. Okay. The problem for most leaders is when they are in, you know, when they're in that micromanagement culture, or let's call it a codependent decision making culture. The problem is they don't have time to coach every employee, right?
Like when you, like that plant manager who had the four people at the door in an hour asking him what he wanted him to do, he could not have possibly coached all four of those individuals. Couldn't have done it. Right. so that's where, what I've found is doing some classroom training upfront Right. can get us part of the way there to prepare them for the coa, right.
To say, Hey, look, from now on, when we're, when you're coming to ask me what you want me to do. Right. Or what I think we should do. Here's how that conversation is going to go. Right. We're going to start with framing the problem and we'll, so we start out by trying, doing that training with everybody to say, this is the change from now on.
This is how we're going to talk about decisions. It's not going to be Chris. What do you want to do? It's going to be this. So we go through that training and then we pick a few members to do. Want to pick specific. Projects or opportunities or ideas and go through the framework with them and come back to the group to then present their recommendation using the framework, right, which builds their own confidence, their own skill set and doing it.
And it also models to all the other, the rest of the team. Hey, look, this guy just made a recommendation and it's getting done because of the way he was able to articulate it. Right. And so encourages them.
Mike Goldman: I mean, I have heard, and I'm sure you have as well. I have heard leaders talk about
Chris Seifert: and wanting to empower their employees for I've been working for over 35 years and wow, more than that. 37 years. I guess 37 is over 35. So I wasn't mistaken, but I've been out in the working world for 37 years.
Mike Goldman: And for that long. I've heard people talking about empowering employees. I need to empower my employees. And yet in most organizations that doesn't happen at the level it should. There's still way more giving people the answer. There's
Chris Seifert: Mhm.
Mike Goldman: you know, catching the fish versus teaching people how to fish.what holds leaders back? Is it just the lack of knowledge that, as you said, decision making is a process and what the process is or framework? And here's the framework. or is there something else that holds leaders back from actually empowering
Chris Seifert: So I say there, there are three requirements to be able to empower people, right? there's first the intention of the leaders to do it. They have to want, right? They have to want that environment. They have to want their team to be, you know, engaged in making the decisions, right? second is the capability of the team, right?
Which is the They have to be able to actually rise up and make good decisions, right? They gotta be able to do that once you give them that. And the last one is the capacity of the leaders to give that capability to the team. Okay. and that's where the challenge usually lies, right? Like I said, that, that plant manager who in an hour had four people come to door and ask him what to do, did not have the capacity.
To fix that capability problem, right? and so they weren't going to be able to do it on their own. And that's where you've got to either, you know, get some help from another resource, or you've got to, you've got to have a more strategic approach. and that, you know, that strategic approach can be, like I said, doing some upfront classroom training with them, right?
But, You know, at the end of the day that to me, those are the three requirements and usually the one that I mean, my experience is, it's usually the capability gap. That's the issue. But there's also a capacity gap that they can't fix that.
Mike Goldman: Right? And if you have that capacity gap, you're also going to have that capability gap.
Chris Seifert: Yeah, that's it. Exactly right.
Mike Goldman: and I found, you know, the intent it's easy. You're not, you made it one of the three, but it's easy for people to blow by the intention. Like, well, of course they have the intention to empower, but there are leaders that actually, while they may not admit it, they like people coming to them and saying, what do you want me to do next, because that's what gives them a feeling of, you know, that's. That's how they believe they're the hero of the story or they're productive. If they're people can go off and kind of do it themselves and make decisions themselves, then how am I still valuable? And that's obviously a pretty damn short sighted tactical versus strategic way to think about things. but do you find that as well, that there are leaders that really, that the intention is the problem. They really don't necessarily want to let go of the
Chris Seifert: Yeah. You know, I started this out saying most leaders, you're right. Don't want to micromanage, but look, I mean, let's be honest. there are some that are right. there are narcissists out there. There are jerks. I just, I never see people saying it's because they have to. And I always see people saying It's intention, right?
I think it's probably more like single digit percent of the time. It's intention, right? but here's the thing that I think is not helpful about that, right? Because when you, if you're in a situation where you're being micromanaged, right, you've got two choices. You can either assume it's intentional.
In which case, I don't know what you're going to do about it. I mean, what are you going to do? I guess go find a different job, I guess is the only thing that can help you. Right. Or you can assume it's not intentional. They just don't know how to get out of it. And then, you know, and if you, that's your default, there's a whole lot more great outcomes that come from that.
Right. So my default is always, we're not doing this on purpose, but like, and I think most, you know, even the leaders where it seems like they want this, when you go to them, like, Hey, do you enjoy getting asked at two o'clock in the morning, what to do? I'm sure they're going to say no, right? Like who wants that?
you know, I, my, my first plant I took over was the previous plant manager was a horrible micromanager. Okay. I mean, I was just lines of people asking me what to do. And my wife literally said, she's like, Well, you just go sleep on the couch because I can't handle the phone all night. Right. And I'm like, and I did, I mean, I slept on the couch for a couple of weeks until I could get them to a point where it's like, we're not doing this, right.
We can't live like this.
Mike Goldman: So how do you, so, so if you're a leader, we want to teach people, we want to coach people. We want to model a decision making process. Let's say you're the person being micromanaged. Now folks listening to this show are typically at some leadership team, leadership level, but it could be the CEO. It could be a listener is a VP of sales and the CEO is micromanaging the VP of sales. So if you're the one being micromanagedand to your point, let's assume positive intent on the part of the leader, that's micromanaging you. what do you do? how do you get out from under that? What are the right steps to
Chris Seifert: Yeah. I would take a hard look at how good you really are at making recommendations. Right, to your boss, that would be my suggestion because look, I would tell you that if you are really good at making good recommendations, they're going to accept them, right? I mean, why wouldn't they? and so, you know, I think you got to take a hard look at, well, how good am I at communicating my decision making process to my boss?
Right. How good am I at communicating why I'm deciding to do things?you know, I look, so the decision making framework that I teach, I mean, I learned, was very fortunate to learn very early in my career. when I worked at, Georgia Pacific, right. It's actually, I've adopted, I've molded it from Charles Coke, right.
It's something he did that he started with his company and right. When he bought Georgia Pacific, he trained all the employees on it. So it was something that I learned there, but I've gotten specific feedback from CEOs that I've worked for, you know, as, both as consultants and as, when I was VP of ops.
That very specific feedback that said, Chris, the way you communicate your decisions to me makes it so easy for me to say yes. Right. And so, you know, that again, this comes back to that curse of knowledge, right? You can't unknow things you don't, you already know. I have to believe that what, you know, learning how to communicate those recommendations and decisions and think that way early in my career has helped me Like deal with that.
When I had bosses who quite frankly, everybody else thought was a micromanager, but I got a high level of autonomy from, because the way I presented my decisions to them, gave them confidence. Right. And they were able to say, yeah, I don't need to talk to you about that anymore. Go do it.
Mike Goldman: what I like about what you just said is, you know, it didn't start off. Well, if you're being micromanaged, you know, go talk to your boss and ask them to like, instead of assuming the problem is out there, kind of an external locus of
Chris Seifert: Yes. Yeah.
Mike Goldman: It was more internal locus of control, which is you, your answer was deal with what you can control, which is first look in the mirror. if you're being micromanaged, don't assume it's because your boss is a jerk. Assume it's because there's something you're doing or not doing that's causing them to do that. Maybe you're not making the right decisions or right recommendations.
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: that idea of taking control.you also write about and talk about this, what you call the culture of principled entrepreneurship
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: What does that mean?
Chris Seifert: it's just, you know, it's a culture where people view themselves as owners of the business instead of employees.they feel like they have a vested interest in the outcome, and so they act like entrepreneurs. they're more willing to take risks. They're more willing to give that discretionary effort.
right. They're going to do more than the minimum required. they own the outcomes, right? They realize that, that I'm an owner of, you know, how this organization does is going to affect me. And so I need to make sure that I'm, you know, doing my best for it. Right. versus that kind of employee culture, right.
Where it's a transactional relationship. I'm just here to do, you know, what I, You know, what I have to do to get paid so I can go home, right? and so, you know, I mean, it's really about creating that culture where people feel like they, they have the ability to influence the out outcome. And, so they have ownership.
And a lot of it goes back to that again, just right. Make a recommendation, right. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Make a recommendation. We're gonna make this decision together because one, when I have an employee comes to me and ask me. That right. If I tell them what to do, they have no ownership in the outcome.
Third, if it goes wrong, it's on me. Right. But if they made the recommendation, even if I approved it, they still, they made the recom, they own it now. Right. And so they start to feel like an owner and they start acting more like an owner and more like an entrepreneur instead of an employee.
Mike Goldman: And that's important. What you just said is so critical because there are times when one of our team members comes to us with a challenge and we believe we know the answer and maybe we do. So we give them the answer because that took 30 seconds versus Coaching them through a thought process and a decision making process that may take 12 minutes. We save that time, but if we took the 12 minutes, now they own it. And if they run into a brick wall, they will figure out a way over it, around it, under it, through it. But if we gave them the answer, they're just going to come back to us and say, all right,
Chris Seifert: Exactly.
Mike Goldman: What do you
Chris Seifert: Exactly.
Mike Goldman: And that takes a whole lot more time, but we tend to be. As leaders, we can be shortsighted when we've got, you know, five minutes in front of us with three hours worth of work to do. We just want to take that 30 seconds and give someone the answer. What we don't understand is that's hurting us in not just in the long run, even
Chris Seifert: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: run
Chris Seifert: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You're a hundred percent right. it just boils back down to that. That capacity question again, right? Like, how are you going to, how are you going to get that done?
Mike Goldman: so Chris, tell me a little bit about, so, so your book is called enabling empowerment. You've got a company called enabling empowerment as well. Tell me as we start to wrap up, tell me a little bit more about your company and what you do to help clients, what types of clients you help.
Chris Seifert: Yeah. So, first off, I mean, I hope anybody who has, you know, where decision making is important, which is, just about everybody, right. I would say historically the vast majority of my experience, I mentioned I was in the Navy, I've been a plant manager, VP of operations, vast majority of my experiences in manufacturing operations environments.
So that's tends to be a lot of my clients. But, and the ways that I engage with them, I mean, so everything from first off, like just simple training, right? let's do for, you know, if you don't have a decision making training in your leadership development program right now, it needs to be right.
So let's get it there. or, you know, simple workshops. We've got a team we need to, we got to get this skills, groups skills upgraded quickly. Right. We can do a workshop. then we will typically do an intervention, where we'll, we can do the workshop and we do, as I mentioned earlier, one on one coaching with specific individuals to make them champions for your team, right?
So you got a handful of really capable decision makers that can then, you know, co help the leadership team coach and mentor the other employees, right. to all the way to, I've, you know, do large, you know, Culture transformations, you know, management system, you know, where we're talking large, which, you know, talking about the organizational structure and policy around how we make decisions and, decision, right.
So, across the whole range of services that support people with.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. And if someone wants to find out more about you, about the company, where should
Chris Seifert: Yeah. the, our website, www.enablingempowerment.com. got all kinds of resources on there. You'll, you can find the book on Amazon or on the website. Also lots of articles, videos, more importantly in the book. I share a lot of templates, right? Like, Hey, if you. If you don't have,a tool that you use to do economic analysis, right.
To calculate the return on investment on a decision, you can go download it, right? Here's one you can use. Right. so there's lots of tools and templates like that, that are mentioned in the book or referenced in the book that are also on the website that people can go feel free to plagiarize and steal.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. Read the book, go to his website. I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Chris, thanks for
Chris Seifert: Yes, sir.
Mike Goldman: today.
Chris Seifert: Appreciate it.