You’re finally in a position of leadership, but still, senior leaders are making decisions that affect your team. And they’re not asking for your input. What’s worse is that you have information that you believe would change their decision, if only they were aware of it.
It’s tempting to become frustrated, to take it personally, to ask, “Why was I left out of the conversation?”
But that’s rarely the most productive response.
Let me start by inviting you to empathize a bit with the senior leaders. Many times, as I’ve been talking about over the past few weeks, the challenge for decision making isn’t lack of information. Sometimes it’s actually too much information, or conflicting information, or out of context information. The information you have may not, in fact, be new to them or relevant to them.
Next, let me invite you to consider your ultimate goal. Is your goal to be invited to every meeting where decisions are being made? I know most people in leadership actually complain that they’re invited to too many meetings.
Perhaps your goal is, instead, to make it as likely as possible that the best decisions are made.
If that’s the case, then consider how you can build the relationships with your senior leaders that will let you anticipate what’s important to them and the kinds of information they’ll find useful. Experiment with different ways of sharing information with them proactively, and see how they respond.
If you can learn to share information that they find relevant – before the decision-making meetings ever occur – not only will you help them make better decisions, but you also just might prove your insights valuable enough to be invited into more of the decision making meetings.
If you’d like to explore the details of your situation together, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.