Key pointers on how to improve your decision-making skills when moving into a leadership role within your veterinary practice
Moving into the next stage of your veterinary career can be exciting. If that next step involves stepping into a new leadership role, it can also be exhilarating and challenging. Whether you’re a veterinarian, veterinary nurse/tech, or a practice manager, if you want to excel as a leader, there are five crucial skills that, as a newcomer, you’ll need to build on. In the first post of this series: What are the 5 essential skills for new & emerging leaders in veterinary practice? we introduced the five essential skills, and in this post, we’ll delve a little deeper into the second of those skills – Decision-Making.
Enhancing your decision-making skills is essential when transitioning from a team member to a leadership role. As a leader, your choices have a broader impact on your team and organisation. Here’s a guide with tips on improving your decision-making skills and the changes needed during this transition.
1. Strategic Perspective
As a leader, many decisions you’ll make are intertwined with your veterinary practice goals. This requires you to understand the bigger picture to align your choices with your practice’s long-term objectives and consider how they impact the entire team and beyond. This requires a shift from tactical decisions, often involving immediate tasks, to strategic ones that contribute to the overall direction and success of your team and veterinary practice.
2. Data-Driven Approach
In a leadership position, your decisions often have far-reaching consequences, which means you will need to move from intuition-based choices to data-driven decisions.
This means you’ll now need to gather relevant information, analyse trends, and rely on evidence to help you make well-informed and objective decisions that also align with your practice goals.
Focusing on data-driven decisions rather than your ‘gut feel’ will help to improve the accuracy of your decisions and minimise any risks.
3. Stakeholder Consideration
Stakeholders refer to those who are vested in the business’s outcomes, including you, other employees, your clients, the practice owner and investors, suppliers and the general community. As a leader, your decisions no longer only affect you but also often affect various stakeholders. This requires you to change your thinking from only considering how a decision will impact your team to considering the broader perspectives of employees, managers, clients, and shareholders. Balancing these interests can be tricky, but it ensures you make well-rounded decisions that benefit most stakeholders.
You don’t have to do this alone, though, as involving the relevant stakeholders in the decision-making is also important. Seek input from team members, colleagues and managers to help you gain various perspectives and insights. A collaborative approach will also help ensure that your decisions are more comprehensive and supported by your veterinary team’s wide range of knowledge and expertise.
4. Risk Assessment
In a leadership role, your decisions often involve more significant risks requiring risk assessment skills. This involves analysing potential outcomes, identifying possible challenges, and developing contingency strategies – always with the goal of safeguarding your veterinary practice’s best interests.
5. Ethical Awareness
The decisions you’ll make as a leader can sometimes involve ethical dilemmas, especially when working in the veterinary industry! To develop the ability to navigate these often complex moral issues, you’ll need to understand your own personal values and practice ethics.
This is a skill that will develop over time, but always asking for advice from mentors and peers is essential, especially when you’re new to the leadership role
6. Delegation of Decision-Making
As a leader, you not only can’t make every decision alone, but you shouldn’t have to make every decision, as your team will likely include highly skilled professionals. To transition from being seen as the ‘decision-maker’, you’ll need to delegate the authority to make decisions. The first step in delegating this authority involves empowering your team members to take ownership and contribute to choices that impact their areas of expertise.
7. Flexibility and Adaptation
As we all know, things often don’t go according to plan. And when you’re a leader, you’re the one that will need to manage these unplanned situations. To do that, you’ll need to develop the ability to adapt your decisions to changing circumstances, which requires becoming comfortable with flexibility while still remaining aligned with your veterinary practice’s overall goals.
9. Inclusive Decision-Making
As a leader, there will be occasions when you just don’t have the time to consult with your team before making a decision. Making a unilateral choice is making decisions without seeking input or consensus from others. Sometimes, you will have sufficient information or expertise to make the call yourself, or time and/or urgency may require you to make a quick decision, and that’s part of the leadership role.
The importance of including various stakeholders in the decision-making process has already been mentioned in Point 3 above; however, although it’s usually best to use inclusive decision-making processes, sometimes time and circumstances don’t allow for that.
Involving your team members in decisions relevant to their expertise provides you with more diverse insights and helps foster a more collaborative and engaged team culture. A side benefit is that it can help to train your team to make better decisions themselves, and you’re also guaranteed to get a better buy-in when everyone feels they have had a say.
10. Continuous Learning
Your decision-making skills will develop over time, especially if you embrace a mindset of continuous improvement. Every day, take the time to review the outcomes of your decisions, ask your team and mentors for feedback, and learn from both your successes and failures to improve your approach to making decisions.
Every week, check out Vetanswers Members’ eNews, as we share a wide range of information with our Members and are always researching new and innovative solutions you can use in your new leadership role. Our Members receive the eNews every Friday morning in their inbox, and if you’re not already a member, join here – it’s FREE!
To help in your ‘continuous learning’ journey, you can also keep an eye on our online What’s On? Veterinary CPD Calendar for interesting CPD events that can help to develop your decision-making skills. Add ‘free’ in the search bar to track down all the freebie events!
Takeaway Points:
Improving decision-making skills in a leadership role involves shifting from task-focused choices to strategic, data-informed decisions. As a leader, you now need to consider a range of perspectives, ethical implications, and long-term effects to help you make the best decisions. And as you develop in your leadership role, delegating decision making when necessary, managing risks and developing the ability to adapt your decisions will all help you navigate challenges and lead your veterinary team towards success.
Next…. Leadership skills for new and emerging leaders in veterinary practice. Essential Skill 3 – Emotional Intelligence
Posts in the series:
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice: 1 Communication
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice: 2 Decision-Making
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice: 3 Emotional Intelligence
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice: 4 Delegation
5 Essential skills for new leaders in veterinary practice: 5 Adaptability & Continuous Learning
