“I don’t want to set a precedent” might be the laziest sentence in leadership.
Here’s why.
Too many leaders obsess about setting a precedent when making a tough decision.
Because it’s too often used as a kind of get out of jail free card to dodge explaining their decisions (in just the same way that ‘confidentiality’ isn often used to avoid tough conversations).
And in doing so, what they’re actually setting a precedent for is:
- Opaque decision making
- Avoidance of decisions that are fair and correct, but which feel awkward to explain – whether now or later down the track when they have to say no to someone else
Therefore, we must retire the phrase “I don’t want to set a precedent” as a reason for any decision.
We should instead push ourselves to clarify our thinking and why the case in hand merits a particular decision.
And to find the courage to say no to any future decisions that – however superficially similar they might appear – differ in meaningful ways.
A common example is a fair and reasonable pay rise request from a great employee.
The fear here is that we might think, “If I say yes to them, I’ll have to say yes to everyone”.
But that’s bullshit. We never have to say yes to everyone.
We are leaders and we’re here to exercise our good judgement and make decisions based on their individual merits.
All we need to do is be:
- Clear about what matters in each case
- Transparent in explaining the nuances
- Courageous in pushing back on any blowback when the circumstances of future requests differ
The precedent we should obsess about is one of courageous, principled and transparent decision making.
Sometimes that means saying yes to some people and no to others – and explaining why. It requires us to have the courage of our convictions. And a resolve to weather pushback from our team.
To do otherwise is to dodge tough decisions and selfishly prioritise our short term comfort over the long term interests of the organisation.
Want to read more? If ‘precedent’ is one leadership dodge, ‘confidentiality’ is another. In this post, we unpack how it’s too often used to avoid tough questions.
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