Dodging Decision Disasters

My family and I are making a big decision about where to live. We had an unexpected (yet long-prayed-for) opportunity that came upon us suddenly last Friday.

We’re all abuzz with ideas, visions, fears, and questions. And we need to make a decision.

I pulled out a resource I had created a few years ago to help churches choose between worship leader candidates when in a hiring process. It’s based on Dan and Chip Heath’s book Decisive.

I found it incredibly helpful to adapt it to our decision because the reality is we can easily succumb to one of the four main villains of decision making. And the better news is we have tools available to avoid those pesky villains!

This resource is typically part of our Hiring Playbook, and today I’m sharing it with you because, as leaders, we are always making decisions! You can have the PDF or continue reading below.

The Four Villains of Decision Making

1. Narrow framing (unduly limiting the options we consider)

2. Our confirmation bias (seeking out information that bolsters our beliefs)

3. Short-term emotion (being swayed by emotions that will fade)

4. Overconfidence (having too much faith in our predictions)

To avoid them, let's look at several questions that will help us to:

1. Widen our options

2. Reality-test our assumptions

3. Attain distance before deciding

4. Prepare us to be wrong.

1. WIDEN YOUR OPTIONS

Vanishing options

• What if we were deciding only between WL1 and WL2, WL3 and WL2, or WL3 and WL1, who would we choose?

Benchmark

• What was the last worship leader great at? Who is most like them in terms of what they excelled at?

• Which candidate is most like a worship leader that people have resonated with in the past?

• What does it take to be a great worship ministry leader? Which candidate most looks like that?

Bright Spots

• What are some of the best qualities of your current staff? Which candidate seems to embody those same traits?

• Toggle between prevention (avoid negative outcomes) and promotion (pursuing positive outcomes) mindsets. Which candidate would we pick if we were trying to avoid another "our last worship leader experience"? Which candidate would we pick if we wanted to really grow the worship ministry?

• Acknowledge the risk of each candidate. What problems does each seem to have?

2. REALITY-TEST OUR ASSUMPTIONS

• Ask what would have to be true for each candidate to be the very best choice?

• If we only had the references to base our decision on, who would we pick?

"Ooch"ing (running small experiments to test our theories)

• Based on the rehearsal they led, who is the best candidate?

• Based on the worship service they led, who is the best candidate?

3. ATTAIN DISTANCE BEFORE DECIDING

Use 10/10/10

• Pretend we've made our choice. How do you feel about that choice 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now?

Status Quo

Wanting to avoid experiencing a loss (since losses are more painful than gains are pleasant), coupled with simply being more familiar with something (merely being exposed to something makes us view it more positively), creates a status-quo bias. To avoid this, we can answer these questions:

• What would we tell a good friend at a church down the street if they were deciding between these candidates?

• What would our successors do?

• Does someone who didn't know one of the candidates like them a lot less than we do?

Core Priorities

• Which candidate most embodies our church’s core values?

• What kind of church do we most feel called to become?

4. PREPARE TO BE WRONG

Bookend the Future

• Rather than the future being a single point or outcome, think of it as a range - from very good to very bad. Where does choosing each candidate fall in this range?

Prospective Hindsight

• We just hired our new leader! Think about all the reasons why this might've happened.

Pre-mortem

• It's six months from now and we just fired the new worship leader. Why?

Buffer factor

• To prepare for what can't be foreseen, what kind of buffer do we need to add to make this decision a win? (coaching, accountability, goals)

Pre-parade

• It's two months from now and we're talking to one of our best friends that knows we were looking for a leader. We tell him who we hired and why. What do we say?

FURTHER QUESTIONS (not from the book)

• At this point, would you be happy working with any of the candidates? (imagine trading emails, seeing at staff meetings, planning with, praying with, sharing meals with...)

• Is there one that you feel more connected to at a heart level? Philosophy level? Vision level? Theology level? Style level?

• What are the life circumstances that each brings, and how do they weigh against each other?

• Looking at the worship ministry's main needs right now, who is more equipped and skilled to meet those needs?

• Looking at the ministry needs down the road, who is more equipped and skilled to meet those needs?

• Who has the worship team seemed most comfortable with?

• Who showed the most actual anointed, relationally connected worship leading that showed marks of meek authority? Which leader seems to lead from the presence and with the posture of Christ?

• Which leader do you enjoy as a person more?

• Sometimes when I am trying to make a decision, I’ll stop and back up from all the processing I’ve been doing, and I’ll listen for the answer that I’ve known God was giving me, but I was mentally debating because I didn’t understand, like, or know how it would work. If you had to say (ignoring any implications of the decision) what you think God’s saying about the hiring...what would it be if you had to make a call right now?

Questions for deciding between two candidates

• What value do you put on musical/vocal skills? Who is more skilled musically? Who is more skilled vocally?

• There’s no question that WL1 is far more qualified as a musician, leader, and mentor. WL2 is still in the running. Why?

• There’s no question that WL2 is the simpler, safer option – local, known, likable. WL1 is still in the running. Why?

• This is not an apples-to-apples choice. What does this church need? A boost of energy? A pastor? Stability? Growth?

• What value do you put on familiarity? How could you know if you are over-valuing it?

I hope this strengthens your decision-making process!

-Dave Helmuth
(purchase my book, "Worship Fertilizer: (the first hundred)" HERE)

Dodging Decision Disasters (Nº 301)