Speaker 1: Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of
Speaker 1: performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving.
Speaker 1: This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host
Speaker 1: Paul Fellovaledo.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 2: It's episode seven twenty seven. Today we're talking about something
Speaker 2: that sounds smart, feels safe, and quietly causes more leadership
Speaker 2: mistakes than most people realize. Decision support tools. We're talking
Speaker 2: about dashboards, reports, surveys, spreadsheets, metrics, personnel assessments, heat maps, consultants,
Speaker 2: and risk calculators. These tools are everywhere, and before anyone
Speaker 2: misunderstands me, I love tools. I'm an EMS chief. I
Speaker 2: use technology, I use reporting, I use analytics, I teach leadership,
Speaker 2: I fly airplanes and use checklists. I believe systems matter.
Speaker 2: But there is a dangerous line that leaders cross. There
Speaker 2: comes a moment where the tool stops supporting the decision
Speaker 2: and starts becoming the decision. And that's where leaders get
Speaker 2: into trouble because leaders over trust tools. For one reason,
Speaker 2: tools reduce emotional discomfort. When a leader says the report
Speaker 2: told me to, it feels safer than saying I made
Speaker 2: the call. The spreadsheet becomes armor, the dashboard becomes permission,
Speaker 2: the software becomes accountability protection, and leadership quietly disappears. Think
Speaker 2: about this. Imagine a hospital executive looking at staffing software.
Speaker 2: The software says staffing levels are acceptable green across the board.
Speaker 2: Everyone looks happy. Turnovers average over time is manageable. Case closed,
Speaker 2: Except nobody walked the floor. Nobody noticed people stopped eating lunch,
Speaker 2: Nobody noticed senior staff stopped mentoring, Nobody noticed employees started
Speaker 2: using more sick time, nobody noticed people physically showed up
Speaker 2: but mentally checked out. And six months later, everyone asks
Speaker 2: how did we miss this? Because the tool was measuring output,
Speaker 2: the leader failed to measure reality. That's the first decision
Speaker 2: support tool. Leaders over trust metrics without context. Numbers feel objective,
Speaker 2: numbers feel clean, but numbers are lagging indicators. By the
Speaker 2: time your dashboard shows a problem, your people may have
Speaker 2: been living it for months. AI in recommendation engines are second.
Speaker 2: I teach leaders about AI, and I think it's one
Speaker 2: of the most important technology gees we will ever see.
Speaker 2: But leaders are developing a dangerous habit. They ask AI
Speaker 2: a question, AI gives an answer, and they stop thinking
Speaker 2: and that's backwards. AI should increase human thinking, not replace it.
Speaker 2: If you ask AI, how should I restructure my department,
Speaker 2: and it gives you a polished answer, that answer still
Speaker 2: does not know your culture, your personalities, your history, the
Speaker 2: politics of the workplace, your unofficial leaders, your one employee
Speaker 2: who quietly holds the place together. Tools cannot see what
Speaker 2: humans feel. That's why the future is not AI versus leaders.
Speaker 2: It's leaders who think, paired with tools that accelerate. In Third,
Speaker 2: our employee surveys, and this one gets uncomfortable. Organizations love surveys,
Speaker 2: anonymous feedback, engagement scores, satisfaction indexes again all useful, but
Speaker 2: leaders sometimes treat surveys like election results. Sixty percent unhappy,
Speaker 2: forty percent happy. Decision made. People answer surveys emotionally. People
Speaker 2: answer surveys politically. People answer surveys differently based on timing.
Speaker 2: A rough Monday can produce very different results than a
Speaker 2: great Friday. Surveys only tell you where to investigate, not
Speaker 2: where to conclude. And fourth is benchmarking, and this one
Speaker 2: traps experienced leaders. You hear the top companies are doing this.
Speaker 2: Our competitors moved this direction. The industry standard is okay,
Speaker 2: but are they successful or are they famous? Those are
Speaker 2: not the same thing. Some leaders copy practices from organizations
Speaker 2: they admire without understanding whether those practices actually created the success.
Speaker 2: You cannot copy someone else's operating manual if you don't
Speaker 2: understand their runway conditions. That's ava thinking. Two pilots can
Speaker 2: fly the same aircraft and arrive at different outcomes because weather, experience, fuel,
Speaker 2: and conditions. Leadership works the same way. Fifth is forecasting.
Speaker 2: Forecasting tools are incredible. Economic projections, growth models, operational planning,
Speaker 2: risk scoring all useful, but forecasts create a dangerous illusion certainty.
Speaker 2: People start speaking in future tents this will happen. No
Speaker 2: forecasts are educated guesses. Leadership exists because uncertainty exists. If
Speaker 2: everything were predictable, organizations would run themselves. The tool gives probability,
Speaker 2: the leader accepts responsibility. That distinction matters. And here's the
Speaker 2: leadership move. I want you to remember. For every decision
Speaker 2: support tool that you use, ask three questions, what is
Speaker 2: this tool not seeing? Who disagrees with this output? In
Speaker 2: what real world observation would prove this wrong? Those three
Speaker 2: questions keep leaders in the cockpit because the tools should
Speaker 2: never become the captain. You are the captain. The dashboard
Speaker 2: does not own consequences. The spreadsheet does not apologize, The
Speaker 2: software does not rebuild trust, the AI does not explain layoffs,
Speaker 2: and the report does not stand in front of employees.
Speaker 2: You do. That's leadership decisions. Support tools are incredible. Use them,
Speaker 2: build them, learn them, master them. Then remember something important.
Speaker 2: Leadership starts where the dashboard ends. So the next time
Speaker 2: you make a decision, pause for ten seconds before accepting
Speaker 2: what that tool tells you. Walk the floor, observe people,
Speaker 2: make the call, and ask one uncomfortable question, Challenge one assumption.
Speaker 2: Leadership was never meant to be outsourced. The tools can
Speaker 2: support your decisions, but they should never become your decision.
Speaker 2: This has been the seven minute leadership podcast, and I
Speaker 2: thank you for listening.
Speaker 1: For more, Paul Fell of Alito Podcasts, visit paulfellowalito dot
Speaker 1: com