What do the following five events have in common?

· Police questioning of suspects/witnesses
· IRS audits
· Courtroom testimony
· Investor calls
· Doctor visits

They all typically seek “just the facts”. This makes sense. In a courtroom, the jury’s job is to interpret the facts; they don’t want them clouded by the witness. I think in most situations, when we are unsure of someone’s credibility or agenda, we tend to seek the facts. While it’s true that people can mislead with facts, there is something safer or more “objective” about getting the facts. In essence, seeking facts counters a lack of trust.

This happens in business as well. Many leaders don’t recognize this as a trust issue. They confuse trust with integrity. They trust their employees not to steal, cheat, or lie. But, this is a different type of trust. It’s trusting their thinking which is often much harder than trusting their actions. That’s where the most “trusting” leaders sometimes fall down. They view their responsibility as ensuring that the data and analysis are accurate. That is their responsibility but they can be more productive if they execute that responsibility differently. If a leader is asking his team to walk through every fact and analysis from start to finish, even in the name of due diligence, he is showing a lack of trust. In addition, he is not being productive.

First, it’s inefficient. If you believe that one person might get it wrong and one might get it right, it’s more productive to have the “right” person do the work in the first place. Second, it’s unempowering. If your people are simply conduits through which data flows, they aren’t adding much value. You aren’t leveraging yourself very well if your job is to do all of the heavy analytical lifting and thinking. Third, it slows down decision-making and taking action. Instead of starting the meeting from the point where the team left off, the meeting backtracks through the data. It might take half (or all) of the meeting to get back to that point. That’s not an efficient use of time or resources.

I’m not suggesting that leaders simply take everything they are told without question. I am suggesting that there is an alternative to being an auditor. If you focus on seeking understanding, you empower your team, keep the conversation moving forward, and uncover potential problems.

Test your assumptions, not theirs
As a leader, you should have a general idea of what the data might tell you. For example, if you know that your sales in Indiana have been struggling, you might expect the data to suggest a problem there. If your team’s analysis doesn’t show a problem there, you can then ask about it (e.g., “We’ve really been struggling in Indiana lately, how did they compare against these other poor performing states). At that point, you’ll either discover that Indiana is doing better than you thought or that your team forgot to include Indiana in their analysis (or that somehow their analysis was flawed). Any of these lets you take action. There’s no need to rehash all of the other information that doesn’t have an issue.

Ask for conclusions first, then ask questions to understand their analysis
Have your team start with the results. What did they find out? What are their recommendations? Suppose they found a quality issue. You can them ask them if the issue is consistent across all products/services or whether it is isolated to a few specific areas. You can ask what patterns they noticed in areas that have the problems versus those that do not. As before, you are still understanding their thinking without having them go through every piece of analysis.

The key is approach your role as understanding people’s thinking rather than auditing their process. Seeking understanding is what good leaders do. It keeps the conversation moving forward and it uncovers problems. Auditing their process is a sign of a lack of trust. It’s unempowering and unproductive. If you don’t trust your people to do the job, get someone else to do it. Repeating the process for your own comfort doesn’t help anyone.

Making data driven decisions isn’t just about having numbers and facts. It requires judgment, perspective, and context. The more you work with your team to hone their ability to combine those things with the facts, the better and more efficient your decision-making will become.