Jay Bransford
A leadership team spends months developing a new strategic priority. They pray over it. They run the numbers. They believe it is exactly what the organization needs.
Then they announce it at an all-staff meeting. No one argues. But three weeks later, managers hear grumbling from their teams. Deadlines start slipping. One employee is brave enough to speak up and voice concern over the lack of input into the decision.
Why do people resist what seems like a good decision?
Sometimes resistance isn't about the decision itself. It’s about how people experienced the process. Employees may feel their perspective wasn't considered, the reasoning wasn't adequately explained, or the decision was made without understanding how it would affect the people expected to implement it.
In other words, what looks like resistance to a decision may actually signal a lack of trust in the process and a lack of employee buy-in.
For Christian leaders, the challenge isn't simply to make good decisions. It’s to create healthy decision-making processes that combine wise leadership with listening, humility, clarity, and appropriate involvement.
1. Create a Listening Culture
Your goal as a leader isn’t to just “sell” people on decisions, but to engage them in a way that nurtures a listening and learning culture at all levels of your organization. When leaders consistently ask questions and listen, employees become more willing to share the information leaders need—especially information that may challenge their assumptions.
Consistent one-on-one meetings between employees and supervisors can create an ongoing rhythm of two-way communication. Effective one-on-ones give employees regular opportunities to raise concerns, offer ideas, ask questions, and provide perspectives leaders may otherwise never hear.
Listening sessions or "listening tours" can provide another valuable forum. Senior leaders might hold these annually or before significant organizational changes. Department leaders might use them more frequently to understand how employees are experiencing specific issues, projects, or potential decisions.
Before making a significant decision, ask: Who will be most affected by this decision? What might they know that we don't? What concerns or opportunities might we be missing?
Listening doesn't require leaders to agree with every suggestion. It means ensuring that the people closest to the work have a reasonable opportunity to contribute wisdom before the decision is made.
2. Clarify How the Decision Will Be Made and Who Owns It
Healthy leaders recognize that different decisions require different levels of involvement. Three common approaches are:
- Autocratic: The leader makes the decision without seeking input from others.
- Consultative: The leader seeks input from appropriate people and then makes the final decision.
- Consensus: A group of stakeholders works together to reach a shared decision.
Each approach can be appropriate. A crisis may require a leader to decide quickly. A highly technical decision may require input from only a few experts. A strategic change affecting many employees may benefit from significant consultation from all levels of the organization. Some decisions may warrant genuine consensus.
Problems arise when leaders use the same decision-making style for every situation—or when employees believe they are being invited to help make a decision when leadership is actually only asking for input.
Before beginning a significant decision process, leaders should clarify: Who needs to provide input? Who owns the decision? Who needs to understand the reasoning? And who will be responsible for implementation?
Clarity about the process creates predictability, and predictability helps build trust.
3. Involve the People Closest to the Impact
The people affected by a decision often see realities senior leaders cannot.
Imagine a leadership team establishing aggressive annual goals for every department. From the executive team's perspective, the goals may seem ambitious but achievable. Yet department managers may immediately recognize staffing limitations, competing priorities, technology constraints, or other realities that make those goals unrealistic.
If those managers aren't consulted, they may leave the planning process feeling overlooked and overwhelmed. Leadership may subsequently interpret their lack of enthusiasm as resistance.
When department managers are involved early, they can identify obstacles, suggest alternatives, refine the goals, and become advocates for the final direction.
Flourishing workplaces proactively seek input before major changes and initiatives. The goal isn't to surrender leadership responsibility. It’s to make better decisions by accessing the wisdom already present throughout the organization.
People are much more likely to support a direction when they know leaders genuinely considered their perspective.
DiscipleMakers, a campus ministry in the 100th percentile of its sector, sends draft policies to a few staff reviewers before they go out to everyone.
4. Give People Time to Understand and Own the Change
Even a good decision can create disruption.
Leaders may spend months discussing an issue before announcing a decision. By the time they announce it, they have processed the alternatives, wrestled with the implications, and become comfortable with the new direction.
Yet leaders sometimes expect employees to quickly embrace what took the leadership team months to process. People need time to understand why a decision was made, consider how it affects their daily work, ask questions, voice concerns, and develop new habits.
This is especially important when a new leader enters an organization. New leaders naturally see opportunities for improvement and may arrive with fresh ideas. Many of those ideas may be excellent. But implementing too many changes too quickly—before listening to the people who understand the organization's history and culture—can unintentionally weaken trust or overwhelm them.
James 1:19 offers simple but powerful wisdom: leaders should be "quick to listen, slow to speak."
Healthy leaders don't confuse decisiveness with speed. Sometimes slowing the decision process enough to listen well lets the organization move faster once the decision is made.
From Resistance to Ownership
It is absolutely possible to build a workplace where significant decisions and new initiatives are met with energy rather than resistance.
That doesn't mean everyone will agree with every decision.
It means employees trust that leaders listen carefully, seek appropriate input, make decisions thoughtfully, explain the reasoning clearly, and genuinely value the people who will carry those decisions forward.
Flourishing workplaces create healthy two-way communication. They listen to input before major decisions. They involve the right people, in the right way, at the right time. And they communicate clearly about who owns the final decision.
Before your next significant decision, ask:
- Who needs to be heard before we decide?
- What decision-making approach best fits this situation?
- Have we made it clear who owns the final decision?
- How can we help the people affected by this decision understand it, process it, and ultimately own their part in implementing it?
The quality of your decision matters. But so does the process you use to get there.
Free Resources from Best Christian Workplaces:
- Equip supervisors and managers to have effective one-on-one meetings: Maximizing Meetings: Four Keys to Ensuring Effective One-on-One Meetings.
- Incorporate proactive listening into your schedule: Listening Tours Resource.
- Learn from a case study: DiscipleMakers Proves Trust Starts Before the Decision
Would you like to better understand what your staff feels about your decision-making processes? Talk to our team about how to utilize Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey to find out.
