Collaborative Clarity: 3 Steps to Making Leadership Decisions

Making leadership decisions can feel messy.

The higher you go up the career ladder, the less obvious the “right” choice becomes. Do you trust the data or your gut? Put people first or prioritise the project? Push ahead or pause? It’s so complex.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be so heavy.

Making leadership decisions can be made easier by finding clarity – not through perfection, but through a simple, trustworthy process that helps you make values-aligned choices, even when things feel uncertain.

⎆ Enter the Collaborative Clarity Framework — three straightforward steps that bring logic, values and intuition together, and invite the right people into the process. Because making clear decisions isn’t a solo job. It’s something we create together.

Step 1 – Define the decision together

Before you solve anything, make sure you’re all solving the same problem.

So often people rush to solutions and later realise they weren’t even answering the same question. That wastes time, trust and energy.

Pause.

Bring in the people who matter early on. Not everyone, but the right voices.

Try these quick prompts:

• What exactly is the decision we need to make?

• Who will this affect, and how?

• What assumptions are we carrying?

• What outcome do we want – for the team, the organisation and the people involved?

When people help shape the question, they’re more likely to support the outcome. And when you include different perspectives up front, you surface blind spots before they become problems.

Quick reflection: Am I defining this decision with others — or for them?

Step 2 – Filter options through shared values

Once the decision is clear, check it against your values.

Values are your inner compass.

Choices that line up with your values feel right; choices that don’t create friction and second-guessing. But it’s not just your personal values — it’s the team and organisational values too.

Ask together:

• Which of our values does this option honour?

• Where might it conflict with what we say we stand for?

• How would we explain this choice to the team or to our clients in a way that reflects integrity?

Using the Values and Intuition Decision-Making Grid here is super helpful. It lets you look at options logically (what makes sense), ethically (what aligns with values) and emotionally (what feels right). If you’re working with a team, share a simplified version of the grid — it makes conversations less personal and more principled.

Quick reflection: Does this choice reflect the leader — and the team — we want to be?

Step 3 – Sense check with conscious intuition, decide and communicate

Now for the head, heart and gut check.

Intuition is powerful. It threads together experience, pattern-recognition and empathy. But intuition can also be noisy — shaped by habit, comfort and unconscious bias. So use it consciously.

Ask yourself and the group:

• What is my gut telling me — and why might it be saying that?

• Is this genuine insight, or an assumption wearing a confident voice?

• Could bias, familiarity or habit be colouring this feeling?

• Whose perspectives have we not yet heard?

That pause matters.

You’re not sidelining intuition — you’re interrogating it so it becomes wiser and fairer. You’re using it consciously.

Once you’ve checked head, values and gut, make the choice and commit to it.

Then be transparent: explain the options you considered, the values that guided you, and what happens next. People don’t always need to agree — they do need to understand the why.

Quick reflection: Have I checked my intuition for bias, and told the story of the decision honestly?

What making leadership decisions looks like in practice.

Let’s take a look at how we can make leadership decisions with a real-life example.

Say you’re deciding whether to ask your hybrid team back into the office two days a week. Some people will point to logistics – desks, costs, efficiency. Others will say it’s about connection.

Using Collaborative Clarity you would:

1. Define it together – gather a small, representative group. Agree what “connection” and “productivity” actually mean for your team.

2. Filter through values – test options against values such as trust, wellbeing, collaboration and performance. You might find both flexibility and connection matter.

3. Sense check consciously – notice the instinct to favour “office days” because it feels familiar. Ask whether that preference is biased by personality types, commuting realities or assumptions you haven’t challenged.

Result: a considered, human-centred decision — and a team who understands the why, not just the what.

Why collaborative clarity matters

Clarity is currency in leadership.

When people understand how decisions are made, trust grows.

When values drive choices, consistency follows.

When intuition is used with awareness, decisions are wiser and fairer.

This framework doesn’t ask you to be perfect. It asks you to be deliberate — to notice how you decide, who you involve, and what principles guide you. That kind of conscious leadership changes the quality of the outcomes and the relationships that carry them out.

Try it for yourself

So, if you’ve got a tricky leadership decision to make this week, try these three steps:

1. Define it with the right people.

2. Filter it through your shared values.

3. Sense check with conscious intuition — then decide and communicate.

If you want a bit more structure, use the Values and Intuition Decision-Making Grid below to map options quickly. It turns complexity into clarity — and helps you step forward with confidence.

When we lead with values, awareness and collaboration, decisions don’t just make sense — they feel right.