A few friends and I once took a 14-hour road trip from the Midwest to the coast. We’d been talking for weeks about sunshine, ocean air, and most of all, fresh seafood.
After a day on the beach, we found a small, local restaurant overlooking the water. No chain, no gimmicks, it was just the kind of place where you expect the fish to have been caught that morning.
When the server came by, most of us started asking questions: What’s the difference between snapper and grouper? What’s the mildest? What’s the richest? We were tourists, out of our element, and eager to learn.
But one friend asked just one question: “How do you like fried fish? You know, like the kind from Long John Silver’s?”
The server smiled and said, “I like it just fine.”
After she walked away, my friend said quietly, “I’m going to take her advice with a grain of salt. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between fast food fried fish and what’s served here probably isn’t an authority on seafood. Fried fish is fine when you’re hungry, but not when the ocean’s right across the street.”
We all laughed. But his point stuck.
The Leadership Lesson
That moment has replayed in my mind many times, especially when I watch business leaders make decisions.
I see CEOs and executives who genuinely want to be inclusive and collaborative. They solicit input from their teams before making major decisions. And that’s smart. Hearing diverse perspectives often drastically improves both the quality of decisions and the speed at which they’re made, but not always.
It’s important for owners, CEOs, and executives to remember that the quality of input matters just as much as the quantity and that not everyone’s experience carries the same weight.
I recently saw an executive who knew what the right decision was but hesitated to act because the group’s opinions leaned the other way. He forgot, or maybe lacked the ability to recognize, that the people disagreeing with him only had access to a fraction of the information and very little of the experience he had.
So he let a well-meaning, but relatively uninformed majority, dissuade him from taking the bold action the company needed most.
The Takeaway
Yes, it’s important to ask for input. Yes, it’s important to listen. Yes, collaboration builds trust.
But leaders still have a duty to discern when their knowledge and experience should carry the final say.
Being collaborative doesn’t mean surrendering your judgment. In fact, real leadership often requires the courage to act against popular opinion when you see what others can’t and know what others don’t. Because just like at that seafood restaurant, if you listen to the wrong voice, you can end up settling when you could’ve had something fresh, rare, and extraordinary.
Listen to others, but don’t surrender responsibility to the masses when they don’t have the specialized knowledge, insight, and experience you possess!
Closing Thought
The best leaders know when to seek advice and when to trust their own expertise. They value every voice, but they weigh them differently.
So the next time you’re facing a tough decision, ask yourself: “Am I leading this discussion or hiding behind it?”