It is thought that we face around 35,000 conscious decisions each day, with around 230 of these being made about food alone. As a school leader, the number of choices that have to be made is only magnified, both in sheer numbers but also in terms of the importance of the decision taken. After all, our decisions will be scrutinised by school stakeholders at every level and, if we fail in our decision making, we fail our communities, we fail our students and we fail their future potential. No pressure then.

Furthermore, in an increasingly fast-paced world, school leaders are expected to act quickly and decisively. In fact, the past few weeks have shown just how much scrutiny and just how much pressure leaders can come under - and they have all dealt with it heroically. But how can they hone their skills even further?

School leadership: making effective decisions

1. Be informed

As obvious as it seems, it is important to gain pertinent information, ideally from multiple sources, to inform decision making. Poor decision making often falls at this first hurdle.

“Pertinence” is one of the major challenges but is absolutely critical to making good decisions. To make sure that you’re basing your decisions on relevant information, you need to have access to quantitative as well as qualitative data. There can sometimes be a temptation to rely too much on qualitative data, which can potentially be incomplete, misleading or not directly applicable to the situation. Added to this, we are all subject to a range of cognitive biases and need to be aware of this so that we can to try to avoid information distortion.

Once you have the relevant information, the next step is to compare the alternatives before choosing the best path. The ability to triangulate as much information as possible will stand you in good stead in a climate of uncertainty and risk.

The past few weeks have been a good example of how difficult this can be. A lack of clear guidance and huge pressure from school communities trapped heads in a situation of whether or not to shut a school before the government finally declared it mandatory.

One headteacher recently described this to me as one of the biggest no-win decisions that you’ll make as a school leader. With curriculum compression, exam pressure, attendance under scrutiny and parental expectations, closure is a significant decision - and not everyone will be satisfied with the choice that you make.

In situations like this, you need to make the best call with the knowledge available to you, triangulated against multiple sources and options.

Once the decision is made, just as important is that the decision and the reason it was taken is clearly communicated. In our school, we send emergency communications to our community listing the core reference points and the risks to students, while also acknowledging unpredictability.

2. Which decision first?

Making decisions themselves is challenging enough. However, when you add to this the sheer number of decisions that need to be made, you can see how easily a high-pressure situation can develop.

Under these conditions, the school leader’s quality of decision making will likely be compromised. We need, though, to avoid the risk of irrationality that comes with making decisions under pressure and be able to make the right decisions at the right times. One useful way of prioritising decision making is to use something known as the Eisenhower Matrix, based on a quotation from former US president Dwight Eisenhower, who identified his decision-making process as follows: “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.”

Superbly simple, his method clearly outlines a structure for prioritising decisions and also introduces the power of delegating. This is something I have had to learn as a leader and find this incredibly helpful when being faced with multiple situations simultaneously.

Rather than risking decision-making paralysis, such a systematic approach takes the steam out of the pressured situation and focuses the leader on tackling the decision with a logic that should ensure the best outcomes for all involved.

This ties in nicely with another leadership maxim called the Pareto Principle, which states that by investing just 20 per cent of effort where it is needed most, one can achieve 80 per cent of the overall required result. For the remaining 20 per cent of the result, 80 per cent of the effort is needed.

This is a very useful principle for effective time management: targeting your time where it will have the most significant impact on your organisation and your work will help you make the most effective decisions.

3. What if you get it wrong?

You cannot get every decision right, every time. However, with greater pressure than ever on leaders to make decisions and get them right - or face immediate and intense scrutiny - we risk creating a culture where the potential of making wrong decisions leads to high stress and anxiety.

As such, school leaders need to have systems around them to enable them to assess when decisions went wrong and identify what they could do better next time. They also need access to a supportive, trusted individual or network that can offer guidance and solace when required.

This is important not just to reduce the risk of stress and irrationality that lead to poor decision making but also to reduce the risk of senior staff having to take time off work or, worse, leave the profession altogether.

Indeed, in education, we know that nearly one third of school leaders leave within three years of taking up their post. At a time of increased student population and high turnover within the profession, we need to do everything we can to keep great school leaders, if we want great schools.

A good guiding principle for decision making is to focus systematically on how the choices we make as school leaders will affect our pupils and staff, and work down from there.

Liz Free is founding director of the British School in the Netherlands’ international leadership academy

This article originally appeared in the 27 March 2020 issue under the headline “Decisions, decisions”