This document reports on findings from a study on decision styles and their influence on leadership and engagement. It summarizes that: 1) There are four main decision styles (Decisive, Flexible, Hierarchic, Integrative) based on how much information people use and their focus, which can influence performance depending on the situation. 2) A study of 180,000 managers found different decision style profiles were most successful at different levels of leadership, showing styles must change to fit the requirements of higher roles. 3) Participants' own styles influenced what qualities they saw as good or bad in past leaders, valuing styles similar to their own.

1. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Decision Dynamics Report on CfL’s Leadership Festival 2013
Decision Styles, Leadership, and Engagement:
Managing Our Different Talents
towards Greater Performance
Professor Rikard Larsson, Decision Dynamics AB and
Psychologist & Executive Advisor Yvonne Duval Thomsen, CfL
Executive Summary
What do we all do all of the time that can make or break the performance of leaders,
teams, sales people, new recruits, and many others? The answer is processing
information and making decisions in different ways that we call Decision Styles.
There is no one best Decision Style. All Decision Styles have both various strengths and
weaknesses. It is their respective fit with specific situations that determine how well they
perform. Still, we have strong tendencies to devalue people with different styles than our
own as inadequate or even stupid. We should learn to better appreciate and trust the
valuable complementary strengths of different Decision Styles than our own.
In the global breakthrough study of 180 000 managers on 5 different manager levels that
has been published in Harvard Business Review, we found dramatically different Decision
Style success profiles across the manager levels. This has resulted in that organizations
tend to promote 10-30% of their managers at least one level too high by selecting the
best at the previous level. Talent management based on Decision Styles can build
leadership pipelines by selecting and developing more successful managers at all levels.
This conference report provides findings of how Decision Styles influence what engage vs
disengage us the most in our everyday work. Talent management should develop not
only the talents themselves, but also their daily jobs. If we can exchange some of our
least engaging work hours for some more work hours that better suit our respective
Decision Styles, we can greatly improve our efficiency, quality, cooperation, and speed.
We conclude with a multi-step approach for more engaging leadership and talent
management based on Decision Styles that include: increasing awareness of own and
others’ Decision Style profiles, leading people in ways that more understand, respect,
utilize, and trust their different talents, developing the various jobs of people for greater
everyday engagement, and teamworkshops for better cooperation between
complementary strengths that can overcome common group weaknesses.
Background
As part of our fully booked keynote presentation “What Is Your Decision Style? How
they can help or hurt you along the leadership pipeline and what you can do about it!” on
September 25, we used a mini-survey that was answered by 68 participants. We thank
all of you for your valuable contributions to our research and this conference report.

2. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Decision Dynamics Report on CfL’s Leadership Festival 2013
Decision Styles, Leadership, and Engagement:
Managing Our Different Talents
towards Greater Performance
We all process information and make decision all of the time in different ways that can
make or break the performance of leaders, teams, sales people, new recruits, and many
others. We call these powerful decision-making habits for Decision Styles and this report
will briefly describe:
(a) what these Decision Styles are;
(b) the results from the participating respondents’ aggregated Decision Style profiles;
(c) the world’s largest leadership pipeline study of 180000 managers in 50 countries
that has been published in Harvard Business Review twice; and
(d) the mini-survey findings on good vs bad leadership and everyday engagement
with as great performance impact as increasing efficiency, quality, cooperation,
and speed with 40-80%!
What are Decision Styles?
Decision-making is not the exclusive activity of only the top managers in an organization.
On the contrary, everybody process information and make many small decisions all the
time. Any action or thought, such as interpreting people and situations, communicating
and cooperating with others, solving problems, working with data and processes require
many micro-decisions. It is not a question if you make decisions or not, but instead of
how well you make them and how they add up to your performance over time.
Decision Styles is a model and a tool to help people understand, develop, and manage
their different ways of making decisions. It is based on more than 40 years of
international research and practice with more than a million personal profiles. 1
Decision Styles are our learned habits of how we process information and make decisions
in different ways. They are not about IQ where some styles are smarter or more stupid
than others. Instead there is no one best style. All Decision Styles have both various
strengths and weaknesses. It is their respective fit with specific situations that determine
how well they perform.
They are based on two fundamental dimensions. First, how much information does one
use when making a decision? Some use lesser amounts of information that one thinks is
enough to reach a decision faster and act upon it, while knowing that there is more
information if one should need more later. We call these people Satisficers. In contrast,
there are those that prefer to make sure that they have as much relevant information as
possible to make as good decisions as possible. We call them Maximizers.
1
See,
for
example,
Driver,
Brousseau
&
Hunsaker
(1993),
Driver
(1999),
and
Brousseau,
Driver,
Hourihan
&
Larsson
(2006).

3. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Which is best? It depends on the situation. If it is urgent, Satisficers tend to perform
better, while if it is more long-term important to make the right decision, Maximizers are
likely to perform better. However, what do you think that they think of each other?
Satisficers tend to view Maximizers as slow, suffering from analysis paralysis, and must
be pretty stupid to gather so much information and still not being able to decide
anything. Maximizers can see Satisficers as hasty, irresponsibly jumping to action like
loose cannons, and must be pretty stupid to not be able to think beyond their noses.
Second, does one choose one alternative from the collected information and stick with
this solution over time, which we call Unifocus, or do one choose several options to
switch between or keep available over time, which we call Multifocus? Again, it depends
on the situation which of these is best. In stable and relatively certain situation, Unifocus
can be more efficient, while changing, uncertain, and social situations with many
different persons that are important are typically better handled by Multifocus.
How do these Unifocus and Multifocus view each other? Unifocus are likely to see
Multifocus as unreliable and switching sides all the time, while Multifocus will probably
think that Unifocus are rigid and cannot adapt as situations change.
If we combine these two dimensions of information use and solution focus, we get the
Decision Style model with four basic styles as shown in the table below. They are the:
a) Decisive style that acts fast in a clear, focused, and efficient way;
b) Flexible style that also acts fast, but in open, sociable, and adaptive ways;
c) Hierarchic style that analyzes and plan carefully to achieve long-term quality; and
d) Integrative style that analyzes a lot too, but in creative and participative ways.
What are your Decision Styles?: The participants StyleView™ profile
An important part of the Decision Style model is to distinguish between Role vs Operating
styles. Role styles are the ways we consciously process information and make decisions
in front of important persons, such as job interviews, our manager, customers, groups,
or privately on a first date. This is how we like to present ourselves to relevant others in
our “front-office” according to our values. It is not a fake mask, but instead how we tend
to behave in social situations. Nor is it the whole story of our decision-making.

4. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
There is also the less aware Operating styles that we use in our “back-offices” when we
are alone or “lost” in our work and forgetting the people around us or working with
colleagues that we know well or with the person we have been married to for a long
time. 60-90% of us have different Role and Operating styles, so we tend to be surprised
by the less conscious, underlying Operating styles that differ the most from our Role
styles. This is shown in our Decision Style profile by the front blue bars indicating the
respective strength of the person’s Role styles in comparison with the back red bars of
the Operating styles (see the aggregated Decision Style profile below of the 40
participants that also answered the StyleView™ questionnaire).
As many other larger group profiles, the average Decision Styles in the diagram to the
left were relatively even with the Flexible Role style (blue bar) and Integrative Operating
styles (red bar) being the highest. This is also more clearly seen in the frequency
diagram to the right where 19 of the 40 (=48%) participants that answered the
StyleView™ questionnaire in advance had Flexible as their primary Role style, while 16
(=40%) had Integrative as their primary Operating style.
The Flexible Role style was closely followed the Hierarchic and Integrative Role styles in
terms of average scores, while the Integrative Operating style was closely followed by
the Hierarchic and Flexible Operating styles. The Decisive style had the lowest averages
and frequencies for both Role and Operating styles.
Thus, these 40 participants have mainly open and dynamic (Multifocus) as well as
analytic (Maximizing) Decision Styles in both their Role ”front-office” and Operating
“back-office” styles. This socially competent, agile, and fairly complex average
StyleView™ profile corresponds rather well to both the middle and higher manager
success profiles in the Harvard Business Review study (see the section below) as well as
to HR, consulting, and Scandinavian Decision style patterns found in previous studies.2
2
Driver
(1999)
has
summarized
more
than
30
years
of
Decision
Style
research
preceding
the
more
recent
Harvard
Business
Review
study.

5. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
How do Decision Styles influence performance along the leadership
pipeline?
Decision Styles have proven to be essential for leadership success in the probably largest
leadership pipeline study of 180000 managers at five different levels ranging from 1st
line
supervisors to CEOs in 50 countries that has been published in Harvard Business Review.
By comparing the most vs least successful managers at each of these manager levels, we
found the following highly statistically significant and practically relevant success vs
failure profiles as shown in the diagrams below.
The success profile of supervisors (the left part of the upper diagram) shows a mainly
Unifocus profile with Decisive and Hierarchic styles being the highest. However, if they
are promoted to middle managers, they tend to fail as shown by the failure profile in the
lower diagram with basically the same Unifocus profile. Middle managers need instead to
develop more balance in terms of using all four Role styles in order to become a well-
functioning “hub” around which managers below, beside, and above revolve.
Promoting successful middle managers runs also the risk of them then becoming the
worst higher managers unless they also develop their Decision Styles to better fit the
higher manager success profile of mainly Flexible and Integrative Role styles. We call the
upper diagram the “lens of success” where the Unifocus supervisor success profile
becomes the mirror image of the Multifocus higher manager success profiles. This
requires substantial development of one’s Decision Styles to both build one’s Multifocus
Roles styles and tone down one’s Decisive Role style, which otherwise becomes an
increasing liability the higher up one climbs the leadership pipeline.3
The 40 respondents answered that the managers whom they experienced as their best
ever were mainly at the higher leadership pipeline levels. In contrast, the worst
3
We
have
found
similar
“lenses
of
success”
for
both
Operating
styles
(where
instead
the
maximizing
Integrative
and
Hierarchic
Operating
styles
become
increasingly
important
the
higher
up
the
leadership
pipeline,
see
Brousseau,
Driver,
Hourihan
&
Larsson,
2006)
and
Career
motives
(where
instead
the
more
general
and
dynamic
Linear,
Spiral,
and
Transitory
motives
become
more
important
higher
up,
see
Larsson,
Brousseau,
Kling
&
Sweet,
2005).

6. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
managers were mainly at the middle level. This suggests that higher managers may be
viewed more positively, whereas the middle manager position can be more difficult to
handle and less appreciated.
How different Decision Styles tend to view what is good vs bad
leadership?
The 40 respondents with both the mini-survey and StyleView™ data for displayed a wide
variety of more than 200 keywords for their best vs worst managers ever. In sum, we
found that the primarily Flexible and Integrative respondents find to a larger extent the
more Multifocus trusting, supportive, open, communicative, and listening keywords for
their best managers which correspond to their own Decision styles. Also the primarily
Hierarchic and Decisive respondents find the more Unifocus honest and visionary
keywords in line with their different Decision styles.
Similarly, the Flexible and Integrative respondents use more Unifocus keywords for their
worst managers, such as controlling and rigid/inflexible/non-adaptive. These are
opposites of their own Decision styles. The Hierarchic and Decisive respondents instead
use relatively more unstructured/disorganized and “not honest”/disloyal keywords for
their worst managers, which are also the opposite of their Decision styles.
The findings of how different we view good vs bad leadership based on our respective
Decision styles become even clearer when we look at how 48 of the participants guessed
which styles their best (+) vs worst (-) managers had in the table below.
For example, 6 of the 11 who thought that they were Decisive themselves (= the whole
upper left quadrant) also thought that their best managers ever were Decisive (green +),
while 2 thought that their best were Flexible, another 2 thought their best were
Integrative, and only 1 thought her/his best was Hierarchic. In contrast, only 2 of these
11 Decisive people thought that their worst managers (red -) had the same style as
themselves, while the other mainly thought their worst were the slow Hierarchics or
Integratives.

7. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Overall, the figure above indicates that 41% guessed that their best manager had the
same style as themselves and only 12% guessed that they had the opposite style. On the
contrary, 43% thought that their worst manager had the opposite style, while only 6%
thought they had the same style as themselves.
Thus, we see here the common and strong pattern of good leadership being viewed in
terms of similar Decision Styles in sharp contrast to poor leadership being viewed in
terms of different Decision Styles.
This clearly supports that leadership is to a large extent similar to “beauty lies in the eyes
of the beholder”. In total, there were 16 who viewed their best manager ever as
Decisive, 14 as Flexible, 5 as Hierarchic, and 13 as Integrative. It suggests that people
overall do not view one single Decision Style as the best for leading others. Instead, they
prefer mainly similar styles to their own.
When it comes to poor leadership, such “ugliness” lies also in the Decision styles of the
direct reports. There were 17 who viewed their least good/worst manager ever as
Decisive, 8 as Flexible, 17 as Hierarchic, and 6 as Integrative. We can here see a pattern
that poor managers are more than twice as many times viewed as Unifocus (ie, Decisive
or Hierarchic) than as Multifocus (ie, Flexible or Integrative). This is partly due to 65%
thought that they themselves were Multifocus and tended to devalue Unifocus as rigid.
The key implication of these findings is that most of us do not fully appreciate different
Decision Styles from our own and this seriously undermines leadership in general. We are
systematically devaluing managers who make decisions in different ways from ourselves
in spite of the fact that it should be advantageous for leaders and direct reports to have
different Decision Styles that can complement one another.
We should stop wasting our most valuable partners, be it leaders, colleagues, direct
reports, or others, who have the complementary strengths of different Decision Styles
that can help us the best with our own weaknesses. We can do this by understanding and
respecting all four Decision Styles for their various strengths instead of tending to view
different styles from our own as more or less “stupid”.
How can one increase efficiency, quality, cooperation, and speed with 40-
80% at the same time?
If a boss requires this, what do you think her/his coworkers would think about that? If
consultants offer this, would you believe them? To show how extensive such
improvements really are, let’s look at the following example in the diagram below for
how one performs in terms of these four factors.
One would then have to move from the more moderate performance represented by the
inner, grey diamond and improve it in all four directions to reach the very high
performance of the outer, orange diamond for it to represent 40-80% improvements at
the same time.

8. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Is this actually possible? For example, can one really combine high quality and speed
when it often becoming fast but faulty? Fortunately, this is not really such a “mission
impossible” as it may seem. Actually, most if not all of you readers do this even every
week! How can this be possible?
The inner grey diamond is the average of what the many hundreds of persons (ranging
from CEOs to students, from EU Directors to HR managers, from Quality managers to
consultants, and from more than 10 different countries) who have been studied so far
answer that they perform during their least engaging work hours in an ordinary week;
and the outer orange diamond is the average what these people answer that they
perform during their most engaging work hours in the same ordinary week!
Thus, the 40-80% performance improvements of all these four dimensions represent how
much better we tend to perform when we are the most engaged in our work compared to
when we are the least engaged. This is done by utilizing 160% more of one’s potential
during one’s most engaging work hours compared with one’s least engaging work hours.
While we of course cannot be fully engaged every work hour of every week, high
engagement work hours are actually more sustainable by regenerating energy in sharp
contrast to the worst work hours that really kill both engagement and performance.
The huge everyday waste of engagement and performance that almost all people do
every week during their worst work hours actually provides what we call engaging
leadership with great leverage to increase performance. Exchanging a couple of people’s
most disengaging work hours for a couple more of their most engaging work hours can
realize this 40-80% improvement potential of efficiency, quality, cooperation, and speed.
Some may say that nobody wants to do other people’s worst work hours, but we are
finding that we differ greatly in what engage vs disengage us the most. Therefore, it
becomes very valuable to find patterns of how engaging leadership systematically can
complement one another by both relieving people of some of their worst hours so they
can add some more engaging work hours for greater performance.

9. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
What engage and disengage people the most in their everyday work?
The 40 respondents listed a total of about 80 activities in their most engaging work
hours, that is, what we call engagement drivers, and about 70 activities in their least
engaging work hours during ordinary weeks, that is, killers. These driving and killing
activities can be divided into being mainly social, non-social or a mix of them.
Social drivers Mixed drivers Non-social drivers Sums
Social killers 5 3 1
(introvert pattern)
9
Mixed killers 7 3 10
Non-social
killers
12
(extravert pattern)
7 2 21
Sums 17 17 6 40
One overall tendency among the respondents were that engagement drivers were
primarily social (bold bottom sum corresponding to about 40%) or at least a mix of social
and non-social drivers (also 40%), with only 15% being primarily non-social. There was
also the contrasting respondent tendency that the engagement killers were instead
primarily non-social (bold right sum being about 50%) or at most a mix of non-social and
social (25%), with less than 25% being primarily social.
Thus, the most common combination was respondents with the extravert pattern of
social drivers and non-social killers (approx. 30%). In contrast, there was only one
respondent with opposite introvert pattern of non-social drivers and social killers. All
these four findings correspond to the previously found correlation between Extravert
Jungian preference (as measured by JTI and MBTI) and the Flexible Role style (being the
by far most common primary Role style among the respondents here).
This division between social vs non-social drivers and killers in our everyday work also
enable us to analyze each of the stated activities during the respondents’ most and least
engaging work hours with greater precision relative to their Role vs Operating styles.
Decision style theory predicts that the social activities are more likely to be explained by
the respondents’ Role styles that are mainly used in the “front-office” with other people
(albeit less so with colleagues one knows very well and/or when one is more absorbed by
the task than by the audience).
The two tables below list the stated social engagement drivers and killers that are
consistent with Decision Style theory. As expected, the mainly Multifocus respondents
with primary Flexible and Integrative Role styles listed many more engagement drivers
and killers on average than the mostly Unifocus respondents. Especially their stated
communicative and cooperative drivers were quite consistent with their Role styles.
Overall, as much as 80% of all respondents’ social engagement drivers were consistent
with their primary Role styles. This was a surprisingly high percentage, given that this is
only one tool and the analysis did not take into account neither their secondary (or third
and fourth) Roles styles, nor any of their Operating styles (even though some of the
activities were with more well-known colleagues).

10. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Their primary Role styles could also explain about 50% of the listed social engagement
killers. The lower percentage here was mainly due to that the Multifocus respondents
stated various meetings as killers, which is inconsistent with their meeting-oriented
styles. However, they often wrote that it was “boring” and otherwise unimportant or
uninteresting meetings, while they could have more exciting meetings as their drivers.
This corresponds to our previous experiences that different meetings can frustrate all
Decision styles if they are felt too long or short, too closed or open, too many or few, etc.
The non-social activities can be expected to be more related to the respondents’
Operating styles that are primarily used in the back-office of solitary or with more well-
known audiences. Here, the two Operating style tables below show that mainly
Maximizing persons were engaged by more complex information processing of analyzing
data, planning, and creating new things. In contrast, especially the Multifocus
respondents were finding routine administrative work disengaging.

11. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Overall, the respondents’ primary Operating style accounted for as much as 70% of both
their listed non-social engagement drivers and killers. This is again surprisingly high
percentages given that it is only one tool and this analysis does not include either their
other three Operating styles or any of their four Role styles, even though people are
likely to answer in part according to their conscious Role style values of what is good vs
bad decision-making in non-social situations also.
For example, two of the most inconsistent replies not shown in the Operating style tables
above is the same person who answered “Focus on one thing at a time” as her/his most
engaging work hour and “Focus on many things at a time” as her/his least engaging
hour. However, while this is quite contradictory to the respondent’s primary Integrative
Operating style, it fits very well with that same person’s primary Decisive Role style.
In sum, the Role and Operating styles provide quite complementary insights into what
engage and disengage us the most in terms of both social and non-social activities.
Conclusions and practical implications for more engaging leadership4
Decision Styles are key behavioral habits that can explain both success and failure in
decision-making in general and leadership, interpersonal chemistry, everyday
engagement, and many other areas in particular. The following talent management steps
can be utilized to develop and select more engaging leadership with Decision Styles:
Learning about one’s own whole Decision Style profile adds valuable self-awareness of
especially one’s less conscious Operating styles that are keys to one’s non-social
engagement drivers and killers. In this way, we can all take greater responsibility for our
own engagement and thereby make working life better for both ourselves and our
managers.
Learning about others’ whole Decision Style profiles provides better understanding,
communication, and cooperation regarding what engage and disengage them the most.
For example, you can communicate efficiently and timely with Decisives, adapt quickly to
changes with Flexibles, make high quality, long-term plans with Hierarchics, and
creatively teamwork with Integratives. Organizations can also select the most suitable
candidates for different positions instead of promoting managers one level too high at the
double cost of losing the best at the previous level and becoming much worse higher up.5
Leading people in more engaging ways that respect, utilize, and trust their respective
complementary Decision Style talents instead of the common devaluation and even
distrust of Decision styles that are different from one’s own.
4
Larsson
and
Kling
(2013)
have
recently
developed
Mintzberg’s
(2004)
original
concept
of
engaging
leadership
in
terms
of
how
the
talent
management
of
organizations
can
develop
leaders
who
engage
their
people
more
to
perform
better
and
stay
longer
with
the
help
of
the
complementary
tool
the
Career
Model™.
5
The
world-­‐leading
executive
search
firm
Korn/Ferry
International
has
together
with
Decision
Dynamics
found
that
managers
selected
with
the
help
of
Decision
Styles
have
been
promoted
8
times
more
often
than
those
selected
without
using
this
tool.
Furthermore,
those
managers
who
had
stayed
after
3
years
had
a
higher
fit
the
Decision
Style
success
benchmark
profile
than
those
who
had
left.
Thus,
Decision
Styles
are
proven
useful
for
improving
managerial
success
and
retention
through
better
talent
selection.

12. © Copyright 2013 Decision Dynamics AB
Developing one’s own and others’ jobs to become more engaging by replacing the most
disengaging activities with more of the most engaging activities that better suit our
different Decision Styles to increase efficiency, quality, cooperation, and speed greatly.
By this, we can turn much of the vast everyday waste of engagement that we all suffer
during our many worst work hours into goldmines of many small engaging wins every
week.
Having engaging teamworkshops where the members learn about their own and the
others’ Decision styles for better understanding, selection, communication, meetings,
division of work tasks, and cooperation instead of the common misunderstandings,
unsuitable team compositions, frustrating meetings, overload, conflicts, etc.
There is no need to implement all of these talent management steps at the same time.
While it is possible to start with any of these steps at a suitable scale and add more steps
over time, it is remarkable that one teamworkshop can achieve much of 3-4 of these
steps simultaneously.
Engaging talent management is about selecting and developing people in ways that suit
their different talents and positions. Decision Styles provide an inside track to doing this
by learning how our own and others’ decision-making habits that can be both utilized and
further developed in more engaging ways for achieving greater performance.
References
Brousseau,
K,
Driver,
M,
Hourihan,
G
and
Larsson,
R
(2006)
The
seasoned
executive’s
decision-­‐making
style,
Harvard
Business
Review,
Vol
84
No
2,
pp.
111-­‐121.
Driver,
M
(1999)
Decision
style:
Past,
present
and
future
research
–
New
developments
in
learning/cognitive
style.
Los
Angeles,
California:
Decision
Dynamics
LLC
White
Paper
1-­‐22.
Driver,
M,
Brousseau,
K
&
Hunsaker,
P
(1993)
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Jossey-­‐Bass.
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K
&
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P
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R,
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K,
Kling,
K
&
Sweet,
P
(2005)
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management:
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Sweden:
Decision
Dynamics
Research
Report
2005:3
Larsson,
R
&
Kling,
K
(2013)
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training
&
development
can
engage
more
people
to
learn
and
perform
better
while
staying
longer.
Lund,
Sweden:
Decision
Dynamics
Research
Report
2013:1.
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H.
(2004)
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not
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look
at
the
soft
practice
of
managing
and
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