Judgment and Authority
If you’re early in your career, start paying attention to your judgment quality now. Good judgment means making smart decisions when you don’t have all the information. This skill separates high performers from everyone else.
How can you check your own judgment? Keep mental notes during reviews with your leaders. Track what you get right and what you miss. Notice which assumptions prove accurate and which fall flat. This awareness creates a feedback loop that makes your decisions better over time.
Many young professionals focus only on technical skills. They miss this crucial dimension of growth. Technical skills help you enter an organization. Judgment quality determines how far you’ll go.
Watch for information gaps. Poor judgment often stems from missing key information. When you get feedback, ask yourself: “What didn’t I know when making this decision?” Then go learn those things before your next similar decision.
Start tracking your judgment early. The sooner you begin, the faster you improve. People who focus on judgment in their twenties gain a huge advantage over those who wait until their thirties. They’ve had thousands more chances to test and refine their decision-making.
Everyone messes up sometimes. What matters is how you use those mistakes. When you make a poor call, don’t defend it. Instead, trace your thinking process. Where did it go wrong? Did you misunderstand the context? Forget a key stakeholder? Prioritize incorrectly? Each error teaches you something specific.
Leaders should help team develop judgment
As a leader, one of your biggest contributions is helping others build better judgment. This happens by showing them how you think through decisions.
Share your decision-making openly. When reviewing work or making important calls, talk through your thought process. “I’m weighing these three factors…” or “I’m concerned about this risk because…” These moments of transparency help others develop judgment quickly.
The thinking behind your decisions matters more than the decisions themselves. Many leaders just announce what they decided without explaining why. This leaves team members guessing at your logic. Their judgment development slows down.
Create safe spaces for people to practice judgment. Give them projects where mistakes won’t cause major problems. Use these projects to discuss decisions thoroughly, not just outcomes.
Be specific with your feedback. Move beyond simple statements like “good decision” or “I disagree with that approach.” Identify exactly which parts of the thinking worked or didn’t work. Say things like “You caught the key stakeholders” or “You didn’t consider the technical complexity enough.” Remember that people need to feel safe when developing judgment.
If people fear harsh consequences for errors, they’ll stop making decisions. Good judgment can only come from a secure team.
Make it clear to them that thoughtful decisions that don’t work out are learning opportunities, not failures.
Authority follows good judgment
Once you see clear signs of solid judgment in your team members, giving them more authority is natural. Authority means the power to make decisions that affect resources and people. It flows most effectively toward those who consistently show good judgment.
In organizations with strong judgment-development cultures, authority spreads organically. Leaders confidently delegate decision-making because they’ve seen patterns of sound judgment. They don’t need to be involved in every decision because they trust others’ judgment.
This creates a multiplier effect. More decisions happen without bottlenecks. The organization moves faster. People feel ownership over their work. Motivation and satisfaction are higher.
Ideally, organizations would need fewer formal reviews as judgment quality increases. The very existence of extensive reviews in most companies shows that judgment development remains incomplete. Reviews exist mainly to verify judgment. The relationship between judgment and authority continues throughout organizational life. As business contexts change, new judgment areas emerge. Technology shifts, markets evolve, and fresh challenges arise that test judgment in new ways. This means judgment development never really ends, even for senior people.
For leaders, balancing authority with judgment quality is a constant work. You continuously ask key questions. “Does this person’s judgment quality match their current authority? Are they ready for more? Do they need help in specific judgment areas?”
The most effective organizations create clear connections between proven judgment and increased authority. This is a positive cycle: better judgment leads to more authority, which provides chances to further refine judgment in more complex situations, which leads to even greater authority. In the end, the best measure of your leadership is how many good decisions happen without your direct involvement.