I believe a Reddit forum somewhere discussed this, but I didn't want to participate in a conversation there, so I'll just post a little bit about it here.
Counselor Troi is studying to get the credentials to potentially move up to a captain's position. But she keeps failing a simulation section of the exam Riker gives her, and he won't tell her why. Eventually she discovers on her own that the reason she kept failing was because she kept the well-being of each individual person in mind, even when the health of the entire ship was on the line.
She finally realizes her first duty is to the ship, and so when she next takes the exam, she orders the simulation of LaForge to go in and fix a warp core breach, despite knowing it was going to kill him. That time she passed the section.
At that point, she realized she didn't want to be a captain anymore.
So the solution to this problem really depends on the duty of the decision maker. It may mean actively ordering someone to their death if it saves the ship, or perhaps actively sending three our four ensigns to their deaths if it saves the captain and first officer. Whatever is optimal to keep the ship afloat on its mission is key. Even if it's not pleasant to think about. Being an effective leader requires tough and unfair decision making sometimes and it's certainly not for everyone. I know I often avoid assuming such a position when I can.
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