The Real Reason Leaders Hesitate To Decide (And What To Do About It)

Leaders do a lot! They must gain influence and trust. They must make progress and achieve results. They elevate everyone around them.

But at the heart of all this leadership activity, we find one commonality: decision-making.

Making decisions is what leaders DO. It’s not just part of the job. In many ways, it is the job.

Leaders must decide:

1. When to create or innovate.
2. When to hire (or fire).
3. How to build the culture.
4. How to organize the team.
5. How to grow influence.
6. How to increase revenue.
7. When to spend money.
8. How to best communicate inside and outside the organization.
9. If the current strategy or model is working.
10. And what to do if it’s not.

We could list hundreds of decisions leaders are responsible for. The list is never-ending.

Two Decision Dilemmas

Great decisions require good information.

Simple decisions can be made from past experiences or gut instincts, but we can’t rely on simple approaches for complex decisions. And unfortunately, most leadership decisions aren’t simple.

Look back at the list above. We must gather, digest, and synthesize information to make great decisions on innovation, change, people, organizational structures, revenue challenges, etc. And not from just one side of the issue, either. We need to evaluate from various perspectives and multiple people.

All this information gathering leads many leaders to:

1. Too Much Information

We call this “paralysis by analysis.” Too much information makes decision-making nearly impossible. When a leader seeks wisdom and opinions from various perspectives and multiple people, rarely (if ever!) will the feedback point in one direction or to one solution. It seems the more information we get, the more complex the decision becomes, stalling out the process.

2. Incomplete Information

Conversely, leaders often feel they need more information to make effective decisions. These leaders delay decisions, hoping to discover 100 percent certainty or unanimous consensus. While we intellectually understand certainty or consensus isn’t realistic, holding out for more data keeps some leaders from moving forward.