Tony Robbins once said, “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
I’ve been thinking about that quote a lot lately, because in over 33 years of management experience, I’ve seen it play out time and time again.
Managers who can’t make decisions, or who make decisions but never quite follow through, or who quietly damage their teams in ways that are hard to undo.
And here’s the bit that doesn’t get talked about enough: the decisions managers avoid most often aren’t strategic ones about budgets or resources.
They’re the people’s decisions.
The conversations that feel too awkward to have. The performance issue that’s been sitting there for weeks. The two team members who can’t be left in a room together. Those are the real decisions getting shelved.
So let’s talk about decision-making properly. Not just the mechanics of it, but the mindset behind it and why it matters so much for how you lead your team
Why Indecision Is Costing You More Than You Realise
I’ve watched managers run around exhausted, constantly putting out fires, wondering why things never seem to improve. And more often than not, the root cause isn’t a lack of effort. It is a backlog of unmade decisions.
When a decision doesn’t get made, something else fills that gap. Confusion, assumption or people going off in different directions. And the longer it sits there, the more energy it takes from everyone around it.
My mentor used to say to me, “bite-size chunks” whenever I was trying to tackle everything at once. It took me a while to really understand what they meant. Too many decisions made at the same time, without any sense of priority, creates chaos rather than momentum.
The team don’t know what to focus on. You don’t know what to focus on. And nothing actually moves.
This builds on something I talk about often when it comes to difficult conversations: avoidance always costs more than action. Whether you’re avoiding a hard chat with an underperforming team member or putting off a key business decision, the consequence is the same: the problem grows, and you end up spending far more time and energy on it down the line.
The Difference Between Urgent and Important for Decisions and Why It Matters
One of the most practical tools I’ve ever used is something deceptively simple: dividing decisions into urgent and important.
Some decisions will be both. Some will be neither. And some will feel urgent but aren’t actually that important, while the truly important ones keep getting pushed back because they’re not screaming for attention yet.
I had a client who was dealing with a team member whose sick absence was through the roof. Every time we spoke, there was something more pressing to deal with: a client situation, a deadline, a fire to put out. The absence issue kept being deemed not urgent enough.
By the time we finally tackled it, the rest of the team had noticed the pattern, morale had dropped, and the manager had lost credibility in their eyes. What wasn’t urgent had become a serious problem because the decision to address it kept being deferred.
Here’s a practical approach to sorting your decision backlog:
• List every issue that needs a decision, and do not filter at this stage; just get it out of your head.
• Look for patterns and ask whether some of these smaller issues are actually part of a bigger one? Group them.
• Identify which items on your list, if left unaddressed, could damage your team, your relationships, or your business reputation.
• Mark anything that connects to multiple other issues, as these are usually the decisions that have the biggest knock-on effect when they’re made well.
• Bring relevant people into the conversation to assess the list, and remember you do not have to carry this alone.
Setting Clear Goals to Aid the Workplace and Decisions – The Part Most Managers Skip
I’ve seen it so many times where a manager makes a decision, communicates it to the team, and then is baffled when nothing changes. The team nods, and they seem to understand. And yet, two weeks later, you’re having the exact same conversation.
Nine times out of ten, the problem isn’t commitment, it is clarity. The goal attached to the decision wasn’t specific enough for anyone to act on.
Take two versions of the same decision:
Version A: “We need to improve our customer response times.”
Version B: “By the end of the month, all customer enquiries will be responded to within 4 hours. We’ll review this in our team meeting on the 30th.”
Version A creates a conversation. Version B creates accountability. Both have their place, but if you want action rather than discussion, you need to know which one you’re going for.
This is something I come back to repeatedly when working with managers on their difficult conversations, too. One of the most common mistakes people make is ending a tough conversation without a specific, time-bound, clear next step.
The conversation happens, everyone feels better for having had it, and then nothing changes. Because the what happens next part wasn’t defined.
The same principle applies here. A decision without a measurable outcome isn’t really a decision. It’s a starting point.
The Decisions Managers Avoid Most and What That Reveals
In my work with managers and leaders, I’ve noticed that the decisions most consistently deferred fall into one category: people decisions. Specifically, decisions that require a difficult conversation.
The manager who has watched a performance issue slide for months isn’t bad at making decisions. They’re scared of the conversation that comes with it. The manager whose team are at each other’s throats hasn’t failed to notice; they’ve been hoping it will resolve itself.
This matters because the way we respond under pressure is often shaped by our DiSC style.
As I’ve explored in my work with the DiSC assessment, different styles have different default responses to conflict and difficult decisions.
A high S style (Steadiness) often prioritises harmony and avoids rocking the boat, even when a decision is overdue. A high C style (Conscientiousness) may get stuck in analysis, wanting more data before committing. Understanding your own style isn’t an excuse for inaction. It is a starting point for doing something different.
In Positive Intelligence terms, this would be described as your inner Avoider or Stickler saboteur running the show. The inner voice that convinces you the timing isn’t right, that you need more information, or that if you just wait a little longer, things might sort themselves out. They won’t. They rarely do.
The Reputational Risk Nobody Talks About With Decision Making
Years ago, I had a manager above me who was brilliant technically but absolutely hopeless at making timely decisions about people.
They could analyse a business problem with precision, but when it came to addressing a team dynamic issue or a performance concern, they would delay and delay.
The team noticed. These things always become visible eventually. When the people around you realise you’re not going to act, you lose something that’s very hard to get back: credibility.
There’s also a reputational risk to the business. When decisions about customer issues, complaints, or service failures are left too long, you end up in reactive mode, throwing resources at a problem that proper, timely decision-making could have prevented entirely. I’ve seen this happen where what started as a minor service delay became front-page news, all because nobody wanted to own the decision to investigate and fix it sooner.
Panic decisions, made under pressure, are almost always worse than considered ones made earlier. And here’s the thing: most managers know this. They know they should act sooner. The barrier isn’t knowledge; it’s confidence and skill.
Making Your Decision-Making Process a Leadership Skill
Decision-making isn’t an innate talent some people are born with. It’s a skill. And like every skill I work on with managers, it gets better with intention, practice, and the right framework.
The managers I work with in my Catalyst Conversations coaching programme consistently tell me that the single biggest shift they make isn’t in how they handle a difficult conversation in the moment. It’s in how they stop deferring the decision to have it. Once they commit to acting, everything else follows.
Here’s what I’d encourage you to try this week:
• Audit your pending list. What decisions have you been sitting on? Write them all down without judging yourself for the delay.
• Separate the business decisions from the people decisions. Are the people ones consistently getting pushed to the bottom? If so, that’s worth sitting with.
• For each decision, define the goal. Not a vague aspiration. A measurable outcome with a timeframe attached.
• Ask yourself: what’s the cost of waiting? Not the risk of acting but the real cost of continued delay.
The Next Step with Decisions and Your Conversations#
If you’re finding that the decisions you’re most consistently deferring are the people ones: the performance conversations, the team conflicts, the feedback that’s overdue.
That’s worth taking seriously. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a skill gap, and skill gaps can be closed.
I’ve written extensively about how to approach those conversations, including why they go wrong and how to recover when they do, in my blog on difficult conversations.
And if you want a structured way to prepare for them, my COMPASS Conversation Model walks you through every stage of the process so you’re never going in without a plan.
Because the truth is, the managers who lead the best teams aren’t the ones who never have difficult decisions to make. They’re the ones who’ve stopped waiting for the right moment and started acting on what they know needs doing.
What decision have you been putting off? I’d love to know.
Sometimes the best decision you can make is to ask for help. Book an exploratory call with me and let’s get you moving.