Hi {{first_name}}

Imagine this: there is a decision sitting on your desk right now that you have not made.

You know what it is. You have known for a while. The information you need is largely there, the direction is reasonably clear, and the cost of waiting is compounding. But the decision keeps getting deferred: to the next meeting, the next quarter, the next time you have a clearer picture.

From the outside, this looks like deliberation. It is not.

In my work with senior leaders, delayed decisions at the top of an organisation rarely come down to missing information. The data is usually sufficient. The strategic rationale is usually sound. What is getting in the way is something in how the leader is operating under pressure, a pattern that makes hesitation feel like prudence, and waiting feel like due diligence.

I call this a Mask: not a personality flaw, not a character weakness, but a limiting behavioural pattern that activates under pressure and distorts how a leader thinks, decides, and acts.

The pattern shows up differently depending on the leader. Some wait for more data, long after the data is sufficient. Some revisit decisions already made, reopening what was closed. Some delegate the call upward or sideways, diffusing accountability rather than owning it. The common thread is not incompetence. It is a response to pressure that has become habitual, and that the organisation has learned to work around.

The consequences are rarely dramatic. There is no single moment of failure. Instead, there is a slow accumulation of drag: initiatives that lose momentum, teams that stop bringing their best thinking forward because they have learned that decisions stall, competitors who move while you are still deliberating.

McKinsey’s research on senior executive decision-making found that 72 percent of respondents believed bad strategic decisions were either about as frequent as good ones, or were the prevailing norm in their organisation*. That is not a data problem or a process problem. It is a leadership behaviour problem, and it starts at the top.

The people around a hesitant leader adapt. They stop escalating decisions that need to be made at the top. They find workarounds. They lower their expectations of what leadership will provide. Over time, the gap between the leader’s intent and the organisation’s execution widens.

The instinct, when a leader recognises this pattern in themselves, is to push harder: to force the decision, to set an artificial deadline, to commit to being more decisive. That rarely works, because it addresses the behaviour without addressing what is driving it.

The more useful question is this: what is making this decision feel more dangerous than it is?

In most cases, the answer has less to do with the decision itself and more to do with what the leader believes is at stake (their credibility, their track record, their position). The Mask operates on that fear, inflating the risk of acting and deflating the risk of waiting, until inaction feels like the safer choice, and it is not, it is simply the less visible one.

The shift happens when a leader learns to notice the pattern in the moment, to recognise when hesitation is coming from a legitimate need for more information, and when it is coming from something else. That distinction is where the work begins.

Identify the decision you have been deferring longest. Not the most complex one, the one you keep moving to the bottom of the list.

Write down, in one sentence, what you are actually afraid will happen if you make it. Not the business risk, the personal one.

That answer is usually more instructive than another week of analysis.

If this pattern is showing up in your leadership, it may be worth a conversation.

I work with a small number of senior leaders on exactly this: diagnosing what is driving hesitation and resetting decision-making and execution. If it is relevant to where you are, you can book a call here.

Gavin

*Source: McKinsey & Company, ‘Untangling your organisation’s decision making’.