When Leaders Refuse to Make the Decision

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Rachel was hired to manage the office of a small, growing company. When the operations coordinator resigned, the owner asked Rachel to cover several of the coordinator’s responsibilities “for a few weeks” while he decided whether to replace her. Rachel agreed. She knew the business was in a difficult season, and she wanted to help.

Three months later, Rachel was still doing both jobs.

The owner knew the arrangement could not continue. He had reviewed the financials, discussed possible candidates, considered dividing the position, and even drafted a job description. He had not decided whether to hire someone, reorganize the work, or eliminate some responsibilities. Whenever Rachel raised the subject, he assured her that he was “still working through it.” And he was.

Rachel was working through lunch.

She arrived early, stayed late, answered messages from home, and tried to prevent important details from falling through the cracks. The owner experienced his delay as additional time to make a careful decision. Rachel experienced it as another week of carrying two jobs.

No one had formally decided that she should continue doing both. Every week the owner refused to decide what to do, however, that was precisely the decision he made.

Not deciding is still a decision—usually one made at someone else’s expense.

This problem has been around for a long, long time—at least three thousand years.

Sometime around 1150 BC, Eli knew.

He knew what his sons were doing. He knew they were treating the offerings of the Lord with contempt. He knew they were abusing their authority, dishonoring God, and injuring the people they had been entrusted to serve. The reports had reached him. The pattern was no longer hidden, and the consequences were no longer theoretical.

Eli even confronted them.

“Why are you doing these things?” he asked. “For I hear about your wicked deeds from all these people” (1 Samuel 2:23).

He recognized the problem, acknowledged the problem, and spoke about the problem. He did not stop the problem.

Eli’s failure was not that he lacked information. His failure was that he refused to act decisively upon what he already knew. He warned his sons, but did not restrain them. He expressed concern, but did not exercise the authority God had entrusted to him. He addressed their behavior verbally while allowing it to continue organizationally.

God later told Samuel:

“I told him that I would judge his [Eli’s] house forever for the iniquity he knew about, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.”
—1 Samuel 3:13 BSB

God’s judgment did not fall upon Eli because he had never noticed the problem. Eli knew. It did not fall because he had never expressed disapproval. Eli had spoken to his sons. It fell because Eli possessed both knowledge and responsibility, yet refused to make the decision his stewardship required.

God’s earlier question exposed the heart beneath Eli’s indecision:

“Why do you honor your sons more than Me?”
—1 Samuel 2:29 BSB

That is a devastating question.

Eli might have said he was trying to be patient. He may have believed he was extending grace. He may have feared the disruption decisive action would cause. He might have hoped another conversation would finally produce change. He may have wanted additional confirmation before taking action against his own sons.

Whatever Eli told himself, God called it what it was…

Eli had honored his sons more than he honored God.

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Indecision Is Not Neutral

Leaders sometimes imagine that delaying a decision preserves the status quo.

It does not.

The present situation continues moving. The workload keeps accumulating, the customer keeps waiting, the cost keeps rising, the opportunity keeps narrowing, the equipment keeps deteriorating, the confusion keeps spreading, and the unresolved responsibility keeps falling upon whoever is conscientious enough to pick it up.

The leader may have postponed making a formal decision, but practical decisions are being made every day. If we do not decide whether to hire someone, we decide that the present staff will continue carrying the work. If we do not decide whether to repair or replace the equipment, we do decide to continue paying for breakdowns. If we do not decide who owns a responsibility, we decide that everyone—and therefore no one—owns it. If we do not decide whether to continue a failing program, we do decide to keep funding it. If we do not decide whether to pursue an opportunity, we decide to allow time to make the decision for us. If we do not decide how to resolve a recurring problem, we decide that the people closest to it will continue improvising. Make sense?

The leader may say, “We have not made a decision yet.” Everyone living with the consequences knows differently.

Every delay preserves something. The question is what it preserves—and who must pay to preserve it.

That is what makes chronic indecision more than an administrative weakness. It is a failure of stewardship.

Leadership is faithful stewardship applied to people. A leader does not own the organization, the ministry, the position, the authority, the resources, or the people affected by that authority. Everything belongs to God. The leader has been temporarily entrusted with responsibility and will one day give an account for how it was exercised.

“Now it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:2). Italics mine.

Faithfulness sometimes requires waiting. It sometimes requires gathering more information, seeking counsel, praying carefully, and resisting pressure to move prematurely. Faithfulness also requires deciding, and there comes a point when continued waiting is no longer wisdom.

It is avoidance.

Fear Often Wears Respectable Clothing

Most leaders will never say, “I am afraid to make this decision.” We have much better language than that.

“We need to be patient.” “We should pray about it.” “We need greater consensus.” “I want to hear every perspective.” “We may need additional research.” “This may not be the right time.” “I am waiting for greater clarity.”

Any of those statements may be entirely legitimate. Wisdom is patient. Prayer is essential. Counsel matters. Facts matter. Timing matters. Leaders who make rapid decisions without listening, thinking, or praying can create enormous damage.

Good leadership language can also conceal bad leadership motives. Patience can disguise fear. Prayerfulness can disguise passivity. Consensus-building can disguise an unwillingness to accept responsibility. Additional research can disguise the hope that another spreadsheet will somehow make the decision painless. Waiting for greater clarity can disguise our demand for a certainty God has never promised to provide.

Sometimes we are not waiting for enough information to make a wise decision. We are waiting for enough information to make a risk-free decision.

That information will never arrive.

Leadership decisions frequently must be made with incomplete knowledge. If every fact were known, every consequence were certain, and every person agreed, the organization would not need much leadership. It would merely need someone to announce the obvious.

Leadership becomes necessary precisely because the way forward is not always obvious. Wisdom is not the possession of perfect certainty. Wisdom is the faithful application of God’s truth to the realities we can reasonably know.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5).

James tells us to ask God for wisdom. He does not promise that God will provide advance knowledge of every outcome. We ask, listen, investigate, seek counsel, and consider the consequences. Then, at the proper time, we decide.

Prayer Must Move Us Toward Obedience

Prayer must precede, accompany, and follow our decisions. Leadership separated from prayer becomes self-reliance dressed in organizational clothing.

Jesus prayed through the night before choosing the twelve apostles (Luke 6:12–13). The church at Antioch worshiped, fasted, and prayed before sending Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2–3). Paul repeatedly asked believers to pray for wisdom, opportunity, courage, and clarity.

Prayer is not the problem.

Using prayer to avoid responsibility is the problem.

Some leaders keep praying because they expect God to remove the uncertainty. Others keep praying because they hope God will provide an easier choice. Still others pray because prayer feels spiritual while deciding feels dangerously personal. We can remain in prayer indefinitely without ever obeying what God has already made clear.

If an employee cannot sustainably carry two positions, we do not need to pray about whether human limitations exist. If the organization cannot afford a program, we do not need special revelation concerning the mathematics. If a responsibility is important but no one owns it, we do not need further discernment about whether someone should. If a process repeatedly fails customers, we do not need to wait for a crisis before addressing it. If we have made commitments our people cannot fulfill without repeatedly sacrificing their families, we do not need greater spiritual clarity about whether those families matter.

We certainly need wisdom concerning what to do, when to do it, and how to carry it out. Uncertainty about the details, however, does not eliminate the responsibility to decide.

“Therefore, whoever knows the right thing to do, yet fails to do it, is guilty of sin” (James 4:17).

Prayer should prepare us to obey. It must never become a spiritual waiting room in which obedience quietly dies of old age.

Decide How You Will Decide

One reason decisions become stalled is that no one has decided how the decision will be made.

In Crucial Conversations, Joseph Grenny and his coauthors describe four methods of decision-making: Command, Consult, Vote, and Consensus. Each method is legitimate when properly used. Each can also create confusion or delay when the people involved do not know which method is governing the decision.

• Command: One person or governing authority makes the decision. Others may be responsible for implementing it, but they do not participate in making it. Command decisions are appropriate when authority is already established, time is limited, an outside requirement determines the choice, or the matter has been properly delegated to one person.

• Consult: The decision-maker invites others to provide information, expertise, concerns, and recommendations, but retains responsibility for making the final decision. Consultation allows people to influence the decision without creating the false expectation that everyone must agree.

• Vote: The group discusses the available options and chooses through an agreed voting process. Voting works best when several acceptable options exist and everyone has agreed beforehand to support the result, even if his or her preferred option does not prevail.

• Consensus: The group continues discussing the matter until everyone honestly supports one decision. Consensus is most appropriate for complex, high-stakes decisions or situations in which implementation genuinely requires the full commitment of everyone involved. It is valuable, but slow, and it should not become the default method for every decision.

The problem is often not the chosen method. The problem is that no method was chosen.

A leader asks for input, but some participants believe they have been invited to make the decision. A committee believes it is working toward consensus while the senior leader believes the group is merely being consulted. Someone calls for a vote when several people never agreed to support the winning option. A leader announces a command decision after weeks of discussion that caused everyone to believe the decision belonged to the group.

Dialogue does not automatically determine decision rights. People deserve to know whether they are being informed, consulted, asked to vote, or invited into genuine consensus. They also need to know who carries final responsibility for the outcome.

Consensus-building can disguise an unwillingness to accept responsibility, but consensus itself is not the enemy. The error is using consensus when the decision does not require it—or pretending to seek consensus because the leader is unwilling to make the decision.

A leader does not merely decide what must be decided. A leader must also decide how it will be decided.

Consensus Can Inform the Decision Without Replacing Leadership

Wise leaders listen to others.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel” (Proverbs 12:15).

Leaders who refuse counsel isolate themselves from reality. They become overconfident in their judgment and increasingly capable of harming the people around them. A leader should actively seek the perspective of people who see what the leader cannot see, know what the leader does not know, and are willing to say what the leader may not want to hear.

Listening to counsel is not the same as transferring responsibility to the counselors.

Some leaders keep widening the circle because they hope unanimity will relieve them of the burden of choosing. If everyone agrees, the leader feels safe. If the decision fails, everyone participated. If anyone objects, the leader can postpone the matter and schedule another meeting.

Calendars are remarkably patient with cowardice.

Consensus is valuable when it can be achieved without abandoning responsibility. Some decisions, however, will never receive universal support. People possess different information, experiences, responsibilities, interests, personalities, and tolerances for risk. A leader may listen carefully to every voice and still be required to choose a direction that some people oppose.

Moses listened to Jethro and changed the structure through which he led Israel (Exodus 18:17–24). David listened to Abigail and was restrained from shedding blood in anger (1 Samuel 25:32–35). Rehoboam also sought counsel, but rejected the wisdom of the elders in favor of the advice he wanted to hear (1 Kings 12:6–15).

The presence of counsel does not guarantee wisdom. The leader must still discern, decide, and accept responsibility. That responsibility cannot be outsourced to a committee, hidden inside a survey, or buried beneath the minutes from seven increasingly repetitive meetings.

How Personality Can Complicate the Decision

[We use The DISC Model of Human Behavior when talking about personality. It is a simple way of understanding the four primary patterns of personality: Dominant, Inspiring, Supportive, and Conscientious (spelling DISC). It considers a person’s Pace—whether Outgoing or Reserved—and Compass—whether primarily Task-oriented or People-oriented—to help explain how people naturally communicate, make decisions, approach work, and respond to others. Most people display a blend of all four patterns, with one or two usually appearing more strongly. DISC describes observable tendencies, not ability, maturity, or character, and it helps us understand how someone may naturally behave, but never excuses how anyone chooses to behave. For a deeper understanding of personality and how these four patterns work together, read The DISC Model of Human Behavior.]

Every personality can delay a necessary decision, although the reasons and outward behavior may look very different.

A person with a strong Dominant pattern is usually associated with quick, forceful decisions. That person can still avoid a decision when it threatens control, exposes an earlier mistake, risks visible failure, or requires reversing a position already defended strongly. The delay may not look timid. It may appear as dismissing the problem, overpowering disagreement, changing the subject, or insisting that no decision is necessary. Sometimes the fastest decision-maker in the room becomes remarkably patient when the decision requires admitting, I was wr… wr… wrong.

A person with a strong Inspiring pattern may delay because the decision will disappoint someone, damage approval, restrict a promising possibility, or require a difficult follow-through after the excitement of discussion has passed. The person may continue talking, generating ideas, consulting more people, and keeping every option emotionally alive because closing one door feels like disappointing everyone standing behind it.

A person with a strong Supportive pattern may delay because the decision will disrupt stability, create conflict, alter familiar relationships, or cause someone pain. Patience, loyalty, and concern for people are genuine strengths, but those same strengths can become liabilities when preserving immediate harmony permits a damaging or unsustainable situation to continue. Peace maintained by transferring the burden to one quiet, dependable person is not peace. It is merely conflict whose cost has been assigned to the person least likely to complain.

A person with a strong Conscientious pattern may delay because more information is available, another risk has not been fully measured, an exception remains unresolved, or the decision cannot yet be proven correct. Careful analysis protects organizations from reckless action, but analysis can eventually become a shelter from responsibility. The pursuit of the best possible decision can prevent the good and necessary decision from ever being made.

Personality helps explain what may make a decision difficult for us. It does not excuse us from making it. Mature leaders learn to recognize the particular form avoidance takes in their own personality and then intentionally borrow the strengths they need: courage, communication, patience, analysis, counsel, or timely action.

Who Is Paying While You Wait?

This may be the most important question a hesitant leader can ask:

Who is paying for my unwillingness to decide?

Someone usually is.

Perhaps one conscientious employee keeps absorbing responsibilities that do not belong to her. Perhaps customers are repeatedly inconvenienced by a process leadership knows is inadequate. Perhaps a family is losing evenings and weekends because the organization will not confront an unsustainable workload. Perhaps a capable employee cannot move forward because two leaders have never clarified who possesses the authority to approve the work. Perhaps money that should be invested in something fruitful remains tied up in a program no one has the courage to end (‼️). Perhaps a promising opportunity is disappearing while leadership waits for perfect agreement. Perhaps volunteers are compensating for a ministry structure that should have been changed years ago. Perhaps the leader’s own spouse is carrying the anxiety that comes home every evening from a decision perpetually postponed.

The leader may experience delay as temporary relief. Everyone else experiences it as continued reality.

That is why indecision can become profoundly self-protective. The leader avoids disappointing someone, risking money, closing a door, admitting that an earlier plan failed, or accepting blame if the decision proves imperfect. Meanwhile, other people continue carrying the consequences.

The leader’s comfort is being purchased with someone else’s labor, time, peace, opportunity, or trust.

That is not patience, servant leadership, or faithful stewardship.

A Delayed Decision Usually Becomes a More Expensive Decision

Necessary decisions rarely become easier because they are ignored.

The temporary workload becomes the new expectation. The aging equipment fails at the worst possible moment. The short-term workaround becomes a permanent process no one understands. The promising employee accepts another position. The opportunity closes. The small deficit grows. The unresolved disagreement recruits supporters. The customer who complained quietly begins complaining publicly. The program everyone knows has ended in practice continues consuming money because no one will declare that it has ended in fact.

A necessary decision made six months late is rarely the same decision that could have been made six months earlier. More people have been affected, more money has been spent, more trust has been lost, more explanations are required, more relationships have hardened, and more credibility must be rebuilt. There is no universal multiplier study for indecision, but six months of delay can easily add 10 to 25 percent to an ordinary operational decision—and far more when the delay costs customers, opportunities, trust, or good people.

The invoice for indecision continues accumulating interest.

Leaders sometimes delay because they want to keep every option open. Options do not remain open indefinitely merely because we refuse to choose among them. Time is making its own decisions while we contemplate ours.

Ecclesiastes warns:

“He who watches the wind will fail to sow, and he who observes the clouds will fail to reap.”
~Ecclesiastes 11:4 BSB

The farmer who waits for conditions without risk will never plant. If he never plants, he has not avoided the possibility of a poor harvest.

He has guaranteed that there will be no harvest.

Decisiveness Is Not the Same as Speed

Not every delayed decision is avoided responsibility.

Some decisions require time. Facts must be verified, people must be heard, costs must be understood, risks must be evaluated, biblical principles must be applied, and legal, financial, medical, or professional counsel may be necessary. Hasty action can injure people and create consequences that cannot easily be reversed.

A wise leader does not confuse decisiveness with speed. Decisiveness means accepting responsibility for moving the matter toward resolution.

Even when a final decision cannot yet be made, the leader can establish a purposeful process by answering several questions:

• What information is still needed?

• Who will obtain it?

• Whose counsel should be sought?

• What biblical, ethical, organizational, or legal principles govern the decision?

• What temporary action is necessary while the decision is pending?

• Who owns the final decision?

• When will the decision be made?

• How will the decision and its reasoning be communicated?

Purposeful delay has direction, responsibility, and a reasonable end point.

Avoidance has recurring meetings.

A leader may appropriately say, “We are not ready to make the final decision today.” That statement should normally be followed by a clear explanation of what must still be learned, who will obtain the information, what will happen in the meantime, and when the decision will be made.

Without those elements, “not yet” can quietly become “not ever.”

Every Decision Will Cost Something

One reason leaders avoid decisions is that every meaningful decision closes a door. Hiring someone costs money, while not hiring someone costs capacity. Ending a program disappoints the people who built it, while continuing it consumes resources that cannot be used elsewhere. Replacing a system creates disruption, while keeping it preserves inefficiency. Accepting an opportunity introduces risk, while rejecting it forfeits possibility. Clarifying responsibility may expose previous confusion, while leaving it unclear guarantees future confusion.

There is no technique that removes these costs. Leadership does not offer a path through consequential decisions in which no one becomes disappointed, nothing valuable is risked, and no tradeoff is required.

We often ask whether the decision will cost something.

That question has already been answered.

It will.

The real questions are:

• What will action cost?

• What will inaction cost?

• Who will bear each cost?

• Which cost does faithful stewardship require us to accept?

Leaders often avoid the immediate, visible cost of action and force other people to absorb the delayed, distributed cost of inaction. The faithful decision is not necessarily the least expensive decision. It is the decision that places the cost where it rightly belongs.

Sometimes the leader must accept the risk, criticism, or discomfort rather than continuing to distribute the burden among people who have no authority to resolve it.

That… is leadership.

Make the Decision You Have Been Entrusted to Make

General George S. Patton is credited with saying:

“A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”

Leadership does not normally require anything to be executed violently, particularly since most personnel departments have created policies about that sort of thing. Maybe strongly is a good substitute word. Patton’s underlying point, however, is sound: the relentless pursuit of a perfect decision can become the enemy of timely, responsible action.

You will not know everything. You may not receive unanimous agreement, and you may not be able to predict every consequence. You may make the wisest decision available and later discover that some part of it should have been handled differently. That does not necessarily mean you were unfaithful.

Leaders are finite people making consequential decisions in a broken world. Faithful stewardship does not require omniscience. It requires humility, wisdom, courage, and obedience.

Begin by defining the decision clearly. Many leaders remain stuck because they are trying to solve a cloud of related concerns rather than stating the actual decision in one sentence. Determine what must be decided, who owns the decision, who will be affected, and which of the four decision-making methods is appropriate. A person who has been asked for counsel should know that the decision remains with the leader. A group working toward consensus should know why consensus is required. Everyone involved should understand both the process and the boundaries.

Gather the facts that can reasonably be gathered without allowing research to become an infinite assignment. Seek counsel from people who possess relevant knowledge, see the situation differently, and are willing to tell you the truth. Listen carefully enough to be influenced, but do not confuse listening with surrendering your responsibility to decide.

Identify the biblical principles governing the matter. Ask what faithfulness, truth, justice, love, stewardship, and responsibility require. Examine your motives honestly. Are you still waiting because you genuinely lack necessary information, or because the decision will disappoint someone? Are you seeking wisdom, or are you seeking protection from criticism? Are you preserving an important relationship, or are you purchasing temporary peace with someone else’s burden?

Determine who is paying while you wait. Put names to the consequences. Rachel is not an item under “staffing considerations.” She is a person going home late again because her leader has not decided. The customer is not a number in a service report. He is waiting for someone to correct a problem the organization already understands. The family is not an invisible source of additional employee capacity. They are people repeatedly losing time together because leadership will not address the workload.

Then establish a reasonable deadline and make the decision. Communicate it clearly, explain what should be explained, accept the costs that properly belong to leadership, and define who will do what by when. Follow up to determine whether the decision is producing its intended result. Humility remains necessary after the decision because faithful leaders correct what proves wrong without pretending that correction invalidates the responsibility to have acted.

Do not demand from God a level of certainty that eliminates the need for faith. Do not ask your people to carry indefinitely what you have been given the responsibility to resolve. Do not call fear patience, passivity prayerfulness, endless consultation wisdom, or avoidance consensus-building.

There is a time to investigate, listen, pray, and wait.

Then there is a time to decide, and act.

A leader who refuses to make a necessary decision has not preserved neutrality. The decision is already being made through delay, drift, and the continuation of the present reality.

The only question is whether the leader will accept responsibility for making it faithfully—or continue requiring someone else to pay for it. What would you do?

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Summary

• Not deciding is still a decision.

• Indecision usually transfers the cost to someone else.

• Every delay preserves something and costs something.

• Patience and prayer can become respectable disguises for fear.

• Decide whether to use Command, Consult, Vote, or Consensus.

• Consensus should inform leadership when appropriate, not replace it.

• Every personality can avoid decisions in a different way.

• Faithfulness does not require perfect certainty.

• Purposeful delay has direction and an end point.

• A delayed decision usually becomes a more expensive decision.

• Decisiveness is responsibility, not merely speed.

• Leaders must consider the costs of action and inaction.

• Gather the facts, seek counsel, pray—and decide.

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Coaching Questions

Take time to answer each question honestly and in writing, then identify one specific action you will take immediately, set a date for completing it, and share your commitment with someone who will hold you accountable.

1. What decision do I already know needs to be made, but I continue describing as something I am still considering?
2. What am I really waiting for—necessary information and godly wisdom, or enough certainty to remove the risk, discomfort, and possibility of criticism?
3. Who is currently paying—in added work, uncertainty, missed opportunity, damaged trust, or personal sacrifice—because I have not made the decision?
4. How should this decision be made—Command, Consult, Vote, or Consensus—and have I clearly told everyone involved who owns the final decision?
5. What specific decision will I make, by what date, and who will I ask to hold me accountable for communicating it and following through?

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Endnotes

1. Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and Emily Gregory, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2021). The authors identify four methods of decision-making—Command, Consult, Vote, and Consensus—and emphasize deciding in advance how a decision will be made.

2. George S. Patton Jr., War as I Knew It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947). Patton is credited there with the statement, “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.”