You're Not Thinking About It. You're Avoiding It.

Why do leaders keep putting off the hardest decisions? Because "I'm thinking about it" is almost always a cover story for something else. Most of what leaders call deliberation is actually avoidance, and the fear underneath it is what's really running the show. Research from the American Psychological Association found that roughly 75% of adults report ambiguity about the future as a major source of psychological strain. Every decision you're carrying right now is one your team is paying for. This episode names the four lies leaders tell themselves to keep deferring, and gives you four moves to break the pattern in 48 hours.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why most leaders carry 3 to 5 actively avoided decisions at any given time (and how to count yours)
• The Four Lies of the Avoided Decision, from the public cover story to the private fears underneath
• What avoidance is actually costing you and your team while you "think about it"
• Why the decision you're afraid will damage your reputation is the one currently damaging it
• The 48-Hour Rule and three other moves to break the pattern this week

The cost of the deferred decision is almost always greater than the cost of the wrong decision. A wrong call can be corrected. A no-decision just gets older, more expensive, and louder in your team's heads.

The Four Lies of the Avoided Decision (Colby Morris)

Four rationalizations leaders tell themselves to keep deferring. The first is the public cover story. The next three are the actual fears underneath it.

1. "I need more information." (The cover story you say out loud)
2. "I need someone else's approval." (Cover-seeking disguised as collaboration)
3. "If this doesn't work, I could lose my job." (Career catastrophizing, almost never true)
4. "If this doesn't work, my team will think I'm a bad leader." (Reputational fear, already coming true while you wait)

The 48-Hour Rule (Colby Morris)

Every decision you've been carrying for more than two weeks gets a 48-hour window. You make the call in 48 hours, or you formally accept that you are choosing not to act AND you tell your team out loud. Open-ended decisions die. Deadlined decisions get made.

When to apply this guidance:

• You've been sitting on a decision for more than two weeks
• You keep telling yourself you need "just a little more information" but you can't name what would change your mind
• Your team is quietly working around you because they've stopped waiting for the call
• You catch yourself using the same weekend to "think on it" more than twice
• You suspect what you're calling deliberation is actually fear

Research referenced in this episode:

• Christopher Anderson (2003), "The Psychology of Doing Nothing" (Psychological Bulletin): identifies four documented patterns of decision avoidance including choice deferral, status quo bias, omission bias, and inaction inertia
• American Psychological Association: roughly 75% of adults report that ambiguity about the future is a major source of psychological strain

Related episodes (the decision-making series):

• Mastering the Art of Decision-Making in Leadership (the foundational anchor)
• The 4 Questions to Stop Making Every Decision (which decisions are yours to make)
• A Framework for Making Wise Decisions as a Leader (the GRIT framework, how to make the call)
• Consensus vs. Buy-In (And Why You're Chasing the Wrong One)

Connect with Colby Morris:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/colbymorris 

Website: NXTStepAdvisors.com

About The Things Leaders Do:

The Things Leaders Do is a weekly leadership podcast hosted by Colby Morris, Founder of NXT Step Advisors. The show delivers practical, immediately actionable leadership tools for middle managers and senior leaders navigating real workplace challenges. No corporate jargon, no theory you can't use. Just real guidance you can implement before your next one-on-one. New episodes every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

• Colby's LinkedIn Profile
• NXTStepAdvisors.com

Transcript

Welcome Back And The Hard Truth

SPEAKER_00 0:00

People first leadership. Actionable strategies, real results. This is Things Leaders Do with Colby Morris.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Hey, before we dive in, I guess I have to address the elephant in the room. It's been a while. At least a month, I guess, since I dropped an episode. And here's the honest version. There's been some health situations. We closed on a new house and we moved, kind of all in the same window. And when life happens, the podcast had to wait its turn. Everybody's doing okay. We're in the new place. The dust is settling, and I'm genuinely back and glad to be behind this mic. And I'll be honest, the irony of dropping an episode about not avoiding the hard stuff after taking a few weeks off is not lost on me. But hey, sometimes life makes the call, not you. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for sticking around. Now, let's get into it.

The Decision You Keep Dodging

SPEAKER_01 1:13

There is a decision sitting on your plate right now that you've been pushing and what? Next week for about three weeks. You know exactly which one I'm talking about. Maybe it's a team change. Someone needs to be moved or coached up or, you know, coached out. And you keep almost doing it. Maybe it's a vendor switch. The one you know isn't working, that you keep telling yourself you'll, you know, you'll deal with it at the start of the next quarter. Maybe it's a conversation with one specific person on your team. The one you've rehearsed in the shower probably four times now. Or maybe it's the org chart move that you've, you know, been redrawing in your head every Sunday night for two months. Maybe it's a hire you keep almost making. Or that project that you keep almost killing. Whatever it is, do you know which one? And here's what you've been telling yourself about it. I'm just being thoughtful. I want to think on it a little longer. I'm waiting for the right moment. I I need a little more information first. Real talk? You're you're not thinking about it. You're avoiding it. And every single day that you don't decide, it's getting more expensive. Not theoretically, actually. Today, we're going to do four things. First, we're going to count how many decisions you're actively avoiding right now because most leaders have no idea. And second, we're going to name the four lies you tell yourself about each one. And the first lie is the cover story. The next three are what the cover story is hiding. And then third, we're going to look at what avoidance is actually costing you and your team while you think about it. And then fourth, I'll give you four moves to help you break the pattern this week. So if you've been cutting a decision around for the last three Sunday nights, well, this episode is for you. Hey, this is Colby. Welcome back to the Things Leaders Do podcast. We're going somewhere uncomfortable today because most leaders don't have a decision-making problem. They have an avoidance problem. All right, let's start with something you might not

Count Your Avoided Decisions

SPEAKER_01 3:41

want to do, but I promise you it'll change the rest of this episode for you. I want you to count. How many decisions are sitting on your plate right now that you've been actively pushing off? Not, you know, decisions you're thinking through. I mean decisions you've been carrying for more than two weeks, where you keep telling yourself you'll deal with it next week. How many? Most leaders I work with carry three to five at literally any given time. Some carry more, and almost none of them have ever actually counted. Because counting, well, that's uncomfortable. Counting forces you to admit it's a pattern. So count yours. Right now. Pause this episode if you need to. Okay, are you back? Some of them are about people. The higher you keep almost making where you've interviewed three candidates and you keep needing one more conversation before you commit. The person you should have moved out three months ago, but the conversation just feels too hard. The promotion you keep almost giving someone because if you give it to them now, you're committing to a whole succession plan you haven't thought through yet. Some of them are about money. You know, the budget call you keep deferring because of the numbers are uncomfortable. The contract you should have renegotiated last quarter, and now you're paying above market because you didn't pull the trigger. The vendor relationship you've outgrown where every month you keep saying, let me make it through this project and then I'll deal with it. Some of them are about structure. The team you should have reorganized after last departure but didn't. The role you should have eliminated when the person in it left, but you backfilled it instead because eliminating felt too aggressive. The process everybody complains about that you keep saying you'll fix in Q3 and then Q4 and then next year. And some of them are existential. The bigger question you keep putting off because you tell yourself you don't have the bandwidth to think about it. When the truth is you do have the bandwidth, you're just scared of the answer. So you keep finding smaller things to fill your week with because small decisions feel productive and big decisions feel terrifying.

Why Leaders Avoid Decisions

SPEAKER_01 6:14

There's actually research on this. Yeah. A 2003 academic paper by a guy named Christopher Anderson called The Psychology of Doing Nothing identified four specific patterns of decision avoidance. Four, it's documented. It's studied. So if you're sitting here feeling a little exposed right now, take a breath. You're not broken, okay? You're inside a pattern that has actual peer-reviewed research behind it. Other leaders are doing this too. Okay, that doesn't make it okay, but it does mean it's a fixable problem, not a character flaw. Now, here's the part that should sting a little, so stay with me on this. The American Psychology Association did research that found roughly 75% of adults report that ambiguity about the future is a major source of psychological strain. Three out of four people. And every decision you're sitting on right now, that's ambiguity. Your team is paying that strain because you haven't decided. They don't know what's coming, so they're operating in a fog, and the fog is your fog. You created it by not deciding. So every decision you're avoiding is one your team has already noticed. They're not waiting patiently for you to figure out, they're watching you not decide. They're drawing conclusions about you while they wait. So

Four Lies That Fuel Avoidance

SPEAKER_01 7:56

let's name the lies, because that's what they are. I'm going to walk you through four things you tell yourself when you're avoiding a decision, and I want you to be honest about which ones you've used in the last 30 days. And here's the structure to pay attention to. The first lie is the cover story, the one you say out loud. The next three are what that cover story is hiding underneath. It's it's the fear under the rationalization. Lie one. I need more information. This is the public lie. The one you say in meetings, the one you tell yourself on the drive home, the one you put in your one-on-one with your boss. It sounds responsible. It sounds thoughtful, even. It sounds like a grown adult doing due diligence. But most of the time, it's just a delayed tactic dressed up in a suit. You don't actually need more information. You're hoping the next data point will be so clear that it tells you what to do so you don't have to make the call yourself. Well, here's the diagnostic. Right now, can you name specifically what information would change your decision? If you can't write that sentence in under 30 seconds, you don't actually need more information. You're delay shopping. You're hoping the universe will hand you certainty so you don't have to choose. And look, this is a close cousin to something I taught back in March with my grit episode, where the G sans for gather the right information, not all of it. If you haven't heard that one, go check it out. Today we're zooming in on the specific version of that trap where more information isn't a real need. It's a cover story. Lie two. I need someone else's approval. Now we're getting under the cover story. Sometimes you genuinely need approval, sure. If it's outside your authority, that's not a lie. That's the org chart. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the leader who tells themselves, well, my boss should probably weigh in on this, when their boss has neither asked for nor needs to weigh in. Or the one who says, I want to run this by the team, when the team is just going to defer to them anyway. Or the one who keeps telling their peer about the call so they can get social proof before they pull the trigger. That's that's not approval seeking, that's cover seeking. You're not looking for input, you're looking for someone who can share the blame if it goes wrong. The diagnostic, who specifically do you need approval from? And for what specific aspect? If you can't answer both halves of that in one sentence, you don't need approval. You need someone to absorb the risk with you. All right, lie three. If I make this call and it doesn't work, I can lose my job. Okay. Now we're at the actual fear. And this is one that most leaders just won't say out loud, even to themselves. But it's it's running in the background of almost every avoided decision. Look, sometimes this is true, right? I mean, there are decisions where you can genuinely get fired for getting it wrong. But almost never. Almost never. Most decisions, even the ones that go badly, result in a hard conversation, maybe a hit on the quarterly review, maybe a slightly awkward few months, but you keep going, you learn something, you move on. But see, your brain doesn't process it that way. Your brain catastrophizes. Your brain takes a 5% career risk and turns it into a 95% existential threat, because that's what brains do when they're scared. And the avoidance feels safer than the decision because the avoidance has no consequences yet. Until it does. And then the consequences are worse. The diagnostic. Like walk through the actual scenario, not the worst case nightmare scenario, the realistic scenario. If you make this call and it doesn't pan out, what's the actual worst that happens? Most of the time, the answer is, you know, a tough conversation and a recovery period. That's it. That's the thing you've been trading for weeks of avoidance and team-wide fog. All right, live four. If this doesn't work, my team will think I'm a bad leader. This is reputational fear. And it might be the most poisonous one of the four. Because here's the contrarian truth, and I want you to sit with this one. What do you think your team is thinking right now while you're not deciding? Go ahead. Actually picture it. Picture the person on your team who's been waiting longest on the decision you've been carrying. What's running through their head when they think about you right now? Is it, wow, what a thoughtful leader. I'm so glad they're taking their time. Or is it something closer to, I don't understand what we're doing, and I'm not sure they do either. Spoiler leaders, they are already losing confidence in you. The decision you're afraid will damage your reputation is the one currently damaging your reputation. You're not protecting your image by waiting. You're eroding it in real time. Here's what most leaders get wrong about reputation. They think reputation is shaped by outcomes. It's not. It's shaped by patterns. And a leader who avoids a hard call for three months has built a pattern that's louder than any single outcome could be. A team that watches their leader avoid a decision for that long doesn't think, wow, what a thoughtful leader. They think this person can't pull the trigger when it matters. That's the actual story you're writing in their heads while you think about it. The diagnostic. Ask yourself what your team thinks of you right now while the decision is still unmade. If you don't know, you've got a bigger problem than the decision itself. If you do know and it's not what you want them to think, then the avoidance is already costing you the exact thing you were trying to protect.

The Real Cost To Your Team

SPEAKER_01 15:07

So let's talk about cost. Because if I just leave it at you're avoiding stuff, I haven't really given you the stakes. And without the stakes, the four lives don't really matter. So here are three real costs that are happening right now while you carry this stuff. Cost one, your team is working around you. Yeah. See, when you don't decide your team doesn't stop, they they make smaller decisions to compensate for your big undecided one. They duplicate work just in case. They build workarounds. They make commitments to other people that may not survive your eventual call. Let me make this concrete. Say you've been sitting on a decision about whether to kill a project. Well, while you sit, here's what your team is doing. The lead on that project is still hiring for it because you haven't told them not to. The marketing person is still building the launch plan around it. The finance person has it in the budget for next quarter. Three other teams are referencing it on their roadmaps, and every single one of those people is privately wondering if it's really going to happen, but nobody's going to ask you because the last three times somebody asks you, you said, I'm still thinking about it. So they keep working, they keep building. And the day you finally decide to kill it, you don't just kill the project. You blow up three months of compensating work that your team did because you couldn't pull the trigger. Their workload doubled, then tripled while you slept on it. Think about that. They are taking on extra labor right now while you listen to this because you haven't made a call. Every hour you spend not deciding generates hours of compensating work downstream. Y'all, the math is brutal, and it's happening even though you can't see it. Cost two, trust quietly erodes. This is the one that compounds. Decisiveness is part of how leaders earn trust. When you waver on one decision, your team doesn't just lose confidence in that one decision. Okay, they start questioning your judgment on decisions you do make. Because if you're not sure about this, what else aren't you sure about? And the trust deficit that doesn't repair itself when you eventually make the call. It lingers. You can be right on the next 10 decisions and still be carrying the weight of the one you sat on too long. Cost three, the decision actually gets harder. This is the part most leaders miss just completely. Every week you wait, the decision becomes more complicated, not less. Your team builds workarounds that now have to be unwound. Okay. You hire around the role you should have eliminated. You keep the vendor because by now switching is more expensive than it would have been three months ago. You sink more time, more money, more political capital into the path you're not even sure you want to be on. The historians of this business strategy call this path dependence. The longer you wait, the fewer options you have because past indecisions constrained your present choices. The cost of the wrong decision was bad. The cost of the deferred decision is much worse. Because at least the wrong decision lets you correct course. The deferred decision just keeps narrowing your runway. And here's the line I want you to hold on to. A 70% decision made now is worth more than a 95% decision made a month from now. The longer you wait for certainty, the less the certainty is worth. I want to repeat that. A 70% decision made now is worth more than a 95% decision made a month from now. The longer you wait for more certainty, the less the certainty is worth. That's not a saying. That's the math of every decision you've ever avoided. So, what what do you actually do?

Four Moves To Break The Pattern

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Four moves, and I want you to start this week. Move one is the 48-hour rule. Every decision you've been carrying for more than two weeks gets a 48-hour window starting now. Yeah. You make the call in 48 hours, or you formally accept that you are choosing not to act, and you tell your team that out loud, so they know what's happening. Why does this work? Well, open-ended decisions die. Deadline decisions get made. The whole reason these decisions have been sitting is because they have no forcing function. You're creating the forcing function yourself. Move two. Name what would change your mind. For every decision you're carrying, write one sentence. I will change my mind if X happens. One sentence. If you can't write it in 30 seconds, you don't have a decision problem. You have an avoidance problem. The sentence forces you to articulate what you're actually waiting for. And if you can't articulate it, then you weren't waiting for anything real. All right, move three. Make the call out loud. Tell one professional person, your boss, a peer, a coach, what you've decided before you decided. Okay, not your spouse, not a friend. Someone in the work context. Here's why this works. Thinking about it has no audience. Telling someone does. Saying this decision out loud commits the brain in a way private deliberately never will. It also exposes whether you actually believe what you're about to do because if you can't say it out loud, you haven't actually made the call yet. All right. Move four. Predecide that being wrong is okay. Yeah, this one's a hard one. Most of what you're scared of isn't that the actual Decision. It's being wrong. Specifically, lies three and four from earlier. You're not afraid of the call. You're afraid of the consequences if the call goes badly. So predecide. Before you make the call, decide that being wrong is acceptable. It's okay. Walk yourself through the actual scenario. If you make this call and it doesn't work out, what's the real path forward? Not the catastrophe path, the real one. You'd have a tough conversation with your boss. You'd document what you learn. You'd adjust course. You'd keep going. The team would adjust with you. The company wouldn't fold. Your career wouldn't end. You'd recover. You'd be a smarter leader on the other side of this. That's what recovery actually looks like. Not the nightmare your brain is selling you, the actual sequence of events that follows a wrong call. Because here's the truth. And this is the hardest one. A wrong decision can be corrected. A no decision can't. The no decision just gets older and more expensive and harder to undo and louder in your team's heads. Wrong is recoverable, but stuck is not. So decide in advance that being wrong is acceptable. And then just make the call. So here's your challenge for the league.

The 48-Hour Challenge And Wrap

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Go back to the inventory you did at the start of the episode. The three to five decisions you've been carrying. Pick one. Pick the one that's, you know, been waiting the longest, or the one that scares you the most. One of those two. And inside the next 48 hours, make the stinking call. Not perfect, not bulletproof, not when you've finally gathered all the information. Now, with what you have, a 70% decision in the next 48 hours with whatever you know right now. I know how that sounds. I know it feels reckless. It's not. Reckless is making a call without doing the work. You've done the work. You've been doing the work for weeks, maybe months. You don't need more thinking. You need to act on the thinking you've already done. Remember, a 70% decision made now is worth more than a 95% decision made a month from now. The longer you wait for more certainty, the less certainty is worth. That decision you've been carrying isn't going to get easier on Sunday night. It's going to get harder. The 48 hours starts now. And hey, you've got this. If you're sitting on this episode going, I have like eight of these right now. That's the kind of work I do. I help leaders break the avoidance pattern, get unstuck, rebuild the decisiveness that earned them the seat they're sitting in in the first place. You can find me at my website at Next Step Advisors. There's no E in next, just Next Step Advisors or on LinkedIn, and both those links are in the show notes. If you want to make the rest of the decision-making toolkit, the framework for how to make wise calls is my grit episode from March. The framework for figuring out which decisions are even yours to make in the first place is my four questions episode from February. Those two go alongside this one. Today was about the decisions you've been avoiding altogether. The how and the which, those are separate conversations. If this episode hit, do me a favor. Please subscribe wherever you listen and leave a review if you've got a minute. That's genuinely how more leaders find the show and share this with another leader you know is sitting on a call right now. We both know one. And remember, keep making the call when 70% is good enough. Keep telling yourself the truth about whether you're deliberating or avoiding, and keep moving because the cost of standing still is bigger than the cost of being wrong. And you know why? Because those are the things that leaders do.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Thank you for listening to Things Leaders Do. If you're looking for more tips on how to be a better leader, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and listen to next week's episode. Until next time, keep working on being a better leader by doing the things that leaders do.