Help Your Leaders Build Better Decision-Making Skills

Last week, I was in a conversation about decision-making and how leaders need to balance supporting their people while still expecting them to think for themselves.

We were talking about a familiar pattern where a team brings an unclear problem to a manager and instead of helping them work through it, the manager answers the question for them. The decision gets made, but the team doesn’t get any better at making the next one.

Most of the time, this isn’t an intelligence or understanding issue. It’s a habit that forms when people aren’t used to owning their decisions. Many emerging leaders take problems off their team’s plate without realizing what they’re teaching.

They teach their team to bring problems instead of solutions. They teach hesitation instead of ownership. And they teach that clarity comes from the manager, not from the team’s own thinking.

The good news is that this pattern is coachable. One small shift can change how leaders develop their teams: Ask them to bring a recommendation, not just a question.

A simple prompt works: “Tell me what you think we should do and why.”

At first, they’ll hesitate because it feels easier to hand the decision off. But the more they practice forming their own point of view, the more confident and capable they become.

This isn’t about pushing work back onto anyone. It’s about helping leaders build the judgment they need to guide their own teams instead of carrying the work for them.

Strong leadership isn’t doing more. It’s creating people who can think clearly on their own and take ownership of their decisions.