Responsibility – Grandpa Bob Encouraging Leadership

A decision sits in front of us, waiting.

We turn it over in our head. We ask a few more questions. We look for one more data point. We check with another person whose opinion we respect. We wait for the timing to feel right.

And still, we hesitate.

We tell ourselves we need more information. More time. More certainty.

Indecision usually grows from very human places. Fear of being wrong. Fear of being blamed. Fear of choosing a path that can’t be undone. Fear of embarrassment.

Add decision fatigue to the mix and postponement starts to feel reasonable.

Meanwhile, the cost of waiting accumulates quietly. Teams stall. Momentum fades. Confidence erodes. What began as a thoughtful pause turns into drift.

Most leadership decisions are made without perfect information. Progress rarely waits for certainty.

So, what is our hesitation really telling us?

Sometimes, it’s a clear no. A request pulls us away from what matters most. We don’t like what we see, but we’re not sure why. Maybe a partnership doesn’t sit right with our values. In these moments, extended thinking isn’t searching for clarity. It’s searching for a way to explain our decision.

Other times, we hesitate because the decision stretches us. It introduces uncertainty. It raises our visibility. It asks more of us than we feel ready to give. Growth decisions usually feel uncomfortable before they feel right.

At some point, the data stops improving and the waiting stops helping.

Start small. Take a step that tests the decision rather than locking it in. Forward motion reveals new information…something thinking alone can’t.

A decision that turns out to be wrong isn’t failure.

It’s feedback.

And feedback points us toward our next decision.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
— Peter F. Drucker

Photo by ChatGPT’s new image generator, which is way better than prior versions of the tool.

Are usually not the real reasons.

Sure, we’ll have our story about how someone or something created the untenable situation that pushed us to quit.

We can talk about how continuing would have been a waste of our time and energy.

We can even describe how the emotional toll was so great that we needed to make the change before some type of permanent damage occurred.

All these reasons contain elements of truth. But, not the whole truth.

The whole truth lies in the balance of authority and responsibility.

Authority and responsibility live on opposite sides of life’s biggest equation. When we perceive that the authority we have matches up with the responsibility we’re carrying, we feel balanced. Satisfied.

But, get them out of whack, and our dissatisfaction begins to climb. Left unattended, the dissatisfaction we feel (subconsciously at first) will begin to overtake our patience. The cascade toward departure begins.

A world where we have ultimate authority and no responsibility would be nice. The “power” to do whatever we want without any ownership of the outcomes. Of course, this is a fantasy world.

Having authority over anything means having responsibility.

The key is the balance.

So, back to the quit or don’t quit decision:

If we stay the course, we’ll be forced to take ownership. We’ll need to assume authority and expend a ton of emotional energy. We can’t blame the “other.” When we decide not to quit, we’re deciding that it’s okay to be responsible for making the situation a success (however that gets defined in our heads).

Quitting is the easy way out of this “authority-responsibility” conundrum. It requires a lot less energy and eliminates our risk of failure. It doesn’t matter that the act of quitting may be an admission of failure in the first place. That’s just a sunk cost. The key is how much emotional energy we’ll have to expend in the future.

Why does any of this matter? We aren’t planning to quit any time soon. It’s not in our nature.

True, but what about everyone around you? What about the people who report to you? What about your teammates? What about your friends?

It turns out they’re working through this same authority-responsibility equation in their own lives.

And guess who has both the authority and responsibility to help them with balancing their equation.

You.

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash