How to encourage leaders to take initiative and make decisions

Written by Josh Sutton from Josh Sutton Coaching

“I wish they’d just use their initiative.”

It’s a line of frustration I’ve heard from many managers. Senior leaders and HR people know it well: a leader in the company brings you a decision they are more than capable of making themselves. They know the role, understand the situation and have enough experience to weigh up the options. But they still don’t back themselves enough to take the initiative and decide.

It’s tempting to conclude that they lack confidence or need more training. Sometimes that’s true. They may not have the knowledge, experience or clarity the decision requires. But before deciding what support they need, it’s worth understanding why the decision keeps coming back to you.

People pay attention to what happens after they act.

If a leader makes a reasonable decision and a senior colleague steps in to change it, they may learn to check next time. If they make a mistake and the response is frustration or “you should have asked me first”, they may decide it’s safer to wait for permission.

That can become an expensive habit: Decisions take longer. Senior leaders become the sign-off point for work they should not need to own. And the leader who needs to develop their judgement gets less practice using it.

The manager may be trying to protect standards or make sure the work is done well. That’s understandable. But over time, the organisation can send a different message from the one it intends: getting everything right matters more than taking ownership.

So here’s the question: what are you rewarding? Are you recognising leaders for using their judgement and taking responsibility, or mainly for getting things exactly right?

You may feel that you encourage initiative, but look at the everyday signals too: Do leaders have clear areas of responsibility, or do they need approval for every significant step? When they bring you a problem, do you ask what they think should happen, or quickly give them your answer? What does your face or tone communicate when a decision hasn’t gone as planned?

There’s another question worth asking: is this actually a confidence issue? A leader may be hesitating because they don’t understand where their authority begins, haven’t had the right information, or have seen previous decisions overturned. Those problems need different responses. Telling someone to “be more confident” won’t help if the expectations are unclear or the organisation keeps pulling decisions back up the chain.

A good place to start? Take one decision that keeps returning to you. Be clear about what the leader can decide, when they should involve you, and what the limits are. Then resist the urge to take the decision back simply because you might have handled it differently.

Instead of giving the answer straight away, ask: “What do you think we should do?” or “What options have you considered?” That gives the leader a chance to explain their thinking and strengthen their judgement. You can still challenge their reasoning or make sure they’ve considered the risks. The decision remains theirs where it belongs.

When something goes wrong, take time to understand how the decision was made. Was it reasonable based on what they knew at the time? Was there something they couldn’t have anticipated? What would they do differently next time? That conversation helps the leader learn from the outcome without teaching them that any mistake means they should stop acting.

For senior leaders and HR teams, a repeated pattern of decisions being escalated is useful information. It may point to a development need, but it may also point to unclear decision rights or a culture that rewards caution over ownership. Leadership development is more useful when it starts with the real decisions people are avoiding, rather than an abstract instruction to “show more confidence”.

There will be times when a decision needs to come to you. There will also be times when a leader’s decision differs from yours and is still perfectly workable. The aim is to help capable leaders make sound decisions within clear boundaries, and to make sure decisions move up the chain because they need to, not because acting without permission feels too risky.

A question to leave you with: If a leader in your organisation keeps bringing decisions back to you, what might your response be teaching them?