Leadership Decision Making: Why Discernment Matters More Than Data
Speed Raised the Stakes in Leadership Decision Making
Speed is no longer optional in leadership decision making. Decisions come faster, consequences compound sooner, and hesitation shows up immediately in the system. In that environment, it’s tempting to believe that more data will make decisions safer. Sometimes it does, but often it doesn’t.
Data can inform decisions. It cannot make them.
When Data Becomes a Shield
Earlier in my career when I was a new director, I leaned heavily on data and consensus. I gathered facts, sought opinions, and revisited decisions week after week. If one manager didn’t agree, we tabled the decision, even when the direction was clear.
On the surface, this looked thoughtful and inclusive. In practice, it slowed the organization and quietly frustrated capable people who were ready to move. The cost wasn’t obvious in the moment, but it showed up in pace, confidence, and momentum.
At the time, I believed I was protecting my credibility by avoiding visible mistakes. I was also trying to protect newer managers from the discomfort that comes with real managerial responsibility. What I didn’t see clearly enough was the broader impact. Delay in leadership decision making isn’t neutral. It carries its own form of harm.
This is where discernment begins to matter. Discernment is the ability to recognize when analysis has done its job and judgment must take over.
As the book Good Leaders Ask Great Questions reminds us, “Leaders who don’t ask the right questions may always be right, but they’ll rarely be successful.” The skill isn’t asking endlessly. It’s knowing when the questions have been answered well enough to act.
The Other Failure Mode: Decisiveness Without Understanding
I’ve also seen the opposite breakdown in leadership judgment. New leaders brought in from the outside with a mandate to fix things often move quickly without understanding what’s actually broken.
They act on what they were told during the hiring process rather than what they observe firsthand. They dismantle systems and replace processes. Months later, what was discarded gets quietly reintroduced. The churn exhausts teams, erodes trust, and undermines confidence in leadership decision making.
In these situations, decisiveness becomes a substitute for discernment.
Leadership and Self-Deception captures this pattern clearly, noting that “when we see others as objects, we stop seeing things as they are.” Leaders who don’t slow down long enough to understand the human system in front of them often solve the wrong problem with great confidence.
Discernment Lives Between Speed and Delay
Discernment sits between hesitation and recklessness.
It’s the ability to read between the lines, understand nuance, uncover unspoken needs, and assess where delay is more harmful than action. Discernment shapes decision making under pressure by asking questions data alone can’t answer.
What harm will waiting cause?
Who absorbs the cost of delay?
Where is alignment necessary, and where is it a false requirement?
Strong leadership decision making requires knowing when speed protects the organization and when patience prevents unnecessary damage.
Why Teams Feel the Cost First
Leadership decisions are never isolated. When leaders hesitate too long, teams learn to wait. When leaders move too fast, teams learn not to trust.
Neither environment develops strong managers or healthy leadership skills.
As Patrick Lencioni writes in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, “When there is low trust, people won’t speak openly, and leaders lose access to what’s really happening.” Discernment depends on that access. Without it, leaders are left reacting to symptoms instead of understanding systems.
The Human Skill Data Can’t Replace
As tools improve and information becomes easier to access, the limiting factor in leadership is no longer data. It’s judgment.
Discernment allows leaders to accept visible risk when the moment calls for it, to slow down when understanding matters more than speed, and to recognize that both delay and decisiveness carry consequences.
Data will continue to get better and technology will continue to accelerate. But the leadership skill that determines whether any of it actually helps is discernment.