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Welcome to Leadership's Edge. Today, I want to talk about decisive decision-making. If you're a leader, one of the most valuable skills that you can develop is the ability to make decisions rapidly.

I have been in the coaching and consulting world for 16 years, which means I've had 16 years to understand what helps leaders truly have the edge and make a global impact.

What are the elements that ultimately hold them back? The ability to make decisive decisions is one of the most important parts of being not just a leader, but a leader that can truly make a huge difference in the world.

The challenge in decision-making: a large number of people have a hard time making rapid decisions. I'm sure at some point in your life you've had some big decision and you hesitated or you evaluated or you waited and probably in some way, held you back. The reason for that, if we get underneath the hood, is usually fear.

It is the fear of making the wrong decision. That's why we hesitate. That's why we deliberate. That's why we evaluate. It's because we don't want to make the wrong decision. And if we want to go a layer deeper, usually what it means is “I don't trust myself.”

Today's focus is all about how you can make the internal shifts to allow you to rapidly make decisions regardless of whether you succeed or you fail. It all stems from that self-trust. Your ability to trust yourself is everything.

What that means is very often we can't trust our mind, but we can trust our gut. The idea is to get better at the ability to trust ourselves and not have to spend so much time thinking about things, but just trust ourselves to make the decision.

When you make rapid decisions, first of all, what you're doing is you're demonstrating to yourself that you trust yourself. That is an excellent habit for you to develop. The more you deliberate and hesitate, the more you reiterate the habit that you don't trust yourself.

So even if I really want you to hear what I'm saying, even if you deliberate and you evaluate, if the essence of that comes from you not trusting yourself, then you still made the wrong decision. If you trust yourself and you rapidly make a decision and it ends up being a mistake, it's still the right decision because you trusted yourself. You can never lose if you trust yourself and you can lose even when you win, when you don't trust yourself.

The universe is essentially evaluating and choosing certain ones to come into existence based on their synergy. Think about that. Everything in nature works together. The trees, the ocean, the flowers, the bees, they all work together. It's very synergistic.

When big things in a business context are desiring to happen, there is a certain speed in which the universe favors. When deliberation happens and when hesitation happens, the universe begins to feel a little shaky about that. Very often, the more you deliberate in, the more you hesitate, the further you get away from enough innovation and synergy.

I think one of the best things you could do is create a culture where two things are happening. You create a culture where everyone from the founders, CEO, all the way down to the janitor, has this culture of self-trust. The amount of innovation and progress that you can create when you make decisive decisions is huge. There are two huge benefits. You create this amazing culture of positivity, and you create a culture of innovation and progress.

As Tony Robbins likes to say, nothing has meaning other than the meaning that we give it. You have to be decisive about the meaning that you're gonna give it. Maybe you have a thought about a new product or a new service, and maybe there's some risk involved.

I guarantee the long-term cost of hesitation and deliberation and not trusting yourself far outweighs any failures that you might experience as a function of decisively deciding because that takes us full circle to what I said at the beginning, which is: it really doesn't matter whether you fail or not.

Deciding and failing is better than hesitating. I want you to commit to a big decisive decision today. I want you to incorporate some real courage into it because I know at the end of the day, huge impact usually is right around the corner from big decisions.

If I could inspire you to make one big decision, and that became the catalyst for this new habit of decisive decision-making, I think it would change everything for you.

If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at shannon@shannongraham.com