The Role of Decision-Making and Communication to Overcome Leadership Stagnation

Jan 9

It’s Monday morning. The first meeting of the week is underway. The agenda? Discuss the week’s priorities and working schedule. But as the meeting unfolds, uncertainty fills the room.

Too many priorities and no clear direction.

At this moment, questions arise:

What is our main concern?
Where do we want to go?
How can we collaborate effectively and bring this project to life?

These questions hang in the air, unanswered. The team struggles to connect as if everyone is speaking a different language. The meeting goes on and on without reaching a clear direction. It seems that the team has hit a productivity wall.

Sound familiar?

Have you ever considered that these can be signs of Leadership Stagnation?

In a previous article, we discussed the importance of a collaborative approach to strategic planning, and its role in a company’s innovation, growth, and success. We discussed how this approach improves communication, strengthens alignment, leads to better decision-making, increases buy-in, and enhances organizational creativity.

But what happens when these principles aren’t in play? A drop in productivity, morale, creativity, and motivation. Often, leadership stagnation is at the core of the issue, and if left unaddressed, it can ripple through the entire team, with significant consequences.

Zuzanna Borek, founder of Fierce Up, a team coaching company, explains:
“Leadership stagnation has a huge impact on an organization’s workflow. It shows up as delayed projects, lack of clear direction, confusion, indecision, endless emails and meetings, and poor prioritization. Over time, this affects the whole organization, often leaving people unaware of the root cause. The result? Reduced employee engagement, low morale, slow innovation, and a loss of competitive edge.”

If you are seeing these signs within your company or feel that your team has ‘hit the wall’, know that this is not the end of the road.

RECOGNIZING LEADERSHIP STAGNATION

We are living in a fast-paced world, with changes affecting businesses and leadership confidence more than ever.

According to Accenture’s Pulse of Change, the pace of tech innovation, namely, generative AI, is the top concern for C-suite leaders in 2025, followed by Talent acquisition, Cybersecurity, Economic, Geopolitical, Sustainability, and Consumer behavior.

Change is the new constant, and as a leader, you need to be prepared to guide your team through these challenging times, approaching evolution with an open mind, confidence, and clarity.

When these principles are not part of the game the likelihood of reaching stagnation is high, and although subtle, the manifestation can be seen as:

1. Unclear Vision and confusion

Teams lack clarity on goals, most of the time, due to a lack of clear prioritization, leading to confusion about the company’s direction.

2. Indecision and Delays

As a leader, you’ve likely experienced the frustration of waiting for someone on your team to take the initiative on an idea, only to find no one steps up.
While it’s tempting to attribute this to a lack of effort, the root cause may lie elsewhere. When priorities aren’t clearly defined—or worse, when team members have previously invested significant time and effort into something, only to see priorities shift without their involvement—it can lead to hesitation, reluctance, and trust issues.

This dynamic often pushes teams into a cycle of micromanagement—not because anyone wants it, but because the lack of clarity and inclusion leaves you feeling the need to step in just to keep things on track.

3. Decreased Employee Engagement

Employee disengagement often arises when leadership fails to set a clear direction or communicate expectations effectively. Even when the message is clear, constant shifts in priorities—without involving or informing the team—can lead to uncertainty and frustration.

4. Repetition and fragmented communication

When communication lacks clarity and consistency, it often results in unnecessary repetition. Topics are discussed in meetings, only to resurface later in emails, often revealing that key points were missed or misunderstood.

At first this may seem like your team isn’t capable, but it’s more about fragmented communication— without a unified approach, workflows become bogged down in unnecessary discussions and confusion, slowing down progress and testing everyone’s patience.

However, we know that recognizing those signs isn’t enough to drive change within a company. Mainly because overcoming stagnation is not a simple task. It lies in creating a culture of accountability, proactivity, and empowerment, where decisions are made quickly, and communication is clear.

A culture where leaders are clear, decisive, and consistent, inspires trust and alignment, unlocking the team’s potential for growth, innovation, and success.

HOW FIERCE UP APPROACHES LEADERSHIP STAGNATION

Healthy relationships are the root of a company’s success, and our goal at Fierce Up is to co-create an environment for the whole team to thrive sustainably. When it comes to leadership stagnation, we focus on two main pillars:

1. Building a New Decision-Making Process That’s Agile and Data-Driven

Leadership stagnation often stems from indecision, unclear priorities, or outdated processes. To tackle this, we help organizations implement agile, data-driven decision-making frameworks that ensure clarity, speed, and alignment.

Using the ORSC (Organization and Relationship Systems Coaching) model, we go beyond traditional strategies to strengthen team dynamics and ensure decisions are not made in isolation. ORSC facilitates:

Relationship Systems Intelligence™: Building co-responsibility for decisions by engaging the entire team. Together we aim to elevate the RSI, a key predictor of business and team resilience.
Role Clarity: Helping teams distinguish between “outer roles” (tasks) and “inner roles” (emotional responsibilities) for smoother workflows.
Change Navigation: Providing tools to manage resistance, uncertainty, and conflict, ensuring teams stay agile and adaptable during transitions.

2. Creating Channels for Better Communication and Feedback

Poor communication makes teams feel disconnected and unclear about their roles and the company’s direction. At Fierce Up, we use the ORSC model to help organizations establish healthier communication channels cultivating trust, transparency, and collaboration.

ORSC allows teams to:

Embrace Diversity: Ensuring every voice in the system and team is acknowledged and honored.
Navigate Conflict Effectively: Transforming difficult conversations into opportunities for growth and alignment.
Increase Positivity: Strengthening positivity and recognition within the team to boost morale and engagement.

OVERCOMING DECISION-MAKING AS A LEADER: AGILITY AND DATA-DRIVEN DECISION-MAKING PROCESSES

Decision-making is a complex process, influenced by an organization’s structure and culture.

It is estimated that nearly 40% of an executive’s time is spent making decisions and considering a typical Fortune 500 company, this represents almost $250 million a year in wages. However, the consequences of ineffective decision-making go beyond financial waste. Poor processes can result in decision fatigue, lower productivity, and a significant decrease in team morale.

Agility in Decision-Making

Agile organizations are better positioned to empower decision-making and quickly adapt to changes in the business environment. It reduces unnecessary management layers, empowers teams, and creates a culture of ownership among employees. Some efficient ways to embrace agile decision-making are:

Categorizing decisions, by identifying the type of decision to be made. They can be big-bet decisions, cross-cutting decisions, or delegated decisions.
Aligning decisions with the corporate strategy, ensuring that they are executed faster and more effectively.
Empowering teams to make decisions while providing guardrails and coaching to ensure alignment with business goals.

In this article, we will not explore every aspect of these strategies. Instead, we will focus on just one of those issues: empowering the team and delegating decisions.

Empowering your team to make better decisions

The scope of delegated decisions is often overlooked, yet it has a profound impact on an organization’s culture, performance, and long-term success. Delegating is not simply about telling employees what to do. It involves building systems where decisions are streamlined, supported, and celebrated. A difficult task though, as it means letting go of fear, and sharing your power with your team.

To be effective, delegation needs to be rooted in:

Clarity: your team needs a clear understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority.
Support: you must provide the right tools, processes, and coaching to ensure quality decisions.
Trust: empowerment thrives in an environment where leaders trust their teams and vice-versa.

Lack of clarity can lead to confusion, stalled progress, and a culture of second-guessing. When roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined, decision-making becomes less efficient, negatively impacting the company's health and progression.

With this, we don’t mean that decision-making is simple. It’s a process and not a one-size-fits-all solution. To start, here are some suggestions you can implement within your company:

Defining decision-making guardrails to ensure alignment
Encouraging your team to own the process and the outcomes—good or bad—so they can learn and improve
Coaching teams through their decision-making processes—without jumping in to “fix” their outcomes—helps build confidence and long-term resilience.
Allow teams to test, learn, and refine their decisions over time, fostering an environment of continuous improvement (implementing an iterative process)
Ensuring that team members know when to act independently and when to escalate decisions.
Empower those closest to the problem to decide, leveraging their unique expertise and perspectives.

ITERATIVE DECISION-MAKING: A CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT FRAMEWORK

The iterative process is a powerful strategy for refining and improving decision-making over time. Rooted in cycles of build, test, and review, this approach incorporates the principles of trial and error to progressively achieve the best outcome.

In the context of decision-making, the iterative process ensures:

Flexibility: Decisions are continuously assessed and refined, allowing teams to adapt quickly to new information or unforeseen changes.
Collaboration: Iterative cycles encourage the participation of all team members, promoting balanced workloads and improving communication.
Efficiency: Focus on delivering value, by eliminating unnecessary steps and staying aligned with goals.

COMMUNICATING DECISIONS EFFECTIVELY TO FOSTER TRUST AND ALIGNMENT

Once a decision is made, how it is communicated across the organization determines whether it will be embraced or met with resistance.

Effective communication requires listening and creating space for dialogue. Too often, communication flows only one way, from the top down, leaving employees feeling disconnected, unheard, and unvalued.

For decisions to truly land without confusion, it’s essential to build mechanisms for feedback, whether through surveys, regular team check-ins, workshops, or facilitated coaching sessions.

These mechanisms allow employees to voice concerns, ask questions, and contribute to refining execution plans, resulting in greater buy-in, and better alignment across teams, where everyone “speaks the same language” and understands their role in the bigger picture.

Here are some practical communication strategies to inspire alignment, build trust, and empower your team:

1. Be Transparent and Provide Context
Transparency is key to building trust. When communicating decisions, explain the rationale, including the factors considered, potential risks, and expected outcomes.

Also, provide context: “How does the decision align with the company’s broader strategy?”

It helps teams understand their role in making it a success. A clear purpose gives direction and creates a sense of commitment to move forward.

2. Ensure Consistency Across the Organization
Decisions should be communicated with a unified message to avoid ambiguity or confusion.

A consistent tone and a clear and coordinated approach ensure that everyone understands both the decision and their part in implementing it.

3. Communicate with Empathy, fostering a healthy environment
New decisions often bring some challenges, making it essential to create safe spaces for open dialogue.

Building a healthy environment, where team members feel they can share concerns or ask questions without judgment, encourages trust and engagement. When employees feel heard and supported, they are more likely to embrace change and contribute to its success.

4. Foster Two-Way Communication
Communication shouldn’t be one-sided. As a leader, it is your responsibility to encourage open dialogue by inviting feedback, addressing questions, and surfacing potential obstacles early on. Involving your team in these conversations helps clarify misunderstandings and creates a sense of shared ownership.

When people see their perspectives being valued, it builds motivation and alignment.

5. Follow Through and Maintain Accountability
Decisions require execution, and that’s where follow-through becomes critical.

Does your team have the right resources and support to implement decisions effectively?

Regular check-ins to monitor progress, address challenges, and celebrate milestones help maintain momentum and reinforce accountability. A continuous feedback loop ensures that decisions evolve and improve where necessary, fostering a culture of resilience and trust.

CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN DECISION AND ACTION

Leadership stagnation often stems from indecision, unclear communication, and a lack of trust within teams. By combining informed decision-making with effective communication strategies, you are breaking this cycle and reigniting momentum in the company.

Bridging the gap between the logic—why and how decisions are made—and the emotion—how decisions are received and acted upon—creates the clarity and alignment teams need to move forward.

When the decision-making is clear, transparent, and inclusive, your teams understand the rationale behind choices but also feel like they’ve contributed or had the opportunity to do so.

This alignment reduces confusion, speeds up execution, and minimizes stress, making it easier for teams to act with confidence and purpose. Ultimately, leadership stagnation is replaced by trust, strengthened alignment, and a shared sense of progress.