You Are Not Indecisive — You Are Misusing Your Decision Muscle

”So you're saying I'm not indecisive - I'm just deciding to do something else?... hm....”, said Michael as he wrote it down. “I could definitely use less beating myself up with ‘Why can’t I do this?’ and more asking, ‘How can I use this same muscle differently?’”

Coaching interventions are sometimes like poetry, or a comedy line: they can fall flat, leaving a person completely unaffected, or they can profoundly shake up and rearrange how a person sees themselves and their world, impacting their actions going forward.

For us coaches, with more expertise and the right amount of listening to our clients about how they see themselves and their world, the chances of choosing the right intervention, for this client, in this moment, increase. Often, these choices are based on methods and strategies we learn in our training. Sometimes, they are intuitive. I remember how I experiened the power of intuitive moves during my time in high-end fashion photography, when we would shoot incredible editorial stories for magazines and things would sometimes not click together, despite having the best talent on set... and then I, or our team member, would have an urge to do something off-beat, something intuitive that could only be explained rationally in hindsight, a move that would make all the pieces fit to get a collective ‘ahhhh’ from everyone on the set. You then knew that you had found something golden to move forward with.

This was such a moment, but in coaching with Michael. A moment in which it all clicked, and the space started to churn.

Michael wanted to work on his decision-making. Up until this point in the session, my questions, clarifications and explorations were landing on what seemed like fertile ground: he was open, answering when he knew, willing to search for an answer when he didn’t, but we were moving subtly and slowly. It was almost at the end of our session that I decided to change gears and said:

“Michael, as I hear you describe yourself as 'indecisive' and struggling to say 'No', 'Not now' or 'Not me, but here’s who can', what strikes me is this: you ARE making decisions.

You’re making decisions not to feel bad. You’re making decisions to do what feels good, rather than what you need to do in your role. But you ARE making decisions”.

The penny dropped. There was silence. I hold silence with him*. I notice Michael change, physically: he is straightening up. I didn’t notice him hunching over earlier, but seeing him sitting upright now, I notice a change not just in his posture, but in his entire presence: his breathing slows, it becomes deeper. He comes across as more grounded.

“I AM making decisions...” - he says slowly as he continues trying this concept on.

I almost see him think back through our whole session (or I think through it myself, wishing him to do the same) and change, in his mind, every time he said 'I’m unable to make decisions' to 'I HAVE been making decisions'... He is accepting my challenge, my provocation, my offer to see himself differently. He is being empowered by it. But only because on some level, he already knew all of that. He just needed a language for it, perhaps by another voice at first, before he can internalise it and make it his own.

He shifts. He is viscerally affected. He is empowered. He is going from disempowering himself the whole session and many months, perhaps years, prior ('I am unable, I am not decisive') to 'I HAVE been deciding the whole time'. I smile as I watch it land, almost seeing it take root. When Michael looks at me again, experiencing himself from this perspective, I dare say he looks transformed. I decide to strengthen it, and say:

“The good news is that you have this decision muscle already available to you. You just need to apply it differently. And that is an easier move rather than trying to go from 'I’m indecisive' to 'I wanna be decisive'."

Michael confirms that he sees it. His self-perception has been positively challenged in the last 5 minutes of our session. He accepted the challenge and, during the next several months, applied this empowering perspective, which proved to be central to several other areas he wanted to work on: not being the hero who saves the day, delegating to his team more, empowering them to say 'no' when appropriate, collaborating with other departments. As we met for other sessions, I experienced that he didn’t need any more interventions, just support and accountability check-ins, as he was getting used to applying this somewhat new self- concept to his leadership role.

...

Michael is not the only one. About a month later, I used the same move with Catherine to see if she was ready to go from 'I’m afraid I’m letting my team down' to 'What can you DO to make sure you’re not letting them down?'. She was ready. But that readiness came with a surprise: “I never even considered that question!”. Of course, she hasn’t. She was too busy, or overpowered, by being concerned.

So, if you think you’re the only one who is, from time to time, challenged, you’re not. There are a lot of people around the world working on something, either in their own journals, with their teams, their mentors or their coach. The solutions are available; sometimes we just need a different lens to see them.

Find your different lenses, whatever they are for you. I believe we owe it to ourselves and to the people around us: to struggle less and do better, whatever we choose to do.