Ever leave a leadership meeting thinking, “Why did that take so long?” If you’ve been investing in Leadership Development and still seeing slow decisions, you’re not alone.
Your leadership team just spent three hours in a meeting that should have taken 45 minutes. Your VP triple checked a presentation that was already solid. Your director sent a 12 paragraph email when three sentences would have done the job.
It’s easy to label that as “thoroughness” or “attention to detail.”
But a lot of the time, it’s something else: the Hesitation Tax.
And corporations and NGOs pay for it every single day in slow decisions, missed opportunities, and burned out high performers. This is where Talent Optimization and real Communication Skills for Executives matter, because hesitation spreads fast at the top.
Stop Calling It a Confidence Problem: Executive Presence Training Isn’t the Whole Answer
Here’s what a lot of Leadership Development gets wrong: it treats hesitation like a confidence problem and tries to “train it out.” So your high potential people get sent to Executive Presence Training and sessions on speaking up.
That kind of training can help. But it won’t fix a culture problem, and it won’t build lasting Communication Skills for Executives if the system keeps punishing people for being human.
When your best people spend hours getting ready for every presentation, soften every recommendation with disclaimers, or stay quiet in meetings even when they have the answer, that isn’t a personal flaw. It’s a learned response to your culture.
Someone, somewhere in your organization, taught them that being wrong out loud is dangerous. Maybe it was a leader who publicly corrected someone in a meeting. Maybe it was a culture that rewards "perfect" over "fast." Maybe it was watching someone else get sidelined for making a call that didn't pan out.
Whatever the origin story, the result is the same: your talent is operating under a rule that says, "If I'm wrong, something bad happens." And that rule is slowing everything down.
The Hesitation Tax: What It Actually Costs Your Talent Optimization Efforts
Let’s talk time and money. Harvard Business Review reports that executives spend about 23 hours a week in meetings. When hesitation becomes “how we operate,” that number creeps up fast because every decision needs another round, another check, another “just in case” email.
Source: Harvard Business Review, “How to Spend Less Time in Meetings” https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness
Here’s what the Hesitation Tax looks like inside corporations and NGOs:
Over preparation. Your team spends three hours prepping for a 30 minute check in because they’re afraid of not having an answer. That’s not excellence. That’s fear dressed up as professionalism.
Over explaining. Every email becomes a mini novel. Every recommendation comes with a pile of caveats. Every decision gets defended three different ways. The cost is obvious: meetings drag, projects stall, and momentum disappears.
Silence in real time. Your sharpest people have the answer but won’t say it until they’re 100% sure. By the time they’re ready, the moment is gone and someone else has made a faster, messier call.
Add it all up and the cost gets ugly fast. Even a few extra hours a week per leader compounds into real dollars, delayed programs, and missed funding or market windows. That’s a talent optimization problem, not a personality problem.
This isn’t about “sending people to training.” This is a structural leak in how decisions move through your organization.
Why “Fixing” Your People Doesn’t Work
Most organizations handle this backward. They see hesitation and think, “Our people need more confidence.” So they invest in coaching and workshops focused on mindset and speaking up.
Then everyone goes right back to playing it safe.
Here’s why: you can’t coach people out of a behavior your culture keeps rewarding.
If your norms punish visible mistakes, reward over preparation, and promote the people who never stumble in real time, confidence training won’t stick. Your employees aren’t being dramatic. They’re being smart. They’re responding to the rules you’ve built.
The fix isn’t another seminar. The fix is to change the rules of the game.
From “Being Right” to “Leading on Purpose”
Here’s the pivot that changes everything: stop rewarding “always right” and start rewarding “recover fast.”
In today’s environment, perfection is expensive. The organizations that win are not the ones that never miss. They’re the ones that course correct quickly, learn, and keep moving.
But a lot of cultures are still stuck on an old rule: the leader who never admits uncertainty is the strong leader. The exec who always has the answer is the competent one. The person who never stumbles is the one we promote.
That rule might have worked when decisions moved slower. It doesn’t work now.
Real advantage goes to teams that can say “I don’t know yet” without losing credibility. Leaders who can decide with 70% of the data and adjust. Organizations where “Let me follow up by end of day” sounds like leadership, not weakness.
This isn’t lowering the bar. It’s upgrading how you define high performance in real time.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Picture this kind of leadership team:
- Your VP says, “Great question. I don’t have that in front of me, but I’ll follow up by end of day,” and nobody side eyes them.
- Your director makes a recommendation, hears new info mid meeting, and adjusts on the spot without getting defensive.
- Your managers stop sending 14 paragraph emails and start sending three clear sentences that move work forward.
That’s not chaos. That’s speed with standards. And it only happens when you change the rules your culture is running on.
The shift starts when leaders model a new standard: authority isn’t having every answer. Authority is trusting yourself and your team to find the answer and move.
When executives stop over protecting themselves and start showing what a clean recovery looks like, it spreads. Less hedging. Less explaining. Faster decisions. Better use of your best people.
The Work Ahead
This is Part 1 of a three part series on how organizations can stop paying the Hesitation Tax and start building cultures where people communicate clearly and lead with authority. This is “permission over perfection” in action, and it’s a big part of strong Leadership Development and Talent Optimization.
In Part 2, we’ll break down how to dismantle the “perfection rule” and replace it with a new standard where recovery beats flawlessness. You’ll learn simple language shifts and leadership behaviors that speed up decisions without sacrificing quality.
In Part 3, we’ll get practical: a clear framework for teaching “clean communication” so your team stops over explaining, decisions move faster, and you get more value from your strongest talent.
But here’s what you can do right now: start noticing where hesitation slows your team down. Watch for the over explaining, the over prep, and the silence. Those moments cost more than time. They train everyone else on what’s “safe” in your culture.
Ready to Shift the Rules?
At BHS & Associates, we don’t just coach individuals to “be more confident.” We work with corporations and NGOs to change the day to day systems that make hesitation feel like the safest option. That’s how you optimize talent, protect momentum, and stop paying for slow decisions.
If you’re ready to stop losing hours to the Hesitation Tax and start building a culture where your people lead with authority, let’s talk. Our leadership workshops and organizational coaching programs help teams communicate clearly, make decisions faster, and recover quickly when plans shift.
Visit our website to learn more about how we can partner with your organization.
And if you want a personal guide to modeling this shift, my book Lead Like You Mean It is a practical, plain English read on showing up with authority, owning your decisions, and giving other people permission to do the same. Get your copy here.
The question isn’t whether your team has what it takes. The question is: are your rules letting them use it?
#Lead Like You Mean It
Get the book here
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