Most executives can build coalitions. Most can't make decisions.
Leadership IQ tested 1,207 executives across five areas of executive-level behavior. They scored reasonably well on four of them, ranging from 51 to 81 on a 100-point scale. But on decision-making, they averaged just 33.
In other words, these executives are well respected and well connected, but they struggle to make quick decisions.
The pattern gets sharper for 39% of the sample. These are leaders who build coalitions well and develop their people well, but they can't make the call when one's required. They're the leaders every team loves. They're the leaders every CEO complains about.
This isn't the executive HR usually worries about. Not the one who breaks under pressure. Not the political operator who can't work with peers. The leader the data describes is well-liked, calm, and on every short list. And they can't decide.
Every succession review has one. Most have several.
The Findings at a Glance
| What we found | What the data says |
|---|---|
| The cohort's weakest area, by far | Decision-making · avg 33 / 100 |
| The cohort's strongest area | Building relationships · avg 81 / 100 |
| Most leaders' single biggest weakness | Decision-making (58% of leaders) |
| Most common development priority | Decision-making (78% of leaders) |
The average executive scored 33 out of 100 on decision-making.
The Executive Readiness Index measures five areas of executive-level behavior. The cohort averaged 81 on building relationships and political influence, 78 on leading through others (delegating, developing people), 61 on adapting and learning, and 51 on strategic thinking. On decision-making (the ability to commit when the picture is incomplete and time matters), they averaged 33.
Only 8% of the cohort scored in the top tier on decision-making. The other 92% are slow when slow is expensive. For 78% of the sample, decision-making came up as one of their top two development priorities. For 58%, it was their single weakest area.
It isn't a pressure problem.
The natural assumption is that slow decisions come from anxiety. Pressure makes leaders freeze and chase consensus. Take the pressure off, the decisions come.
The data says no.
The deeper reason the pattern persists has nothing to do with stress. It has to do with how slow decisions feel from the inside.
From the inside, slow decisions don't feel like indecision. They feel like being careful. They feel like being collaborative. The leader experiences their own behavior as a virtue, not a problem. They aren't avoiding the decision. They're "gathering input." They aren't stalling. They're "making sure we have alignment." The behavior comes with its own reasonable-sounding language, and that language is what's getting reinforced in 360s, in performance reviews, in promotion conversations.
That's why the pattern survives so much feedback. The leader keeps hearing they're great with people. They don't hear that they can't decide, because the people closest to them aren't watching the decisions that don't get made.
At the executive level, slow becomes expensive.
For directors and middle managers, slow decisions are usually recoverable. The team has time to react. The decisions are smaller in scope. The cost is bearable.
At the executive level, that math falls apart. The decisions get bigger, the windows get shorter, the ripple effects get longer. And the same behavior that looked thoughtful at the director level starts costing real money at the SVP level.
A delayed hire keeps the wrong person in a critical seat for another quarter. The business unit underperforms in plain view of the board, and the cost shows up in the Q3 numbers. A delayed strategy call hands competitors a window the executive's team didn't realize they were giving away. By the time the decision finally lands, the move that would have worked six months ago is now a follower's move. A delayed pricing decision preserves internal comfort and a few customer relationships, while the company quietly loses the margin it was built on.
None of these decisions look heroic on the way in. They look like "let me think about it" and "let's get more input." What they cost only shows up later, in the version of the company that didn't happen.
"We need someone who can move faster."
"She's great with the team but she struggles to commit."
"He's politically savvy but he's not driving the call."
Leadership IQ's separate research on why CEOs get fired, based on a study of 1,087 board members, found that decisional speed and judgment was a top reason cited. The data in this report shows where that pattern starts, often years before the firing conversation happens. The executive who can't decide doesn't last at the executive level. They get worked around. They get replaced. Or the organization stalls until something forces a change. None of those outcomes are good for the leader. None are good for the organization.
Better at relationships means worse at decisions.
One scattered finding could come from anywhere. The decision deficit shows up too consistently for that. There's a structural reason the same leaders who score high on relationships score low on decisions, and it's worth understanding.
Across the cohort, the correlation between political skill (building coalitions, navigating organizational dynamics, reading the room) and decision-making speed is −0.49. In behavioral research, that's a strong negative relationship. The leaders who score highest on relationships and influence are statistically the same leaders who score lowest on making timely calls.
The pattern doesn't stop with relationships. Decision-making also correlates negatively with leading through others (−0.31) and with adapting and learning (−0.27). The skills that make leaders strong at developing people, building systems, and adjusting their approach also appear to slow them down on decisions.
Among the leaders in the sample who did score high on decision-making, the average score on relationships was 50, against the cohort average of 81. The fast deciders have their own gaps. They aren't the answer either.
The well-rounded executive is a myth in this data. Only 5.8% of the sample scored well across four or more of the five behavior areas.
The closer to the top, the worse the deciding.
The pattern doesn't ease up at higher aspiration levels. It sharpens.
Each leader in the sample chose an aspiration target before taking the assessment: Director, VP, or C-Suite. Their scores broke down by aspiration in a way that matters for HR.
Leaders aspiring to C-Suite roles posted the lowest average score on decision-making in the entire sample (28 out of 100). Leaders aspiring to Director-level roles weren't far behind (30). Only leaders aspiring to VP-level roles broke the trend, scoring 44 on decision-making. Still below the threshold for adequate, but enough to suggest the pattern isn't uniform across levels.
The aspiring C-Suite group also scored highest on relationships and political influence (83 out of 100). The trade-off intensifies as leaders climb. The closer they get to the top, the more relationships dominate at the expense of deciding.
The implication is uncomfortable for HR. The leaders most likely to be on a C-suite shortlist are also, on average, the worst deciders in the sample. The very candidates a board is most likely to greenlight are the ones whose biggest behavioral gap is the one the job is most about.
Mark Murphy on the behavioral shift from polished-but-stuck to faster, better decisions.
Two paths forward, depending on what you're looking at.
If this pattern looks familiar on your bench, the next step depends on whether you're seeing it across multiple seats or in one specific person.
The Executive Shift
A five-week intensive built on the Executive Readiness Index, the assessment that surfaced this data. Each leader takes the assessment, gets their individual profile, and works through the specific behavioral shifts the data flags. Designed for cohorts of leaders moving from VP to SVP, or SVP to C-suite.
Learn about the course1:1 Coaching with Mark Murphy
Six months of direct work on the specific decision patterns the assessment flags. The right fit when the executive is already in the seat, the stakes are real, and the gap between current behavior and what the role requires is wide enough that a course alone won't close it.
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