Get Off Your Tail: 3 Choices Great Leaders Make

I recently spent a full day with a CEO and his three top leaders. Over coffee that morning, I walked him through what a one-year coaching road map could look like for the four of them. He listened, asked two questions, and said, “I’m in. Let’s do it.”

That was it. No committee. No “circle back next quarter.”

By late afternoon, the room had a different energy than the one I’d walked into. Each leader had that spark in their eye, a renewed hunger to grow and to win, together.

I’ve thought about that morning a lot since. Not because the decision was big, but because of how quickly it was made, in a year when most leaders I meet are waiting. Waiting for the market to settle. Waiting to see what AI does to their industry. Waiting for a better time.

What separates great leaders from average ones?

Decisiveness.

The best leaders I know are not the most talented or the most polished. They are the ones who get off their tail and move. They invest. They train. They focus on personal development while everyone else is still “gathering more information.”

We have more information available to us than any generation of leaders in history. What we’re short on is the willingness to act on it.

When I look at the tough choices I’ve made, and watched others make, to get off their tail, three things are almost always true.