One of the most valuable things a Chief of Staff can do is help a leadership team make decisions.
That doesn’t mean making the decisions for them.
It means that you make it easier for them to make good decisions.
When a decision keeps appearing on the agenda, generating lots of discussion, and leaving the room without resolution, the problem isn’t necessarily indecisive leaders. The decision process itself may need work.
Here are four things I’d look at.
1. Do we actually know what decision needs to be made?
“Discuss staffing.”
“Talk about the new strategy.”
“Review the proposal.”
Those are agenda items. They aren’t decisions.
Before the meeting, try completing this sentence:
By the end of this conversation, we need to decide ________.
You may discover that one enormous issue actually contains three or four smaller decisions. Separating them can immediately make the conversation more manageable.
2. Are we missing information—or do we genuinely disagree?
If the team keeps circling, figure out why.
- Maybe someone needs data before they can make the call.
- Maybe two executives are operating with different assumptions.
- Maybe nobody actually knows what the customer thinks.
Those are information problems. Figure out what the team needs to know… and go get it.
But sometimes everyone has the same information and still reaches different conclusions.
That’s when you’ve got to step in, as Chief of Staff, and change course. Don’t let the team keep commissioning analyses, in hopes that another spreadsheet or report will magically create agreement.
The team may simply value different outcomes or see the risks differently.
In other words, you have an alignment problem. The conversation needs to be about those tradeoffs.
3. Did we actually decide?
This sounds ridiculously basic. It’s also surprisingly common.
A leadership team has a robust discussion. People nod. Someone says, “I think we’re all on the same page.”
And everyone leaves with a slightly different interpretation of what just happened.
As Chief of Staff, you can create enormous value by forcing a little clarity:
It sounds like we’ve decided X. Is that correct?
Then capture it. And do the same with what wasn’t decided.
A productive discussion is not a decision, and “we talked about it” is not a useful status update three weeks later.
4. What happens now?
The decision isn’t finished when the meeting ends.
- Who owns the next step?
- What exactly did they commit to?
- When will it happen?
- What unanswered questions need to come back to the team?
- What decision needs to be revisited—and when?
Capture those commitments while everyone is still in the room.
Don’t wait to send meeting notes two days later… and discover that three people remember the conversation differently.
Your job isn’t to make everyone agree.
This is an especially important distinction for a Chief of Staff.
You can create the conditions for people to hear one another. You can surface information. You can clarify tradeoffs. You can make sure quieter perspectives aren’t lost. You can help the team understand exactly where agreement exists and where it doesn’t.
But you don’t need to manufacture consensus.
Sometimes the leader needs to make the call. Sometimes the team votes. Sometimes the answer is, “We’re not ready yet.”
The goal isn’t a room full of people happily agreeing.
It’s a room full of people who understand:
- What did we decide?
- What didn’t we decide?
- Who owns what?
- What happens next?
If you can consistently help a leadership team leave difficult conversations with those four questions answered, you’re doing some of the highest-value work a Chief of Staff can do.
