When you step into a new leadership role, there is a version of the experience you imagine: structured conversations with your team, deliberate learning, and careful onboarding. Then there is the version that actually happens.

The reality is that the world does not pause while you get your bearings. Unresolved decisions have been stacking up. Personnel transitions have happened at inopportune moments. A regular cycle of meetings and events is already in motion, and none of it will wait three months for you to feel fully prepared. That tension is not a failure of planning. It is simply the nature of leadership transitions. The question is not how to avoid it, but how to navigate it with intention.

For ongoing events and commitments that are already scheduled, the guidance is straightforward: move forward and do your best. This is not the moment for an exhaustive review of how things have always been done. Lean on your staff team, defer to their institutional knowledge, and focus your energy on showing up well. These early moments are also opportunities. They are chances to demonstrate your style, build trust, and let your team see how you operate under pressure.

For decisions that can wait, a brief delay while you continue learning is a reasonable choice. The keyword is brief. Moving deliberately is a virtue; developing a reputation for being indecisive is a liability. Know the difference, and communicate proactively if timelines are shifting.

For complicated decisions that cannot wait, resist the urge to retreat or defer entirely. Convening structured conversations, inviting input, and working toward a decision with your team is not a sign of uncertainty; it is leadership. I have found that a consultative approach, one built around deliberate listening and structured dialogue, not only produces better decisions but also helps a new leader build credibility quickly. Your team wants to see how you think, not just what you decide.

It is also worth remembering that not every decision needs to be fully resolved in a single move. A complex project may only require a go/no-go at the first stage. You can make a decision about whether to move forward, but you don’t need a complete blueprint for how. This approach lets you act decisively on what you know while preserving space to keep learning about what you don’t. Breaking a big decision into steps is not indecision. It is good judgment about where the real decision point actually lies.

Leaders who are new to a role sometimes worry that asking questions signals weakness. In practice, the opposite is often true.

The early days of a leadership role are a rare window during which structured listening is not only accepted but expected. Use that window deliberately. The learning you do in those first months compounds over time, and the relationships you build through genuine curiosity and consultation become the foundation for everything that follows.

None of this is a substitute for decisiveness. At some point, you take the input you have gathered, accept that your information will never be complete, and make the call. Which brings me to the best advice I ever received on this subject, which did not come from a leadership seminar or a management book. It came from my father.

Growing up, he told me to always use the best available information before making a decision, and then to move on. Don’t get caught in a cycle of second-guessing yourself. That advice has stayed with me, and it applies with particular force in the early days of a CEO tenure. You will rarely have all the information you want. What you can control is the quality of the process you use to gather it and the discipline to commit once that process is complete