Trust your judgement
You already knew. You waited anyway
CONFIDENCECAREER DEVELOPMENTLEADERSHIP
I want to tell you about a role I almost didn't go for.
I was just under a year into a job I was good at. The team was great. My manager had invested in me. And I could see that there was a different role in the business that was the right next move for my career.
I sat on it for months anyway.
I didn't want to seem ungrateful. It had only been a year and I worried that asking would make me look like I didn't care about the team I was in. So I kept telling myself to wait a bit longer, prove a bit more, get a bit more certain before saying anything.
What finally moved me was realising the delay wasn't protecting anyone. It was just protecting me from a conversation I'd already decided I needed to have.
When I finally asked, it was fine. It led to the right change. And I'd spent months stuck in a decision that was already made.
Not trusting your judgement isn't a neutral act
Every time you know the answer and you wait anyway, you send yourself a message. You tell yourself your judgement needs backup. That you're not quite enough to act on what you already know. And the next time a decision comes up, the hesitation kicks in a little earlier, before you've even had a chance to think it through.
It compounds. The habit of outsourcing your own calls builds a version of you that finds it harder and harder to trust the thing that's actually been right most of the time: your own read of a situation.
And before you tell me this is just about being careful, there's a real difference between needing more information and waiting to feel more certain than you ever will. The second one disguises itself as wisdom. That's what makes it hard to spot.
What McKinsey found
McKinsey research on decision-making found that leaders who act on their judgement sooner consistently outperform those who delay in search of certainty. Not because they make fewer mistakes, but because they course-correct faster and spend less time in the costly in-between of knowing and not acting.
The delay has a cost. We just don't always count it.
What gets in the way
In the room with my clients, it's rarely about not knowing. It's almost always about what being wrong would mean.
If I make this call and it doesn't work, what does that say about me? That I got ahead of myself. That I should have waited.
So we collect more opinions. We run it past one more person. We find reasons why now isn't quite the right moment. And we call all of that being careful, when actually we're managing the story we'd have to tell about ourselves if things didn't go the way we hoped.
Fear in a sensible outfit.
This is what we're working on next month
In June's Empower & Lead Confidence Workout, we're going into this together.
What it actually takes to back yourself faster. What gets in the way, specifically, not just in theory. And how to build the foundation that makes trusting your judgement feel less like a risk and more like a muscle you know how to use.
If you've been in your head about a decision lately, or if you keep finding yourself waiting for certainty that never quite arrives, this is the session for you.
It's free. It's one hour. And it's the kind of conversation that tends to move things.
Come and join us: nataliacerezo.com/confidence-workout
And one question to leave you with:
What decision are you currently waiting to feel more certain about, and what would you do if you trusted what you already know?
Keep shining!
Natalia x
Human Red Bull. Leadership Coach. Shine File Creator.
©Natalia Cerezo Martin 2026
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