“Maybe” to Momentum: Why Leaders Must Choose to Make It Work
- Laura Culver
- 7d
- 5 min read
Conflict vs. Choice (how we unintentionally choose conflict)
Leadership in Practice | Episode 270
Most leaders think staying in “maybe” is responsible.
It feels careful. Rational. Safe.
But prolonged indecision doesn’t preserve options — it creates tension.
Teams hesitate.
What feels neutral quietly becomes conflict.
Slow down just enough to notice what’s actually happening — in your head + around you.
This is the move most people skip.
Awareness creates options.
Commitment creates clarity.
Clarity creates momentum.
In this article, we’ll break down:
Why “maybe” fuels conflict
How elite leaders separate emotion from logic
What modern teaming looks like when people choose forward motion over hesitation.
The Physiology of “Maybe”: Why Indecision Is Toxic & How to Choose Your Way Out
We’ve all been taught that good leaders weigh every option, stay objective, and that “maybe” is the responsible, careful choice.
But here’s the reality: chronic “maybe” is not neutral. It’s biologically expensive.
It’s a slow-burning stress state that quietly wears down your clarity, energy, and judgment over time.
Your brain prefers resolution. Without a clear yes or no, it continues scanning for threats, running predictive simulations, and allocating energy toward uncertainty rather than action.
Over time, this drains mental bandwidth and reduces your ability to think clearly.
Why Is Indecision So Exhausting?
Indecision is exhausting because the brain is built to resolve uncertainty.
Without closure:
The brain stays in threat-scanning mode
Stress hormones like cortisol remain elevated longer than necessary
Mental energy goes into simulation instead of execution
Cognitive clarity declines
Unlike acute stress that fades once a situation resolves, chronic indecision prolongs the stress response. Your brain keeps searching for an “end signal” that never arrives.
The result?
Brain fog
Burnout
Emotional reactivity
Slower decision-making
The goal isn’t a perfect decision. It’s a decision — then adjust.
When leaders stay in “maybe,” they’re not just affecting themselves. They increase uncertainty for everyone around them. They trade short-term social comfort (avoiding conflict or criticism) for long-term team stress.
Your Brain vs. AI: The Biological Advantage
Here’s something most leaders underestimate: your intuition is biologically efficient.
The human brain runs on roughly the energy of a lightbulb, while large AI systems require enormous computational power to process data. That efficiency is not a weakness — it’s an evolutionary advantage.
Your brain is designed to:
Detect patterns quickly
Integrate context rapidly
Produce fast, intuitive judgments
AI excels at sorting massive datasets. But it does not possess human authenticity or visceral intuition.
The competitive edge is not waiting for perfect data. It’s forming a fast directional judgment, exposing your logic, and refining it through feedback.
Speed isn’t recklessness.
Speed creates feedback loops.
Feedback loops sharpen judgment.
Old Teaming vs. New Teaming
The industrial-age model of teamwork often creates division-- assign work, assign blame.
Old | New | |
Goal | Divide work, assign blame | Find what's right together |
Stance | Backseat driver | Contact sport |
Decisions | "Maybe" as a shield | Fast judgment + rapid refinement |
New: both people look at the same situation, share gut conclusions first, then dig into why.
This upgraded teaming focuses on exposing logic instead of defending positions.
Find what's right, not who's right.
Exposing Your Ladders of Inference
Ladders of Inference is the mental process where we move from raw data, to assumptions, to conclusions — often without noticing the steps in between.
New teaming makes this visible:
Your visceral judgment + the assumptions you made + the data you selected or ignored
When logic is exposed, judgment improves.
The Stockdale Paradox: Choosing to Prevail
Resilience isn’t blind optimism. It’s the Stockdale Paradox:
Face the brutal facts
Choose to prevail anyway
You don’t wait for conditions to be perfect. You commit — and adjust.
That commitment generates momentum while others remain in evaluation mode.
Think of it like parenting. You don’t evaluate daily whether to love your child. You choose it.
Curious for more about the Stockdale Paradox? Learn more here
Tool #1: "Cinching": Stopping Negative Thoughts Before They Spiral
Negative rumination is a loop. The more you play the “movie” of a bad interaction, the more you distort the past & manufacturer crisis.
Notice the tilt, then “Cinch It” (don’t finish the thought, stop, interrupt). Cinching is the practice of stopping rumination before it spirals.
Notice the tilt — the physical cue of defensiveness or anxiety
Stop the input — pause the email, the message, the data stream
Cut the narrative — do not let the doom story finish
Cinching is not emotional suppression.
It is interrupting destructive rumination.
Acknowledge the feeling, but refuse the spiral.
Tool #2: Gratitude as a Counterweight
The brain cannot scan for threats and feel gratitude simultaneously—the use conflicting neural pathways.
Gratitude activates dopamine and serotonin, which counterbalance stress responses.
Use gratitude deliberately:
Morning: Set an intention. Provide your brain with a target.
Evening: Create closure. Signal the day is complete.
Toward your team: Scan for what’s working, not just what’s wrong.
You shift from threat-scanning to mission-scanning.
The 80% Rule: Awareness Is the Solution
Here's the thing most people miss: you don't need a perfect solution or a complex system to break out of the "maybe" trap.
Awareness is 80% of the solution.
Simply noticing when you're stuck in indecision—or when you're looking for someone to blame, or when you're bracing for doom—is enough to slow the process down. That moment of noticing creates what we call a "decision fork": a point where you can actually see your options and make a choice.
Before you notice, you're on autopilot. The shame-blame cycle runs automatically. The cortisol keeps flowing. You're stuck in the loop.
After you notice, you have agency.
You can ask yourself:
"Is this reaction actually helpful? What would happen if I just made a call here?"
That small gap between stimulus and response—that's where better self-leadership happens.
Want help working through negative spirals or being stuck in maybe?
Check out the full episode (with timestamps) here
FAQ's
What’s the difference between cinching and suppressing emotion?
Cinching interrupts rumination. It does not deny emotion. You acknowledge the feeling — then choose not to spiral.
Isn't "maybe" sometimes the right answer?
Yes—but only when it's deliberate and time-bound. Elite leaders are exceptionally picky about what they allow into the "indecision bucket" because they treat it like a battery-draining app. The problem isn't occasional, strategic indecision. The problem is chronic, fuzzy "maybe" that keeps the cortisol flowing indefinitely.
What if I make a fast decision and it's wrong?
Then you adjust. The cost of a wrong decision that you catch and fix quickly is almost always lower than the cost of staying in "maybe" for weeks or months. Fast decisions create fast feedback, which creates fast learning. Slow decisions create slow feedback, which creates slow learning—and a lot of cortisol in between.
What if my team culture rewards "thoughtful consideration" over speed?
Reframe it. Speed isn't about being reckless—it's about creating faster feedback loops. A "thoughtful" culture that keeps too many things in "maybe" is actually a high-cortisol, low-agency culture. True thoughtfulness means making directional decisions quickly, then adjusting based on what you learn.
How do I practice New Teaming if my partner isn't on board?
Start by modeling it. Share your gut conclusion first, then expose your logic. Invite them to poke holes in your assumptions. You can't force someone into New Teaming, but you can make it so effective and refreshing that they naturally start reciprocating.
If you notice a pattern and adjust behavior, that’s growth.
If you endlessly analyze without changing anything, that’s stagnation.
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