The challenge of championing what you wouldn’t have chosen
Senior leadership often requires you to champion decisions you wouldn’t have made on your own.
A regional leader I coach learned that her division was being restructured as part of a broader consolidation strategy. Reporting lines would shift. Some roles would be eliminated. The team she’d spent years building would be fundamentally redesigned.
The leadership team (of which she is a member) had debated multiple approaches. She’d advocated for a different path. But ultimately, they’d reached a collective decision, and she’d committed to it – as had everyone else around the table. They would speak in one voice, move forward together, and support the strategy as a united leadership team.
That commitment was genuine, but it didn’t make it her personal choice.
Now she needed to lead her team through it.
“I walked into the team meeting knowing I had to project confidence and stability,” she told me. “But I felt neither of those things.”
The questions came immediately. Why is this happening? What does this mean for us? Do you think this is the right call?
She gave the answers she’d committed to give. She emphasised the strategic rationale, the opportunities ahead, the commitment to supporting everyone through the transition.
But inside, she felt the gap between her commitment and her conviction.
She isn’t alone in feeling this gap every once in a while. In fact it is one of the most emotionally demanding aspects of senior leadership.
You’ve made a professional commitment to align, to speak in one voice, to support a direction even when it wasn’t your personal choice. That commitment is real. But so are your private reservations.
Your team needs you to be steady. Your superiors need you to be aligned. Your peers are managing their own challenges. So you carry it alone.
The exhaustion isn’t just from the difficult conversations. It’s from the daily work of honouring your commitment to collective leadership while managing the gap between what you’re championing and what you might have chosen. It’s from providing reassurance to your team while privately holding your own questions and doubts.
The leaders I see navigate this most effectively don’t try to manufacture false confidence or pretend the situation is easier than it is. Instead, they reconnect with why they made the commitment in the first place. The decision may not have been their personal preference, but it was made in service of the overall business needs. They focus on that broader purpose – not just their team’s immediate interests, but what the organisation requires to move forward.
They also understand what Patrick Lencioni calls the “first team” principle – that your primary team is the leadership team you’re part of, not the team you manage. When you commit to a decision in that room, you speak in one voice outside of it. Your reservations were valid, and needed to be voiced during the discussion, but once the decision is made collectively, maintaining that unified front is a leadership responsibility, not a performance of inauthenticity.
This shift from “what’s best for my team” to “what’s necessary for the business” helps them lead with genuine conviction, even when the path isn’t what they would have personally chosen.
Because championing decisions you wouldn’t have personally taken isn’t about pretending to feel something you don’t.
It’s about finding genuine conviction in your commitment to collective leadership and the broader business needs and recognising that you don’t have to carry it entirely alone.
Reflect: You’ve likely navigated similar tensions before – times when you led through something you didn’t personally choose.
When have you led powerfully through something that wasn’t your personal choice?
What did that version of you believe, that would be useful to draw on in future?
What became possible because you committed fully despite your reservations?
Acknowledge: Speaking in one voice as a leadership team is a fundamental commitment, but it requires clarity about what that actually means in practice.
What does honouring your first team commitment actually require of you, today?
What is the difference to you in speaking with authenticity versus saying everything you think?
What does communicating with integrity mean to you personally?
Navigate: Leading with conviction doesn’t mean waiting until your reservations disappear – it means moving forward with commitment despite them.
How do you best communicate a decision with genuine conviction when it wasn’t your personal choice?
Which of your strengths help you lead the implementation effectively despite your reservations?
What have you learned about what you actually need to sustain yourself, during times like this?
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