Asking Vs. Informing: The Unwritten Rules for Leaders and Managers

After a promotion at work, there’s so much to think about. One of the most important things to remember is that the workplace behaviors that got you where you are may not be the ones that will help you keep moving forward.

That’s especially true when it comes to your communication style, particularly around decision-making. All too often, I see new managers or leaders undermine their credibility by continuing to ask permission on decisions as if they are still in their previous role.

Why is this such a big deal? Regularly asking for permission conveys that you lack confidence. And that, in turn, leads to others losing confidence in your ability to lead.

The solution? Shifting from asking to informing. This is one of those “unwritten rules” of work. It doesn’t get talked about a lot, but it makes a big difference in how effective a leader is. Whether you're navigating a new leadership role yourself or you’re managing or mentoring someone who's just gotten promoted, understanding this unwritten rule is essential.

What's the Difference Between Asking for Permission and Informing?

At first glance, the distinction might seem subtle, but the impact on a leader’s personal brand can be significant. Read these two statements and notice your gut reaction to each one.

• I've explored several options, and I have identified the best one to resolve our budget issue. Are you OK with it? Can I move forward?

• I've explored several options, and I'm confident that I have identified the best one to resolve our budget issue. I'll move forward with this unless you have any major concerns.

While both messages convey the same basic information, the tone and implied confidence levels are very different. The first scenario positions the asker as seeking approval, which potentially undermines their authority. The second demonstrates their capability to make decisions while still respecting the organizational hierarchy.

The Risks of Too Much Asking

It's common for newly promoted leaders to err on the side of caution by frequently asking for permission. This behavior comes from a positive place. The asker may want to show deference to the leaders above them or demonstrate that they are open and collaborative. This can be a good approach in some situations. But when asking is overused, it can backfire. Constantly seeking approval before acting can have several negative consequences:

• Damaged credibility. Others may start to wonder whether the leader can, in fact, make independent decisions. Team members might even start going around them to the "real" decision-maker.

• Entrenched micromanagement. Constantly asking a micromanager for permission just adds fuel to the fire of their unproductive behavior.

• Stalled progress. Waiting for approval on every decision can slow down processes, hurt productivity and lead to missed opportunities.

How to Shift from Asking to Informing

Whether you’re the one who needs to inform more and ask less or you’re helping a team member through this transition, here are some strategies that can help. You can use these steps yourself or make them part of coaching conversations with your team member

• Reflect. Think about your recent interactions. How often did you ask for permission around decisions instead of simply informing others?

• Pause before asking. When you're about to ask for permission, stop and consider whether the decision falls within your authority. If it does, how can you rephrase your communication to inform rather than ask?

• Provide clear rationale. When informing others of your decisions, concisely explain your logic. This demonstrates that you understand the big picture and that you've thought through the implications.

• Express confidence. Use language that conveys your confidence in your decision-making ability.

• Invite feedback judiciously. Instead of asking for permission, you might say something like, "Unless you have any major concerns, I'll proceed with this approach."

Examples of Informing Statements

What does it sound like to inform others while maintaining your respect for their role? Here are some phrases that demonstrate both consideration and decision-making capability:

• I've analyzed the situation and determined the best course of action. I'll move forward with this plan unless you see any significant issues I might have overlooked.

• Given our current priorities, I've decided to allocate resources as follows ... Please let me know if you need any clarification on this approach.

• After careful consideration, I'm confident this is the right direction for our team. I'll begin implementation next week and keep you updated on our progress.

• I know we have a lot going on, and I want to be respectful of your time. I've done the groundwork, feel good about the direction, and am ready to move forward.

Supporting Your Team's Growth

If you're managing someone who's recently been promoted, you can play a crucial role in helping them start informing more and asking less. This is beneficial for both of you. Your team member will improve their ability to communicate with confidence and impact. And you’ll free up more time in your day when you don’t have to sign off on all of their decisions.

Here are some ways that you can support their growth and independence:

• Set clear expectations. Let your team member know that you expect them to make decisions within their scope of authority.

• Provide feedback. When they ask for your permission unnecessarily, talk about how they could have informed instead and what they can do in a similar situation next time.

• Delegate for development. Give them chances to make decisions on their own and support them, even if the outcome isn't perfect.

• Set an example. Demonstrate informing (rather than asking) in your own interactions with your superiors.

• Spark reflection. Encourage them to think about how their communication style affects how others perceive them as a leader.

Developing Leadership Skills: What's Next?

Mastering the art of informing rather than asking permission projects confidence, demonstrates decision-making competence, and establishes leadership credibility. But honing a new communication style is just one of the many adjustments involved in taking on a new role.

If your organization is looking for innovative ways to support and train new leaders and managers, I invite you to explore Newberry Solutions’ New Lens® learning platform. New Lens is a Capability Academy that focuses on core leadership strategies — like impactful communication — that have helped over 75% of our clients in Fortune 500 companies get promoted. To schedule a demo or learn more, visit https://www.newlensleadership.com. You can also join in the conversation about this article on my LinkedIn page. Share the communication strategies that worked for you as a new manager or leader, and let me know if there are more unwritten rules of leadership that you’d like me to cover in an upcoming blog article.

7 Thinking Traps That Undermine Leaders—And How to Escape Them

When the pressure is high and the pace is relentless, your brain will try to work against you. Here’s what to watch for.

I was working with a senior leader recently. Talented, experienced, the kind of person her organization depends on. And she said something that stopped me cold:

“I just don’t think I’m cut out for this role.”

She’d had a rough quarter. A major initiative hadn’t landed the way she’d hoped. Two of her strongest people were being pulled toward other priorities. And she was navigating an executive team that seemed to be communicating less the more pressure mounted.

Anyone who’s been through a stretch like that knows the feeling: Is it me? Am I the problem?

She was not the problem. And she was cut out for her role. But in that moment, she had fallen into one of the most common thinking traps for leaders: letting a hard stretch become a judgment about her identity.

Thinking traps are patterns of distorted thinking that feel true in the moment but lead us away from clear judgment and effective action. They’re not new. Over the years, I’ve seen them surface constantly in my coaching work. But these days they’re feeling more common than ever. Right now, leaders are navigating unprecedented complexity, uncertainty and change. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries faster than most organizations can adapt. Teams are distributed, attention is fractured, and the pace of change has made the job of leading more cognitively demanding than at any other point in my 17-plus years in this work.

Under that kind of pressure, even excellent leaders stop thinking clearly. Trying to protect them from threat, their brains start generating narratives that are unhelpful and just plain wrong.

Why Thinking Traps Hit Leaders Especially Hard Right Now

What makes us vulnerable to thinking traps? You know firsthand that when you’re physically depleted—running on too little sleep, skipping meals, neglecting exercise—your brain feels foggy. That fogginess isn’t just your perception. The exhausted brain shifts into a more reactive mode. The prefrontal cortex, which handles sound judgment, perspective-taking and long-range thinking, gets crowded out by the more threat-sensitive parts of the brain. We stop being strategic. We start being stressed. And the traps follow almost automatically.

The stressed leader reacts instead of responds. Catastrophizes instead of assesses. Assumes the worst about other people’s intentions. Swings between taking on all the blame and deflecting responsibility entirely. Makes decisions they wouldn’t make with a full night’s sleep and a clear head.

The stressed leader operates from urgency—constantly pulled toward what’s loudest and most immediate. The strategic leader protects time for what’s actually important, makes decisions from a position of clarity and builds shared ownership with their team instead of hoarding control or abandoning it.

Thinking traps keep leaders stuck in stress mode. Getting unstuck starts with learning to recognize them.

The 7 Thinking Traps

These seven traps are well-documented in research, and I see versions of all of them regularly in my executive coaching work. Take a moment now to read through them with honest curiosity: Which ones feel familiar? Where do you recognize yourself?

1. Personalizing: Taking the Blame for Things You Don’t Control

What it sounds like: My team is struggling because I haven’t figured out how to lead them through this level of change.

When you personalize, you accept full responsibility for outcomes that are actually the result of several factors—some of which have nothing to do with you.

This trap is especially damaging because it’s common among leaders who care deeply. When things go wrong, they turn inward immediately. They see a client departure—or a disengaged team member, or an initiative that didn’t land—as evidence of their failure.

For some leaders, personalizing might feel like a virtue because they think they’re holding themselves accountable. But that’s not what’s happening. Instead, claiming ownership of every variable prevents them from seeing the full picture of what went wrong and finding better solutions going forward.

The reframe:

When something goes wrong, get curious before you get self-critical. Ask yourself: “What evidence supports that this was because of me—and what doesn’t?” You can take genuine responsibility for your contribution without shouldering the weight of everything that was never yours to carry.

2. Externalizing: Handing Your Power to Forces Outside You

What it sounds like: The market shifted. The board kept changing the priorities. The leadership team is dysfunctional, not me.

Externalizing is the mirror image of personalizing, and it’s just as dangerous. It means placing responsibility for your outcomes entirely outside yourself, and in doing so, giving up what you actually control: your own choices and responses.

I’ve watched genuinely skilled leaders stall out because they were so focused on what was being done to them that they never stopped to ask what they could do in response. And I get it—leaders are dealing with a lot right now. AI disruption, competitive pressure, a complicated talent market. Those are real forces. But leaders who get stuck here stop learning, stop adapting and eventually stop leading. They become spectators in their own situation.

The reframe:

What evidence supports that this situation was because of others or external factors—and what doesn’t? Name honestly what is outside your control. Then turn your attention to your own role. You almost certainly have more influence than it feels like right now.

3. Magnifying and Minimizing: Turning Up the Bad, Turning Down the Good

What it sounds like: We lost that account—this whole quarter has been a disaster. Their positive feedback was just them being polite.

When you turn up the volume on the negatives and turn it down on the positives, you get a distorted sense of your performance and your situation.

We work with a lot of high performers, who are particularly vulnerable to this thinking trap. The same high standards that drive them to excellence can make it nearly impossible to let a success land. One difficult client interaction overshadows a dozen strong ones. A single critical comment in a performance review drowns out months of genuine praise.

You can’t deploy your strengths more deliberately if you can’t see them clearly. Overanalyzing your failures while treating your successes as flukes isn’t humility—it’s leading from incomplete data.

The reframe:

Before you analyze what went wrong, identify what went right. Not as a feel-good exercise, but as a data-collection exercise. What specifically worked, and why?

4. Overgeneralizing: Mistaking a Moment for a Trend

What it sounds like: Every time we try something new, it fails. We’ve never been able to retain strong people here.

Overgeneralizing means drawing broad conclusions from limited evidence—and then treating those conclusions as fixed facts about yourself, your team or your organization.

One difficult presentation becomes “I’m a poor presenter.” A failed initiative becomes “We’re not good at executing new ideas.” Once we get set on those conclusions, they close off the possibility of fresh solutions. If you’ve already decided something “never” works, you stop looking for new approaches.

The reframe:

Replace “always,” “never” and “every time” with “this time” or “in this situation.” One data point is information. It’s not a pattern. And it’s certainly not a verdict about who you are or what you’re capable of.

5. Mind Reading: Assuming the Worst Without Asking

What it sounds like: I haven’t heard from her—she must think my proposal is a bad idea. He was quiet in that meeting; I know he’s frustrated with me.

Mind reading means assuming you know what someone else is thinking—and almost always assuming the worst.

As pressure and stress increase, so does the pull of this trap. When people are busy, communication breaks down. Emails don’t get returned promptly. Leaders get left out of meetings. They feel “in the dark,” and they instinctively start looking for patterns that might explain what’s happening. The stressed mind rushes in with a story, and it’s almost always a negative one—more about our own fears and insecurities than the actual situation.

I’ve seen mind reading cost leaders critical relationships, because they pulled back from someone based on a conclusion that had no basis in fact. I’ve also seen it cost organizations real momentum, because a leader assumed a key stakeholder was skeptical without ever testing that assumption.

The reframe:

Make it a practice to ask rather than assume. “I noticed you were quiet in that meeting—what was on your mind?” takes 10 seconds and can save hours of mental energy spent on a story that may not be true.

6. Emotional Reasoning: Treating Feelings as Facts

What it sounds like: I feel overwhelmed, so this must be an impossible situation. I’m anxious about this, which must mean I’m not ready.

Emotional reasoning means treating your emotional state as evidence about external reality, when in fact it’s only evidence about your internal state.

Emotions are real and they matter. But they are not always accurate reporters about what is happening around you. A leader who feels overwhelmed isn’t necessarily in an unmanageable situation. They may be depleted—physically or emotionally—or working without the right support, or simply in a chapter that calls for a different approach.

I see emotional reasoning showing up frequently around AI right now. Leaders who feel behind on understanding how AI is changing their industry often conclude, based on that feeling alone, that they aren’t equipped to lead through change. That feeling is worth paying attention to: It might be telling you to learn more, to ask for help, to slow down. But it’s not proof that you’re in the wrong seat.

The reframe:

Separate the feeling from the conclusion. “I feel overwhelmed” is a signal that something needs to shift. But “this is impossible” is a claim that deserves evidence before you act on it. Feelings are data, not verdicts.

7. Catastrophizing: Jumping Straight to Disaster

What it sounds like: If we don’t nail this next presentation, we could lose everything we’ve built. If I don’t figure out this AI transition, I’m going to lose my job.

Catastrophizing means jumping from a difficult present moment to a worst-case future—and then responding to the imagined disaster as if it’s already happening. When the environment is uncertain, the brain tries to protect itself by reaching for worst-case scenarios: If I imagine the disaster, maybe I can prevent it. But a mind that’s busy managing an imagined catastrophe can’t think clearly about the actual situation in front of it.

This is the energy drain I see most often in my work with senior leaders. I recently worked with a leadership team navigating intense pressure from key stakeholders—the kind of environment where every quarterly review felt high-stakes. They were spending enormous energy on contingency planning for outcomes that were unlikely, while the real issue—a cadence of communication with the stakeholders that was creating more anxiety than it resolved—went unaddressed. They were managing the wrong fire.

The reframe:

Bring yourself back to right now. Not the 17th step, not the worst-case outcome. Just the next concrete action. What is the first thing you need to do? Focus there. You can’t solve a problem you haven’t arrived at yet.

The Practice: From Stressed Leader to Strategic Leader

Thinking traps are not a sign of weakness or inadequacy. They’re a sign of being human—and of being in a demanding role. Every leader I’ve worked with, at every level of every organization, has experienced some version of every trap on this list. I have too.

We can’t stop our brains from generating these patterns. But we can take back our power by learning to recognize them and developing the habits that help us find our way back to clear thinking.

If you recognize yourself in one or more of the traps on this list, take that as a signal—not that something is wrong with you, but that you need a reset. Start with the physical foundations of self-care. You might be tired of reminders to get more sleep, but it really can change so much. So can real meals and regular movement. When you’re running on empty, every trap hits harder and faster. Protect your energy the way you’d protect any other strategic resource.

Then build the noticing habit. This week, pick one trap from the list—the one that seems to always snare you. Then, just once, catch yourself when you’ve fallen in. You don’t have to fix it immediately. Just notice it. Name it. And then ask yourself what you would say to a trusted colleague who was thinking this way.

You probably wouldn’t tell them the one bad quarter defined their career. You probably wouldn’t tell them that a silent inbox meant a lost relationship. Or that the worst-case outcome was inevitable.

You’d help them see the fuller picture. You’d remind them what they’re good at. You’d tell them the truth with kindness.

Give yourself the same clarity and compassion you’d give someone you respect.

Ready to Go Deeper?

When leaders are stuck in stress mode, the cost shows up in retention, decision-making and the performance of entire teams. For more than 17 years, we’ve helped leaders and organizations across industries build the skills to lead strategically through complexity and change. If you’re seeing these patterns in yourself or your leadership team, let’s talk. Reach out at neena@newberrysolutions.com, learn more about coaching and other offerings or explore New Lens®, our award-winning leadership development platform, at www.newlensleadership.com.

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