How to Reduce Decision Escalation Among New Managers

A new manager brings a decision to their boss. The boss answers it in thirty seconds because it’s faster.

The same thing happens the next day. Then again on Friday. A few weeks later, the boss is complaining that the new manager “doesn’t take enough ownership”, while continuing to make every decision for them.

A cool little system they have built together.

When every decision travels upwards, people often call it a confidence problem. Sometimes it is. More often, the manager is trying to work out where their authority starts and ends.

Decision escalation usually drops when three things become clear: which decisions they own, where the boundaries sit, and how they can get support without handing the decision back.

Some escalation is sensible. But please do not encourage a first-time manager to freestyle their way through a legal issue, a serious employee-relations problem or a decision that could cost the company a frightening amount of money. In those situations, escalating is simply good judgement. And everyone should be relieved they asked.

The problem is routine escalation: everyday priorities, small customer exceptions, team disagreements, work allocation, minor spending and decisions that should sit comfortably inside the manager’s role.

New managers tend to escalate these decisions for fairly understandable reasons. They don’t know what they are allowed to decide. Their boss has strong opinions and quick answers. Mistakes are treated like evidence that the promotion was a terrible administrative error. Or they have spent years being rewarded for getting things right themselves and are now expected to make judgement calls through other people, with less information and more consequences. Easy!

The manager may look hesitant. Underneath, they are often doing a perfectly rational calculation: asking the boss is safer than being wrong in public.

A job description will not do this work for you. New managers need to know which decisions they own, which ones require consultation and which ones genuinely need approval.

Be super specific. “You own weekly priorities and work allocation. Talk to me before changing headcount or making commitments outside the agreed budget. Escalate anything involving legal risk or a formal employee-relations process.”

That is useful on a random afternoon when three people want an answer. “Show leadership” is not.

You can make this even simpler by sorting recurring decisions into three groups:

Own: make the decision and inform the relevant people.

Consult: get input, then make the decision yourself.

Escalate: the decision sits outside your authority or carries material legal, financial, reputational or people risk.

If nearly everything still needs approval, the new manager has a new title, but very little actual authority.

When a new manager brings a decision upwards, resist the urge to answer immediately. Ask: “What do you recommend?”

Then stay quiet. This part may be difficult for people who were promoted for having answers and have spent the last decade generously distributing them.

Ask what information the manager is using, what trade-off they are accepting and what would change their view. You will quickly see whether the problem is missing knowledge, unclear authority, low confidence or fear of what happens if the decision is imperfect.

They can still use their boss as a sounding board, while remaining responsible for the recommendation and what happens next.

“Use your judgement” sounds supportive. It can also mean, “There are invisible rules here and you will discover them after breaking one.”

Guardrails make the invisible bits visible. They might include a spending threshold, situations that require HR involvement, non-negotiable customer standards, decisions that affect another team or a clear definition of what counts as reversible.

The aim is not to write a policy for every possible event. Nobody wants a 47-page decision manual that gets opened twice: once by the person who wrote it and once by someone looking for the expenses policy.

Give the manager enough structure to make ordinary decisions without asking for permission.

A good decision can still produce an awkward result. A poor decision can get lucky. If you only discuss judgement when something goes wrong, managers learn that independent thinking is dangerous and escalation is the sensible career move.

Review decisions that went well too. What did they notice? What did they miss? Which trade-off did they make? What would they do differently next time?

The point is to help them understand how they reached the decision, so they can make a better one next time.

Senior leaders often say they want managers to take ownership while answering every question and stepping in the moment something starts to wobble.

It is understandable. But every time they step in, they teach the manager to wait for them.

Before stepping in, ask whether the situation is genuinely dangerous or simply uncomfortable. If it is dangerous, intervene. If it is uncomfortable, coach. Clarify the boundary. Ask questions. Let the manager make the call and stay available for what happens next.

They can support the manager without taking the decision back.

New managers need to practice making decisions, not just learn another model or framework.

Give managers realistic situations with incomplete information. Ask them who owns the decision, what the guardrails are, who needs to be consulted and when escalation becomes necessary. Let them make the call, explain their reasoning and discover where their thinking becomes wobbly.

The manager’s own boss needs to be involved too. A brilliant workshop will lose quickly to a senior leader who keeps saying, “Just send it to me and I’ll sort it.”

Decision escalation can quickly become an organisational habit. The new manager may be the person doing it, but everyone around them has helped create it.

Ask a new manager to keep a decision log for two weeks. Nothing fancy. Record the decision, who owned it, whether it was reversible, who was consulted, whether it was escalated and what happened.

Review the patterns together. Are the same types of decisions travelling upwards? Is the manager escalating because they lack information, authority or confidence? Does their boss keep taking decisions back because it feels quicker?

Nobody needs another spreadsheet monitoring their every move. The decision log gives the manager and their boss something concrete to review together.

New managers still need support. The aim is to give them support that builds their judgement instead of making them more dependent on their boss.

If you are reviewing how your organisation supports first-time managers, decision ownership is a very useful place to start. It reveals what the manager needs to learn, and what the organisation may need to stop doing for them.