My dad used to say to me, “Son, he who hesitates is lost. You gotta be decisive!”

I think he is right – most of the time. There are certainly times when we need to hesitate in order to be decisive. But what I gathered from his sage advice is that when it’s time to make a decision you need to make the decision. Don’t dilly dally. Not every decision we make is going to be the right one, but we are better off making the decision than with refusing to decide and hoping the issue will somehow go away – that never ends very well.

I learned something profound about this topic from Mario Andretti. For those of you who may not have heard of Mario Andretti, he was one of the greatest race car drivers in the world. He was a champion driver and is the only man in world to win the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 and the Formula One World Championship. He is the only person ever to be named the US driver of the year in 3 decades – 1967, 1978, 1984.

When I was a kid I dreamed I was a driver like Mario Andretti, and that probably continued right up until I was in my twenties.

A friend of mine had the opportunity to interview Mario. He asked him this question, “Why do you win more races than any other driver?”

Apparently Mario didn’t hesitate with his answer – he knew why he won more races. He said that he wins more races because he has trained himself to do something that didn’t come naturally to him. When there is an accident on the track, or the beginnings of an accident about to occur, his natural tendency was to slow down and drive more cautiously – just like everyone else. It’s an autonomic response.

However, he trained himself to not slow down, but to speed up. He would not hesitate, he would accelerate. When a situation was thrust upon him that would naturally cause him to hesitate, he trained himself to accelerate. One of two things would happen: he would crash, or he would pass a number of other drivers who were hesitating.

Wow, that’s gutsy.

He is a man who played to win. He didn’t play ‘not to lose’. Apparently this strategy worked very well for him: he was one of the greatest drivers of all time.

So, when it comes to decisions that you find intimidating, do you accelerate or do you hesitate?

I am not talking about simply making a quick decision with no real thought. Decisions that leaders make every day require some degree of thought. What I am talking about are those decisions that you are presented with that can cause fear and intimidation. It might be something that has gone wrong, or is going sideways like Mario faced with the accidents on the track. Your stomach starts to turn in knots as you inwardly groan and mutter to yourself, “I don’t want to have to deal with this…”

It’s in those moments, those times when we just wish the scenario would go away, that we can hesitate in a fashion that makes things worse. We are not necessarily deliberating to determine the best possible decision. No, we are avoiding dealing with what needs to be dealt with. We are not leading. We are hesitating. It’s ironic actually that in leadership it’s this kind of ‘hesitation’ that can lead to crashes. Refusing to engage, refusing to step in and lead, is what causes things to really go sideways and actually compounds the problem into a larger pile-up.

Courageous wholehearted leaders step into the midst of the mess and accelerate resolution. By engaging, making decisions and leading in the midst of situations that are blowing up, going sideways or skidding off course, leaders facilitate resolution with as little damage as possible.

Let’s learn a valuable leadership lesson from one of the greatest racing drivers of our time: when we are presented with difficult and demanding situations let’s choose to accelerate engagement and not hesitate. Let’s step up, step in, take a stand and step on it.

Accelerate, don’t hesitate.