George W. Bush has famously described his leadership role as “the decider”. But deciding how to decide is as important as making the final decision. What should be the composition of the group the leader turns to? What is the context of the decision? How will information be communicated and how much control does the leader maintain over the decision? A leader who gets any of these factors wrong may be decisive, but also decisively wrong.

The US president described his leadership style as having three core components: outline a vision, build a strong team and delegate much of the process to them. His decision-making on Iraq, however, has been criticised for the grandiosity of his vision, failure to manage the divisions in his team and failure to monitor the delegation of decisions. Without contextual intelligence, being a “decider” is not enough.