There is a particular kind of leadership problem that can look like a compliment at first: Everyone wants your opinion.
A significant decision comes up, and someone says, “We should probably run this by her.” A meeting reaches a fork in the road, and the group decides to wait until you can join. Someone on the leadership team has a recommendation, but instead of acting on it, they schedule 30 minutes with you.
You are trusted. You have good judgment. People value your experience. And nothing moves without you.
At some point, that stops being evidence of strong leadership and starts becoming a constraint on the organization. The difficult part is recognizing that your leadership team may not have created this dependency on its own. You may have helped teach them to wait.
First, Not Everyone Wants To Make The Call
Before assuming every leader on your team needs to become a bold, independent decision maker, recognize something that can be surprisingly difficult for senior leaders to accept: Not everyone wants to be like you.
Many people who eventually become senior leaders can remember the first time they were given real authority. Finally. A chance to make the call and show what they should do. But not everybody experiences leadership that way. Some highly capable people would genuinely prefer to hear, “Here is what we need. Go make it happen.” And then they will make it happen exceptionally well.
You want those people on your team.
Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius model offers a useful way to think about this. It describes Enablement as providing the support needed to implement an idea, and Tenacity as ensuring the work is completed and achieves results. Those are tremendously valuable contributions. Do not make the mistake of trying to remake every capable executor in your own image.
But set those people aside for a moment. There are probably others on your leadership team who should be making strategic decisions and are perfectly capable of doing so. They just are not. That is where you need to look at the environment you have created
You May Have Trained Your Team To Wait For You
Leaders rarely set out to create dependency. Usually, it happens through dozens of perfectly reasonable interactions. Maybe you run a tight ship. Important decisions come through you because you want consistency and quality. Over time, people learn that the safest thing to do is wait. Or maybe you ask for opinions, but everyone knows there is a right answer. “What do you think we should do?” They answer. You explain why that probably will not work. They offer another idea. You explain the problem with that one, too. Eventually, everyone is thinking, “If you already know what you want, just tell me.”
There is another version that looks even more like empowerment. You tell someone the decision is theirs, then spend 15 minutes explaining what you think should happen and why. Technically, they still own the decision. Kind of.
In a 2024 Harvard Business Review article on delegating decision-making, researchers Hayley Blunden and Mary Steffel note that giving employees decision-making responsibility can provide “experience and control,” but their research also found that employees may view delegated decisions as a burden they would rather avoid. In other words, saying, “You decide,” is not enough. You have to create the conditions in which someone can actually own the decision.
Give Away The Decision, Not Just The Work
If you want your leadership team to operate when you are not in the room, start by being much more explicit about what they own. Pick a real decision and delegate the authority for it. Then give them the boundaries. Maybe there is a budget they cannot exceed. Maybe there is a deadline. Maybe there are legal, customer, or strategic constraints that are
nonnegotiable. Be clear about those things.
Then say something harder: “This is your decision. I will support what you decide.” And mean it. Ask them to tell you what they decided and why. But make it clear that they are informing you, not seeking approval. That distinction is enormous.
McKinsey’s research on employee empowerment and delegated decisions found that only slightly more than a quarter of respondents said their organizations made delegated decisions both quickly and well. The researchers concluded that simply identifying which decisions employees can make is insufficient. People also need the authority, tools, guidance, and managerial support to succeed. This is why decision-making capacity has to be developed, not announced.
Coaching Is How You Build The Judgment Behind The Decision
When someone brings you a problem, your instinct may be to solve it. You probably can solve it. That is part of how you got here. But every time you immediately provide the answer, you get another repetition in decision-making, and they lose one. Stay curious a little longer. Ask:
- “What are you seeing?”
- “What options have you considered?”
- “What are the tradeoffs?”
- “What would you do if I were not available?”
That last question can be particularly revealing.
Coaching creates space for leaders to work through their own thinking instead of borrowing yours. You can challenge assumptions, point toward information they may have missed, and help them examine consequences without taking the decision back.
There is evidence behind that approach. McKinsey research on faster, better decisions found that respondents at organizations where employees were empowered to decide and received sufficient coaching were 3.2 times more likely to report that delegated decisions were both high quality and fast. The researchers also emphasized creating room for people to “fail safely.” That last part may be the hardest.
Eventually, They Are Going To Make A Bad Call
If you delegate meaningful decisions, somebody will eventually make one you would not have made. Some of those decisions will turn out badly. This is the moment when your team finds out whether you really meant what you said. If you respond with a tribunal, a lecture, or a quiet takeover of future decisions, people learn quickly. They learn that they technically have authority until something goes wrong. After that, the smart move is to get your approval first.
Accountability is different.
The decision was theirs. The outcome is theirs, too. So hold them accountable. Ask, “What happened?” “What did you miss?” “What are you going to do to fix it?” Then let them fix it.
McKinsey makes a similar point in its work on untangling organizational decision-making: Leaders should establish clear decision rights and escalation thresholds, but they also have to resist allowing people to push decisions upward simply to avoid personal risk. Mistakes cannot be eliminated entirely if genuine authority is being delegated.
Your team may need a few cycles before they believe you. They may need to make a few decisions without you. They may need to make a few decisions you disagree with. They may even need to make a bad decision, watch you stand behind their authority, and then hear you tell them to go fix it.
That is how trust becomes real.
What Changes When The Team Really Owns Decisions
Eventually, something interesting starts happening: People stop looking toward your empty chair. The leadership meeting continues even though you had to miss it. Someone identifies an issue, the right person owns the call, the group debates it, and they move.
You come back later and hear, “Here is what we decided and why.” Your response matters tremendously in that moment. Not: “Did you consider this?” Not: “I probably would have gone another direction.” Not: “Before we finalize it, let’s talk.” Just: “Great. Thanks.”
That can be uncomfortable, particularly when you have spent years being the person with the answers. But that discomfort is part of the transition from being the organization’s chief decision-maker to being the person who develops other decision-makers. The goal is not to become irrelevant, but to become unnecessary in decisions that other capable leaders should own.
There is a line often attributed to Gandhi: “There go my people. I must hurry to catch up with them, for I am their leader.” Whatever its original source, there is something wonderful about that picture of leadership. Your people are moving. Decisions are getting made. They are exercising judgment, accepting accountability, learning from mistakes, and going somewhere without waiting for you to lead every step.
Now go catch up with them. It is a great sprint.
