You’re in a leadership meeting and an issue is raised, it goes eerily quiet and when you look up you realise everyone’s staring at you. They’re waiting for the RIGHT answer, to gain certainty of what to do next.
So naturally you give it to them. Almost instantly the energy in the room changes, momentum is restored and people start talking again to move things forward.
It feels good, doesn’t it? Your team still need you. They’re very capable and you pay them well but still need YOU. It’s a reminder that you’re brilliant at what you do:
- You make decisions quicker,
- You see patterns faster,
- You have commercial context stored inside your head,
- You’re the only person in control.
It’s why you’re at the top! It’s also great for your ego 😉… BUT it can also be frustrating AND more importantly its less than great for your scaling business!
Here’s the problem. Every time you provide the confidence everyone else is waiting for, you reinforce the belief that yours is the only judgement they should trust. And the more they trust yours, the less they learn to trust their own. … no matter how much you pay them.
Of course your team needs your experience and support. The question is whether they’re becoming more confident because of it, or increasingly dependent on it.
There’s a difference between helping someone think through a difficult decision and making that decision for them. One builds confidence in their own judgement, the other risks making yours indispensable. And when you’re under pressure, it’s surprisingly easy to slip from one into the other.
I see this happen in successful founder-led businesses all the time.
And if this continues, you risk paying people big salaries to be reliant and dependent on you and to always think from your perspective, rather than their own:
- What does ‘x’ think?
- Would x be comfortable with this?
- Is this what ‘x’ would do?
Therefore, your team will never get a chance to learn, fail, learn and build their own confidence enough to trust making decisions for themselves, from their own judgement
You’ll still be sitting around a table with intelligent, experienced, well-paid leaders and still be doing all the work. And the more confidently you provide it, the less opportunity they have to discover whether their own judgement will ever be good enough.
That matters commercially.
As you continue to grow, your bigger business will need confident leaders. Leaders who can make a judgement call with incomplete information, tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty and move forward without needing you to make everything feel safe first.
If you don’t have that, or don’t create choices, you risk limiting your ability to scale or eventually sell.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable bit…
You might get frustrated that your leadership team don’t always step up as much as you want and need, but ask yourself where does their confidence to do that come from? Have you taught them to think and act for themselves or to only be in your shadow?
If you want your business to grow beyond you, your team needs to learn what happens when you don’t give them everything.
No matter how much it may scare you!