You're the Bottleneck

It’s Sunday night. You’re rewriting a proposal your team was ready to send. You tell yourself it’ll take 10 minutes. Forty minutes later, you’ve changed the opening, moved two slides, and answered a question nobody asked.

Monday morning, you wonder why your team waits for you to make every decision.

Here’s the uncomfortable part. It feels good to be the person who makes things better. You know how to help, you get to see the difference immediately, and for a few minutes, there’s no question about what you bring to the table. Meanwhile, your team learns that a decision is only final once you’ve weighed in. Bye-bye, scale.

A review of 72 workplace studies found that when employees felt their leaders supported their autonomy, they were more likely to feel personally motivated by their work. In practice, that can look like inviting someone’s input and giving them room to decide how they’ll deliver an agreed result.

This week, pick one recurring decision you’ve delegated on paper but still make in practice. Tell the person who owns it what a good outcome looks like, which limits matter, and when you need to be brought in. Then say, “If it’s within those limits, you can make the call.”

When you feel the urge to jump in, ask yourself, “What’s at risk here if they do it their way?” If you can point to a real consequence, talk it through. If you’d just phrase the opening differently, close the document.

At the end of the week, look at what happened. Did the work meet the standard? Did it move faster? What did you get to spend your time on instead?

You already know you can improve a proposal. Find out what your team can do when they know they have the authority to send it.